kindness Archives — truthmission.net

Evidence: Part 3–What Leads to Peace

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Spirit; whoever serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by others. Let us then pursue what leads to peace and to building up one another. For the sake of food, do not destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to become a stumbling block by eating; it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. (Romans 14:17-21 NABRE)

The historical context of the passage above concerns a cultural clash in the early church, specifically regarding dietary laws. As Christianity spread throughout the ancient world and came into contact with diverse people and their customs, some questions began to arise.

Is it OK to eat meat? If so, what kinds of meat are OK? And what about alcohol? Should we abstain completely, or is moderation OK? We are supposed to be new creations in Christ, but what EXACTLY do we have to change?

Now if there’s one concept that a Truthseeker abhors, it’s the notion of a “gray area.” The world has a lot more black and white in it than many people are willing to admit. “Gray area” implies uncertainty, instability, ambiguity. These are not the things that a Truthseeker seeks.

Nevertheless, they do exist. Truth is universal, but not everything you encounter is universal Truth. Some things really can apply differently to different people in different situations.

A phrase I like better than “gray area” is “bullet point.” My son picked this one up when he studied at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Over the decades, Moody has sent out many missionaries to some of the most dangerous parts of the world. Many of them actually have taken a bullet for their faith. Therefore, a “bullet point” refers to an aspect of Christianity that you would literally take a bullet for. Anything that doesn’t fall into that category is up for discussion.

This is a critical concept for growing Christians to keep in mind. Everyone is on his or her own journey. That does not mean that everyone has his or her own truth. It just means that we are all in a different stage of seeking the Truth that is universal and applies to us all. A bullet point is that Jesus is the only way to that Truth, because He said as much:

Jesus answered, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. The only way to the Father is through me. (John 14:6 NCV)

So we all have the same destination, and the same road to reach it. HOWEVER, we all started from a different place. Therefore, we all must take a different route to reach the main road. The common ground of our common destination, the peace of God, is the most important thing. Even so, we must not lose sight of the fact that everything else about us is different.

I am frequently annoyed at the overuse of the word “diversity” in our culture. Usually when you hear that word, someone is attempting to forcibly construct a false community out of a group of people based on what they DON’T have in common.

This is never necessary. No two people are alike. For this reason, diversity occurs naturally. It isn’t something that needs to be forced or promoted—it just IS.

As a Truthseeker, it seems counter-productive to go out of our way to celebrate our differences. Acknowledge them, yes, but putting the spotlight on what’s different isn’t what promotes peace. Rather, putting the spotlight on what is the same within a group of people who are OTHERWISE different is what leads to peace within that group.

So if Truth is found in the common ground, then it would follow that truth seeking and peace loving are one and the same. If you are constantly looking for ways that you are different from other people, no matter how innocent your intentions were at first, it’s all too easy to drift toward bigotry from that stance. This is because you will have made the mental shift from “us” to “us and them.”

We keep the focus on “us” by seeking out the things that make us “us.”

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Let’s take a moment to review the first two tenets of the Truthseeker Manifesto.

A Truthseeker’s objective is to end arguments, not start them.
A Truthseeker makes the most of every opportunity to learn and grow, striving to understand other points of view, with the purpose of establishing common ground.

As you can see from these, Truthseeking acknowledges that people are different, and that everyone has a unique perspective. A Truthseeker values that perspective. We are not trying to be right, or to “win” the conversation. We listen to each other’s stories to learn about where we came from to get where we are.

When we take this attitude into a conversation or a relationship, then we can acknowledge our naturally occurring diversity without making a false issue out of it. Where we came from doesn’t matter, and where we are now doesn’t even matter the most. It’s all about where we are going and how do we get there. This posture promotes peace from the very beginning. It creates an environment where you start thinking of your destination as a common one, and not just an individual one. You are not two ships passing in the night, but two voyagers seeking the same shore.

So how does this play out in our culture today?

I am going to take the point of view of a mature, or at least maturing, Truthseeker. The concept in the passage at the top that we need to focus on is to not being a “stumbling block.”

From the perspective of the Church, this includes mature Christians showing grace not only to “baby Christians,” that is, those who have just joined the church, but also to those outside the church with whom we have relationships. (Yes, you can actually do that. FRFR!)

