conflict Archives - Made Sacred

There Are Times

July 15, 2016 by Elizabeth 4 Comments

I took a short break from blogging after experiencing some very difficult times related to my writing, and I’m glad to be back in my writing space. As I searched for the way to be obedient in what happened, I discovered that I don’t believe God has released me from writing here in this space, so I published a couple of essays from my archives while I prayed and thought and wrote. Here is what I wrote in the aftermath of my troubles. I pray that it will give a small bit of help to you.

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

There are times when I feel desperate for God.

Times when my path forward seems dark

as the hour before dawn.

Times when the darkness seems to creep into my soul and

times when it wants to burst out of my heart and

threaten to hurt those around me.

I always know in a cerebral sense that my very being depends on God, but

there are times when I know it in a deep, carnal way.

These are the times I see clearly into my own heart and

tremble with fear for the rage I see there.

These are the times I am asked to forgive, to

turn the other cheek in a real and painful way.

These are the times I find I must return something

to God that is precious to me and find that my deepest self

wants to turn away from Him instead.

It is in these times that I fall on my face and

beg Him to surround me with Himself.

It is in these times that I lift up my eyes and

plead for Him to heal me from the inside.

It is in these times that I know with a gut-wrenching certainty that

I am, indeed, desperate for God

in all times.

I need Thee, oh, I need Thee;

Every hour I need Thee.

Oh, bless me now my Savior,

I come to Thee.

Filed Under: anger, choices, conflict, daily life, discipleship, forgiveness, obedience, suffering

His is a Terrible Love

July 1, 2016 by Elizabeth 2 Comments

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

There is darkness in all of us.

It is a part of being human to feel the weightiness of the absence of God.

And there is an absence of God in this world. The Bible we profess speaks of it.

The prophets and psalms all speak of Him who is not there when He is most needed. The author of Hebrews strips all of our pretense away when he speaks of Noah, of Abraham, of Gideon and David and the rest who “all died without having received what was promised.”

It is the anguish of glimpsing the briefest glow of the light of presence without being allowed to bask in the sun.

It is a terrible love, this love of God for us. It is a love that means His absence as often as it means His presence. It is a love that Jesus speaks of when He utters in His darkest moment the piercing cry of Where are you, God?

You who are in heaven for us, why are you not down here in hell with us?

It is a terrible love that speaks of carrying our own cross, that utters the truth that all ye labor and are heavy laden.

It is a terrible love that wounds, or allows the wounds, before the healing can come.

It is a terrible love that weeps at the death of a friend, of Lazarus. They are tears that speak of the absence of God. Of the part of God in the very body of Jesus who would not save the life of His own friend.

This is, after all, the Gospel. It is terrible before it is beautiful. It is darkness before it is light.

We all labor and are heavy laden. We work so very hard to pretend that it is not so, but even when we are appalled at the darkness, we cannot help but listen to Jesus because we see in Him not only the darkness of being without God but the glorious light of what it looks like to be with God.

It is out of the absence of God that He becomes most present. It is out of the whirlwind, out of the storm that God first speaks to Job, answering Him not with answers but with Himself.

It is out of darkness that we first begin to perceive the light.

Paul says that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are”, and he points to “the apparent emptiness of the world where God belongs and to how the emptiness starts to echo like an empty shell after a while until you can hear in it the still, small voice of the sea, hear strength in weakness, victory in defeat, presence in absence.” ~ Frederick Buechner

The cross itself is a symbol of defeat before it is a symbol of victory and it, too, speaks of the absence of God.

When the absence is all that we see, when we are tempted to see in it a well of doubt that could lead us into atheism or at least into becoming agnostic, there is yet something else to see as well.

It was out of the darkness and absence that God first spoke. “In the beginning…the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Darkness is upon our faces as well, a void that sinks deep into our hearts. And perhaps it is necessary for the reality of this darkness to fold itself around us for us to be able to glimpse the reality of the word that God spoke into the darkness, “God said let there be light, and there was light.”

