Truth and Relationship

I have to give credit to Chris in my Sunday School class; he’s the one that brought it to our attention. We were talking about the passage in Mark when Peter acknowledges that Jesus was the Messiah, and Jesus sternly warns the disciples not to tell anyone. The class was wondering why he gave them that warning, and we came up with some possibilities. The one that rings most true to me is that the Jews of that time were looking for a political Messiah. If word got around that Jesus was that, the excitable radicals might have started balls rolling that would have gotten authorities involved (including the Romans), and the real plan could have been thwarted.

But Chris pointed something else out that really stuck with me. This is a great example of Jesus living out a principle we all need to understand: just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s helpful to say right now.

Oh, my goodness . . . on the nose, my friend! How many times have I heard people justify unkind, judgmental words to someone by saying, “Well, telling them the truth is the most loving thing to do.”

Always? Really? I'm not so sure.

It may be true that someone has gained weight since you last saw them a year ago; it is probably not helpful or kind to say so. It may be true that I screwed things up in my lesson plans last week (and I really did, y’all); given the fact that I’m already aware and beating myself up, having my students and their parents all point my mistakes out to me does not help me – it just discourages me.

Here’s a tougher one: It may be true that somebody is making some unwise decisions in their lives, but your “loving” intervention may do more harm than good. 

An extreme example of this is the stereotypical street preacher walking around loudly proclaiming that everyone around him is going to hell unless they confess Jesus Christ as their savior. Well, yes . . . this may be true, but does he really think he is going to change that reality with this behavior? Okay, maybe I can allow that God sometimes calls people to do things that look foolish to the world. But still . . . 

Friends, my life experiences have made me ultra-sensitive to the need to speak truth. But truth without compassion can be cruelty. And truth without relationship can be fruitless -- or even harmful. I suspect that the number of people who have come to salvation through a fire and brimstone street preacher is FAR outweighed by the number of people who have been completely turned off to Christianity by them. 

My principal lives by the philosophy that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. PREACH, sister. Relationship -- this is key, people. 

When my daughter was in college, she met a lot of people in the community theater who had beliefs and lifestyles that she strongly disagreed with and which greatly concerned her. But she kept her mouth closed. She spent a couple years working with these people, creating art with these people, and developing sincere friendships with these people. Then later, when an opportunity came up to share her beliefs, they heard her out.

Because they knew her. They had already seen that she loved them and that she wasn’t one of THOSE Christians, the ones who had hurt them so badly over the years. So, they were willing to listen to her loving words . . . and who knows what seeds were planted there.

I have had a conviction in my heart for many years now about some people in my life who I feel are on a wrong track. They are not likely to be convinced by me to change their minds and ways. (And let’s be honest; I could be wrong and could lead them astray.) The only way they would be convinced to move in a different direction – and then have the power to make that move – is through the Holy Spirit. So, my first concern is not to change their mind or their behavior; my first concern is to help them build their relationship with God.

Because knowing God is ultimate. An intimate relationship with God is the beginning of everything that matters. The theology of Jesus’ sacrifice without knowing God is just an interesting concept easily dismissed as mythology. Compliance with the law without knowing God merely qualifies as legalism. Awareness of our sinful state without knowing God leads only to despair.

Relationship with God must be the priority . . . and that means it often needs to be the starting point with the people we want to love. As we learned in Sunday School, Jesus wanted people to know him before they got the rest of the story. And yesterday, the lesson was about people doing great works in his name, but in the end, Jesus said, "I never knew you."

“The truth will set you free,” Jesus told us . . . but he also said, “I am the truth.” Nobody will really know the truth until they know him.

And this clarifies our job a bit, I believe.