The key points are these:

Don’t ever look down on someone for not being in the same place you are, because NO ONE is in the same place you are.
NEVER pass judgment on something that isn’t a bullet point.

These two principles can be effective in any relationship, but they are especially effective WITHIN the church. There are a lot of traditions that vary from one denomination to the next, from one church building to the next within a denomination, and even from one person to the next in a church body.

One person may have been brought up to believe that alcohol is evil. The person in the next row might have come from a background where beer is its own food group. Who’s right?

Universally speaking, if the Bible doesn’t specifically say one way or the other, then it doesn’t matter. It’s not a bullet point.

However, the main goal of Christianity is to love your neighbor as yourself (see Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 19:19). And while it is true that offense is simply an emotional reaction to the challenging of a belief pattern, you are not walking in love if you have deliberately set out to offend.

You don’t know what you don’t know about the background of everybody you meet. If your church buddy doesn’t want to have a beer with you, or looks uncomfortable when you order a bottle of wine at dinner, this is not a sign that you need to help him “loosen up.” What if he came from an abusive home with an alcoholic father? What if he lost a friend or a child to a drunk driver?

The bottom line is that it’s not your job to “help” someone come around to your way of thinking. If they are convicted that they shouldn’t be drinking alcohol, or eating pork, or watching The King’s Speech because it’s rated R, then you must realize and accept that TO THEM, it is a sin, even if it’s not a bullet point. So rather than trying to explain your point of view, show some kindness and give up your thing for an evening to meet them where they are. You can always crack open that beer when you get home.

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If we aren’t supposed to be judgmental on non-bullet points inside the church, then how much more should we avoid judging those outside! It is foolish to try to measure someone by standards that they are not even aware of. I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone who found judgmentalism attractive. I certainly can’t think of any logical reason why a non-believer would want to consider Christianity if all they have to look forward to is having their every action scrutinized and weighed in the balance.

Now a bullet point is a bullet point, and common sense is common sense. While we shouldn’t wrinkle our nose at, say, a tattoo or a piercing, it would be another matter entirely to speak out against an extramarital affair, or the exploitation of children, for example. On these matters, we have not only the right, but the obligation to speak against these sins.

But for everything that doesn’t fall neatly on one side of the fence or the other, the path that leads to peace is the path of love. We show the evidence of this love by walking the path that emphasizes our similarities, not the things we do that are different.

(Come back for Part 4: Choose Joy!)

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Evidence: Part 2–Where Your Treasue Is

Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being. (Matthew 6:19-21 MSG)

Have you ever been truly in need?

There’s a chance that some of you have. I don’t know the personal story of everyone reading this. But if you’re reading it now, then you have access to the Internet, which means you likely have shelter and enough means to know where your next meal is coming from.

The point is that whoever you are and whatever your situation is, someone has it worse than you do. This is true for every human being on this planet except one. Theoretically, someone has to be at the end of the line, and whoever that is will probably be dead by the time I finish typing this sentence.

The reverse is also true. If there is always someone that is worse off than you, then obviously, that means that you are better off than someone else is. If all of your needs are met, and you have one extra penny in your pocket, then to a great many people in this world, you are rich. So if you are reading this, you have more than you need. It might be a little more; it might be a lot more. And lots of folks out there have less than they need.

Let me be clear that I am talking about needs, not desires. You need clean drinking water, but you don’t need Perrier. You need clothing, but you don’t need the little black dress from Chanel. You need shelter, but you don’t need a mansion in Bel Air.

Some people get the wrong idea about how to get what they need. They decide that because you have more than you need, they might as well take some of what you have. Some might call that “redistribution of wealth,” but what it really is is theft.

If you have more than you need, technically, you are always at risk of having it taken away from you. The more you hoard for yourself, the more you stand to potentially lose.

There’s a way around this though. We as a nation need to get over this ridiculous mentality of piling up wealth for ourselves. Malcolm Forbes is frequently quoted as having said, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Well, Malcolm Forbes is dead. Someone else got his toys. So what did he win?

Remember what we’ve talked about before—the toys aren’t even yours to begin with. Everything you have is on loan from God, because you don’t take anything with you.