It is a terrible love that is offered to us, and perhaps we must face the truth of the terribleness before we are capable of accepting the love.

Art credits: Three Crosses sketch by Rembrandt; Supernova photo by NASA

edited from the archives

Filed Under: conflict, cross, darkness, Frederick Buechner, light, love, pain, sacred, sorrow, suffering

Hijacked Truth and Futile Character

July 10, 2015 by Elizabeth Leave a Comment

Character is vital to our society. It is important to people as individuals and it is important to society in its entirety. I wrote long ago about how we form character and why character matters, and I re-post this particular essay today because of the lack of character that I see all around us these days.

When we can cheat and lie “just a little bit” and still think highly of ourselves, when we show our kids that it’s okay to do little wrong things to get by, when it is more wrong to judge evil than to do evil, then we are in trouble. For our society to function, we need people of character in leadership positions from teachers and managers to mayors and governors.

Why has this happened? Why do ordinary people care so little about acting in moral ways?

Much of this dearth of character, this dearth of virtue, comes from the rejection of the idea of truth.

If truth is, at best, all relative and just a matter of perspective and, at worst, a social construct and simply whatever we make it to be, then why should anyone work hard to develop a character that may or may not be valid to those around us?

If there is no truth that we can deliberate and discover together as a society (whatever that truth may be and wherever it may come from), we are left with “power and propaganda and grievance and anger and caucuses and anti-caucuses and special interest groups and victims and vengeance.” ~ Richard John Neuhaus, a Christian cleric and writer

There is an assumption in much of society, in many of our universities especially, that we cannot keep society and relationships moving forward if we talk about truth because truth brings only conflict. Truth has gained a negative connotation, one that assumes that anything so divisive has no appropriate role in public life.

How did this happen? How did truth get hijacked and associated with the negative? How did truth become linked with religious totalitarianism and Osama bin Laden? How did it become shameful to declare a belief in truth, even simply the idea of truth, regardless of what that truth is?

Part of the answer, I’m afraid, is due to the Church. We have a history of wielding the truth as divisively as possible, of tearing down and even destroying rather than creating and building up. We have used truth as an excuse for starting wars and we have used truth as an excuse to look down on our neighbor.

Richard John Neuhaus says that it is now the Church’s task to learn how to assert truth in public “persuasively and winsomely and in a manner that does not violate but strengthens the bonds of civility”. He challenges that it is our duty not to just tolerate those with whom we disagree but to eagerly engage them in love.

How? How do we declare truth without being divisive and unpleasant, causing strife, conflict and wars?

By remembering grace.

By remembering that we can’t even live up to our own standards and yet we are loved.

When we despise anyone or feel superior to anyone, we are living by moral performance rather than grace. And living by moral performance is what brings divisiveness to the truth.

By the way we live, by living a life of loving and caring for others, we can show truth and speak truth with no divisiveness at all.

This is what the early Christians did when they loved the poor, empowered women, and brought together the races and classes. This is how the early Church overran the Roman Empire when it wasn’t even attempting to gain political power.

This. This is the truth we need.

Because this truth is

a God Who became weak, Who loved and died for the people Who opposed Him, forgiving them. ~ Tim Keller

Will you speak and live this kind of truth to your world? Our world desperately needs Him.

art credits: Medieval image of Peter the Hermit leading the Crusades; Christ Crucified by Diego Velazquez; engraving of the Hotel Dieu; photograph of Christ on the Cross by Asta Rastauskiene

Filed Under: character, conflict, grace, love, Richard John Neuhaus, Timothy Keller, truth

Terrible Love

October 24, 2014 by Elizabeth Leave a Comment

It is Thanksgiving time and there is light.

They sit around the table laden with food, this family bound together by blood. There is light and laughter, talk of sports and of God, there is caring and kindness between generations. There are eyes shining bright, shining with love and with joy in the company around them.

And there is darkness.

There is one who is recently bereft of the comfort of spouse, struggling to find what is normal. There is one who sits heavy with the weight of marriage that is harder than expected. There is one who wonders if anything they do will ever seem good enough.

