FRIENDS IN NEED

Job 4:1-7:21; 1 Corinthians 14:18-40; Psalm 37:30-40; Proverbs 21:27

“In the past you have encouraged many people; you have strengthened those who were weak.
 Your words have supported those who were falling; you encouraged those with shaky knees. But now when trouble strikes, you lose heart. You are terrified when it touches you. Doesn’t your reverence for God give you confidence? Doesn’t your life of integrity give you hope? Stop and think! Do the innocent die? When have the upright been destroyed?... My experience shows that those who plant trouble and cultivate evil will harvest the same.
 A breath from God destroys them. They vanish in a blast of his anger…. If I were you, I would go to God and present my case to him.”

“But everything that is done must strengthen all of you.”

“The godly offer good counsel; they teach right from wrong.
 They have made God’s law their own, so they will never slip from his path.”

My mother was always harping on me about my criticisms of others. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” She meant well, but was a pretty inconsistent model. Over the years, I also learned that some things which must be said just cannot be said in a way that sounds nice. “Nice” tends to get misinterpreted, especially when coupled with politically correct euphemisms. People who do not want to hear the negative won’t hear the negative, at least unless it is thrust upon them in no uncertain terms. Nice or not, there is a time and place to speak the truth in love.

Nevertheless, Mom got it mostly right. First, talking to a young man with little experience in living life and even less maturity, she was wise to counsel me not to sound too big for my britches. (Not that I ever listened, but that’s another blog….) Second, silence was a good discipline for me; it was not my default response to much of anything. But finally, it came down to this: my criticism just wasn’t helpful. It was not spoken in a spirit of love. It did not typically offer solutions. There was no real intent to assist the other person, only an intent to drag him or her back down to the level I thought they should be (meaning, below me). It was not unusual to use my powers of criticism simply as a means of elevating myself over those I saw as competitors. Nor is that a strategy unique to me. In most any competitive environment (is there one that isn’t these days?) there can be found those who practice criticism as a cat sharpens its claws to attack its prey.

Paul laid down a better principle. He had nothing against correction or education or even outright criticism, so long as whatever was done conformed to one rule. Everything that is done must be useful to all and build up everybody in the Lord. I’ll admit when I first came across this verse and began to apply it, it made me more than a little frustrated and sometimes downright angry. Such wisdom was being withheld! What righteous judgments went unpronounced! Come to find out, though, that folks usually got along just fine without my critical counseling. They mostly knew if and what they were doing wrong from the start. They did not need my input to figure it out in any event. One way or another, as time passed, they came to understand their sin and its impact. They did not need a judge; they needed a supportive friend. They did not need someone to fix them (or would not accept a “fixer” at the time, regardless). They needed someone to love them in spite of their shortcomings.

I first “got” this when I saw it in action in my youth group at church. A big-time leader in the church got caught embezzling funds from work, and by the time he was caught, he’d already squirreled away north of a million dollars. His son drove a too-expensive car, dressed too well and had always been an arrogant sort. When his Dad went down, the car got repossessed, and raggedy jeans and t-shirts became his Sunday best. I had my talons ready to skewer. One thing stopped me. No one else was doing or saying anything that was not supportive of the boy. My own friends, who had been alienated as much as I, suddenly formed a protective hedge around him that kept me and others like me at bay. My folks fumed that the church continued to accept the man into its fellowship until he finally went to jail, and after he’d done his time, welcomed him back with open arms. Later, I learned his son had understandably gone through a very rough time and paid a huge price elsewhere for being the son of the wrong man. Church was the only place he felt safe, and it was to church he turned when he got so depressed suicide seemed like the only way to end his personal mortification. Even today, I shudder to think what I might have said and how it might have affected him if I had, and I praise God for the fact that my friends were a whole lot wiser and more compassionate than me. That incident marked a turning point for me as well. Paul’s admonition began to look like it made a lot more sense.

I don’t know where people developed our irrational need to fix each other – whatever the personal cost to the ones needing fixing. I do know our feeble efforts often backfire and end up doing more harm than good. So it was with Job’s friends, and so it is with us. People are almost infinitely capable of punishing themselves for their misfortune. Judging and second guessing ourselves are two talents we require little help to develop. Loving ourselves in spite of the messes we make,… now, that’s another story. It is nearly impossible, especially in the midst of guilt and self-loathing, to see ourselves as God sees us. Truly, the kindest thing a friend can do in such times is remind us how to love ourselves by allowing the Spirit to love us in spite of ourselves. The lesson may begin with something as simple as an arm around the shoulders or a quiet listening ear.

We cannot fix each other any more than we are capable of creating each other out of a sperm and egg. Only the Original Manufacturer actually knows how to fit that sperm and egg together to make a unique individual according to His Plan, and only He can fully and faultlessly repair His Creation when it gets broken. We do no one any good when we just break them down further. The next time I cannot say anything nice, I think I’ll try just being with the person and sticking around in support until I see how God handles the situation. I figure I’ll probably learn a thing or two that way, and I won’t have to worry about doing any additional damage, either. Win-win.