So if you have more than you need, and what you have isn’t yours anyway, why not give some of it away? Nobody can take from you what you have already voluntarily surrendered. All you have to do is get to a place where the people you meet that have less than you are more important than the stuff you have that they don’t.

But if you’re not at that place yet, then how do you get there? In a word, trust.

Trust that God is your provider. Trust that He will continue to meet your needs as He always has. Most of all, trust that He can do more with the money you’re giving away than you could if you kept it.

It’s this trust that leads to a life of generosity. Think about it—why do we try so hard to hold on to our money? Is it because we worked hard and we earned it? Maybe, but I think it’s more about fear. We are afraid that we will LOSE what we have earned. We have probably set goals for ourselves that involved “moving up in the world.” Maybe we have been successful in attaining those goals, at least in part. We get jealous for what we have acquired along the way, because we have devoted so much of our lives to acquiring it.

This tells me that maybe the goals are the problem. If the ambition of our lives is to build our own legacy, what’s the point of that? We won’t be around to enjoy it.

On the other hand, when we trust God to take care of everything we need (again, not everything we want, but everything we need), we find ourselves holding on more loosely to a lot of things, but especially money. The less we try to grasp at the material things in our lives, the more we find ourselves learning to be content. We learn what the meaning of “enough” is. We learn that if we have enough today and trust that we will tomorrow, God will open our eyes to people we can help and situations we can change with the more-than-enough with which He has blessed us.

Best of all, we learn that when we help someone else have enough, we find that we STILL have enough. And by being kind and thinking of the needs of others first, we pay our blessings forward. And maybe, with this generosity as the evidence that God is doing something in our lives, we might inspire someone else to follow our lead.

Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed. (Proverbs 19:17 ESV)

(Come back for Part 3: What Leads to Peace)

Evidence: Part 1–Be Kind

Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else. (1 Thessalonians 5:13b-15)

The number one thing that should set Christians apart from the world is the evidence of the Holy Spirit working in their lives. One of the fruits of the Spirit is kindness. But what does it actually mean to “be kind?”

He started it!

If you have more than one child, or if you grew up in a house with more than one child, you have heard this one (or maybe even said it). When two kids are caught in the throes of conflict, they are less concerned with ending the conflict than with determining and/or declaring whose fault it was that the conflict began. One of my frequent lines when my boys were little was, “I don’t care who started it; I’m FINISHING IT!”

Kindness is about learning how to finish it before it even starts. Bellowing like a deranged grizzly bear might have gotten my sons to shut up and stop fighting, but it didn’t really teach them about being kind to each other or to anyone else.

To be kind is to seek peace, which is nearly impossible to do if you are also trying to get your own way. Kindness, like mercy, goes first. It was the kindness of God that moved Him to send Jesus to save us. He didn’t wait for us to be good enough to earn His kindness. He went first, putting our benefit first, with the goal of restoring our relationship to Him.

Jesus’ message about loving your enemies from the Sermon on the Mount is another demonstration of kindness:

But I tell everyone who is listening: Love your enemies. Be kind to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who insult you. (Luke 6:27-28 GW)

There is more to kindness, however, than just being nice or turning the other cheek.

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WARNING!!!

Sandwiched in the middle of the scripture at the top of this post is an admonition to “warn those who are idle.” That may not sound like kindness to some. If kindness is about living at peace with people, then why do you want to be all up in their grill when they’re just chillin’? (Can you tell I have a teenager?)

Remember that the main goal of kindness is seeking the other person’s benefit. If it would benefit the other person not to lose his job, then you are doing him a kindness by telling him to get off his lazy tuchas and get to work. If it would benefit someone to kick an unhealthy habit, break off an unhealthy relationship or not get arrested, then anything you do to prevent those things qualifies as being kind, even though it may come off as “meddling.”

Let me be clear. If you are in a position to keep someone from ruining his or her life, you are not doing that person any favors by “staying out of it.” Sometimes kindness is displayed by helping people who can’t help themselves, but sometimes, you can also show it by helping people who WON’T help themselves. That one is harder, and to be honest, it doesn’t always work out. But at least you have done your part. And, you have done something that most would not have been willing to do.

This kindness is the evidence that God is working in your life.

(To be continued in Part 2–Where Your Treasure Is)