There is one who struggles with getting older, one who struggles with trouble at work and money that slips through the fingers, one who wonders if there is anything good coming when they can’t see what lies further down the road.

There is darkness in all of us. It is a part of being human to feel the weightiness of the absence of God. And there is an absence of God in this world. The Bible we profess speaks of it. The prophets and psalms all speak of Him who is not there when He is most needed. The author of Hebrews strips all of our pretense away when he speaks of Noah, of Abraham, of Gideon and David and the rest who “all died without having received what was promised.” It is the anguish of glimpsing the briefest glow of the light of presence without being allowed to bask in the sun.

It is a terrible love, this love of God for us. It is a love that means His absence as often as it means His presence. It is a love that Jesus speaks of when He utters in His darkest moment the piercing cry of Where are you, God?

You who are in heaven for us, why are you not down here in hell with us?

It is a terrible love that speaks of carrying our own cross, that utters the truth that all ye labor and are heavy laden.

It is a terrible love that wounds, or allows the wounds, before the healing can come.

It is a terrible love that weeps at the death of a friend, of Lazarus. They are tears that speak of the absence of God. Of the part of God in the very body of Jesus who would not save the life of His own friend.

This is, after all, the Gospel. It is terrible before it is beautiful. It is darkness before it is light.

We all labor and are heavy laden. We work so very hard to pretend that it is not so, but even when we are appalled at the darkness, we cannot help but listen to Jesus because we see in Him not only the darkness of being without God but the glorious light of what it looks like to be with God.

It is out of the absence of God that He becomes most present. It is out of the whirlwind, out of the storm that God first speaks to Job, answering Him not with answers but with Himself. It is out of darkness that we first begin to perceive the light.

Paul says that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are”, and he points to “the apparent emptiness of the world where God belongs and to how the emptiness starts to echo like an empty shell after a while until you can here in it the still, small voice of the sea, hear strength in weakness, victory in defeat, presence in absence.” ~ Frederick Buechner

The cross itself is a symbol of defeat before it is a symbol of victory and it, too, speaks of the absence of God.

When the absence is all that we see, when we are tempted to see in it a well of doubt that could lead us into atheism or at least into becoming agnostic, there is yet something else to see as well.

It was out of the darkness and absence that God first spoke. “In the beginning…the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” And darkness is upon our faces as well, a void that sinks deep into our hearts. And perhaps it is necessary for the reality of this darkness to fold itself around us for us to be able to glimpse the reality of the word that God spoke into the darkness, “God said let there be light, and there was light.”

It is a terrible love that is offered to us, and perhaps we must face the truth of the terribleness before we are capable of accepting the love.

Art credits: Three Crosses sketch by Rembrandt; Supernova photo by NASA

Filed Under: conflict, cross, darkness, Frederick Buechner, light, love, pain, sacred, sorrow, suffering, wound

Piety or Knowledge?

October 3, 2014 by Elizabeth 2 Comments

I have written before of the battle between holiness and justice. Some say we are to focus on our own moral purity, on becoming more like Jesus. Others say we are to focus on social justice for others, on being Jesus to those around the world.

When describing the wickedness of Israel, Isaiah says “He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.”

It seems that one of the Deceiver’s favorite ploys is to take a set of discipleship practices, a pairing that works best when done in concert with each other, and separate them, throwing them into battle with each another. In doing so, he not only diminishes the efficacy of both practices but he also divides the very body of Christ.

Clearly both holiness and justice are important. We should not focus on half of God’s commands to the exclusion of the rest.

Another battle I’ve been trying to understand is the battle between piety and knowledge.

Is it better to obey God, to act on His behalf, or is it better to learn about God, to know what it is He commands?

Some would say that knowledge is too dry, that the life of the mind is on par with selfishness. It brings to mind ivory towers and keeping oneself unsullied by the realities of the real world.

While it is true that focusing solely on knowledge and learning would keep one from ever actually helping this world of hurting people, modern church culture seems to lean too heavily in the direction of anti-intellectualism. There is a growing spirit of pragmatism in our churches. A spirit whose first question about an idea is not “Is it true?” but “Does it work?”.

“Young people tend to be activists, dedicated supporters of a cause, though without always inquiring too closely either whether their cause is a good end to pursue or whether this action is the best means by which to pursue it.” ~ Rev. John R. W. Stott in an address at the Inter-Varsity Fellowship Annual Conference

It seems this is another set of discipleship practices that when separated leads to reduced success.

On one hand you have people rushing crazily about for the next good idea regardless of the wisdom or truth of it, perhaps even causing more harm than good. On the other hand you have people sitting stagnant with their books, not allowing any of the knowledge of God to seep into their hearts and affect the world around them.

Both piety and knowledge are desperately needed together. Only with knowledge can you know what God truly wants, what is the wise action to take. Only with piety can your own heart be changed, can the hearts and lives of other people be changed.

Paul says in II Corinthians that we are to take every thought captive toward the obedience of Christ.

Piety and knowledge. Obedience and intellect. The heart and the mind.

Both are needed. Both are required to continue to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth.

Only together can these practices nourish “a warm and fruitful devotion set on fire by truth.” (Stott)

Filed Under: balance, church, community, conflict, discipleship, holiness, justice, knowledge, learning, love, morality, piety, sacred

Our Jealous God

February 21, 2014 by Elizabeth Leave a Comment

The Bible is the Word of God. It is God speaking to us, revealing Himself to us so that we can know Him, know how much He loves us and so that we can learn how to love Him in return.

This Bible of ours is a beautiful book of love. And there are parts of the Bible that are downright disturbing, parts that don’t adhere to our black and white notions of God. We like to gloss over these, to skim over them so that we don’t have to think about them, but they just won’t go away. There are parts of God’s Word that don’t fit the image we have of God. They don’t fit the sort of God we want God to be. Even God the Son does and says some absurd and strange things. Like the cursing of the fig tree. Who, for the love of God, would curse a tree because it is not bearing fruit in the winter? How could that action possibly have been done for the love of God?

Another of these disturbing pieces is God as a jealous God. We tend to think of jealousy as weak, as petty, as fear. We think of it as wishing that we were and had what we are not and do not. But God is in everything and by Him everything lives and moves and has its being. How can both of these be true?

We don’t always get a resolution of the images of God that don’t fit, these pieces of God we can’t make sense of. This one, though, has become clearer lately through reading Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris. She speaks of the jealousy of God as mother love, as a lion or tiger protecting her young with passion and fierceness. This jealousy of God is the kind of jealousy that protects her vulnerable children from all that would hurt them, from all that would steal their joy.

It makes sense, then, that one of the times this image of God is given to us is in the first of the Ten Commandments. These commandments were meant to show us how much we need God, to teach us how life works and the way we will be most happy. So if God is jealous to keep false gods away from us, it is the jealousy that wants to protect us from all that would harm our souls.

God’s jealousy allows us to trust Him.

Who, after all, would trust a God, a parent, spouse, or lover, who said to us, “I really love you, but I don’t care at all what you do or who you become.”? ~ Kathleen Norris

It is resolutions like this, resolutions that show that what seems disturbing is all somehow out of love and holiness, resolutions that help us trust for the unknown, disquieting pieces. They help us trust that God is holy and is love and is working to make all of us and all of this world into what it was created to be.

Resolutions like this help us trust that God is a jealous God, “who loves us enough to care when we stray. And who has given us commandments to help us find the way home.” ~ Kathleen Norris

Art Credit: Moses Smashing the Tablet of the Law by Rembrandt

Filed Under: believe, conflict, doubt, fear, Kathleen Norris, knowing, relationship, seeking, trust

Is Grace Worth It?

February 14, 2014 by Elizabeth Leave a Comment

I am always yearning for perfection. I long for this battle to be done, for the result of a war won to become more evident. I want my internal battle to be finished as well as the battle over this world of ours. I get tired, you see, of fighting. I want to love perfectly, to obey perfectly, to forgive perfectly.

I want our world to be able to quit fighting.

I want all of us to love perfectly, to love in a way that results in bodies getting fed, animals feeling safe, hearts being healed, trees growing tall.

I’m ready for the lion and the lamb to lie down together.

Yet if I had been born into perfection, I would never have experienced the gift that is grace. This grace-gift of being loved at my most unlovable, of being shaped into perfection at my most imperfect. Is it worth it? A hard question.

If I had been perfect from the start, I wouldn’t know battle and I wouldn’t know mercy. I would, perhaps, trust more in myself than in the One who made me. Are heights of joy made richer by the depths carved by sorrow?

Grace is having a commitment to – or at least an acceptance of – being ineffective and foolish. ~ Anne Lamott

I don’t know why this is so. I don’t know why we can only experience grace while being ineffective and foolish. I don’t know why we must experience battle in order to grasp this gift full of beauty. I wish it were not this way.

I do know that God does nothing by accident. I do know that God created with a purpose of love and I do know that someday His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Is grace worth all of this?

There is much that I don’t know. And there are a few things I do.

Art credit: Illustration from Luther Bible 1769

Filed Under: Anne Lamott, conflict, gift, grace, perfection

The Years the Locust Ate

September 27, 2013 by Elizabeth 2 Comments

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten…you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you…

A beautiful set of verses in Joel. Verses filled with hope, with new life and new beginnings.

Yet I hate with all of my being that there were entire years that were eaten by locusts. I hate that people had to endure that pain and despair before they could reach the end point of being satisfied and praising God.

The memories of those years don’t go away.

And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. And the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before…And the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. And he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He had also seven sons and three daughters…And after this Job lived 140 years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, four generations. And Job died, an old man, and full of days.

Another beautiful set of verses in Job. Verses filled with hope, with new life and new beginnings.

Yet Job still endured the loss of all that he had. He still watched all of his children die and, as any of you who have lost children know all too well, no number of new children can ever take away the pain of losing those who came before.

It is a heart filled with mixed emotions, this kind of hope. It is joy and excitement over the beauty of what lies ahead and it is sorrow and grieving over what happened in the past.

This is life.

It is beauty that is tinged with sorrow. It is love that is colored by loss. All who live deeply are affected. None are exempt except for those who choose not to love.

God speaks beautiful words about our future with Him, words filled with promise, words filled with satisfaction and praise and joy. What do we do with this apparent contradiction? How do we get from this common suffering to a perfect life filled with perfect joy?

One option is that it is all a big hoax. None of this hope is true; it is all just a ruse to keep us from rebelling too hard against our lot in life.

Those who have known God long enough to catch a glimpse of His character, though, know that He is not given to such cruel jokes.

If you keep God in the picture, this God who is the very definition of love, than you are left with the answer that it is somehow all worth it. If God is who He says He is, if His words are trustworthy and true, then somehow the end is so brilliantly glorious that it will eclipse the darkness that came before.

Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. ~ C.S. Lewis

So what do we do with this hope that is so full of wildly contradicting emotions? I don’t understand how this sort of ending is at all possible when the sorrow seems so great. Yet like Abraham, we are asked to keep trusting in the face of apparent impossibility. Trusting that what God said to Abraham is truth for all: “Is anything too hard for the LORD?”

On our best days we are able to trust that, in the end, we will be so seized by the sight of His face that we will fall to the ground at His feet in pure adoration. And all that came before will be as a vacuous mist that is chased away by the brilliant light and heat of the sun.

Art Credits: Sunlight Through Tulips photo by Kirk Sewell; Christ and Samaritan Woman painting by Siemiradzki; Sunlight Through Trees photo by Kirk Sewell

Filed Under: C.S. Lewis, conflict, darkness, faith, joy, light, pain, promises, reconcile, sacred, sorrow, suffering, trust, wait, worship

To You Who Doubt

May 17, 2013 by Elizabeth 4 Comments

To you who doubt, I say

Bravo.

We are often closer to God in our doubts than in our certainties…it is all right to be like the small child who constantly asks: Why? Why? Why? ~Madeleine L’Engle

And have mercy on those who doubt…Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

To you who question God’s nature or even very His existence, I say

You are courageous.

If we begin with certainties, we will end in doubt. But if we begin with doubts and bear them patiently, we may end in certainty. ~ Francis Bacon

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”

To you who voice concerns over why the ugly exists and why life is unfair, I say

Thank you for speaking aloud the fears we all harbor deep in our hearts.

Love, which trusts God so implicitly despite the cloud, that it is brave enough to ask questions, no matter how fearful. ~L’Engle

And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

To you who doubt the things you have been taught, who question traditional religious beliefs, I say

Search on.

To come to a doubt, and to a debatement of any religious duty, is the voice of God in our conscience: Would you know the truth? Doubt, and then you will inquire. ~ John Donne

To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.

When people shrink back in horror from your questions, when fellow Christ-followers load shame onto your heart, remind them of the faithfulness of doubt.

This (the faithfulness of doubt) is often assumed by the judgmental to be faithlessness, but it is not; it is a prerequisite for a living faith. ~ L’Engle

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

To you who continue to seek through the fear of what the answers will be, I say

Take heart. God is and He will be found.

If my religion is true, it will stand up to all my questioning; there is no need to fear. But if it is not true, if it is man imposing strictures on God…, then I want to be open to God, not to what man says about God. ~ L’Engle

And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are holy…

To you who you are brave enough to doubt, brave enough to ask questions, brave enough to keep on searching for God Himself rather than what man says about God, I say

You deserve our deep respect for your courage.

You deserve our cheers and our thanks for refusing to settle for a shallow faith that only is manifested in appearances.

To you who doubt, I say

Well done, hero.

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvationand my God.

art credit: Road to Emmaus by Zund; Christ with Martha and Maria by Siemiradzki

This essay is, in part, for my brothers who kept searching for God at different times, in very different ways, and under very different circumstances, yet both found and were found by Him.

Filed Under: comfort, conflict, doubt, faith, fear, learning, peace, pursuing God, relationship, religion, seeking, truth

How Truth Got Hijacked

June 8, 2012 by Elizabeth 6 Comments

One reason that I wrote recently about character, how we form it and why it matters, is because of the lack of it that I see all around me.

When we can cheat and lie “just a little bit” and still think highly of ourselves, when we show our kids that it’s okay to do little wrong things to get by, when it is more wrong to judge evil than to do evil, we are in trouble. For our society to function, we need people of character in leadership positions from teachers and managers to mayors and governors.

Why is this? Why do ordinary people care so little about acting in moral ways?

I think a lot of this dearth of character, of virtue, comes from the rejection of the idea of truth.

If truth is, at best, all relative, a matter of perspective, and at worst, a social construct, whatever we make it to be, then why should we work hard to develop a character that may or may not be valid to those around us?

If there is no truth that we can deliberate and discover together as a society (whatever that truth may be), we are left with “power and propaganda and grievance and anger and caucuses and anti-caucuses and special interest groups and victims and vengeance.” ~ Richard John Neuhaus

There is an assumption in much of society, in many of our universities especially, that we can’t keep society and relationships going if we talk about truth because truth brings conflict. Truth has gained a negative connotation, one that assumes that anything so divisive has no appropriate role in public life.

How did this happen? How did truth get hijacked and associated with the negative? How did truth become linked with religious totalitarianism and Osama bin Laden? How did it become shameful to declare a belief in truth, even simply the idea of truth, regardless of what that truth is?

Part of the answer, I’m afraid, is due to the Church. We have a history of wielding the truth as divisively as possible, of tearing down and even destroying rather than creating and building up. We have used truth as an excuse for starting wars and we have used truth as an excuse to look down on our neighbor.

Richard John Neuhaus says that it is now the Church’s task to learn how to assert truth in public “persuasively and winsomely and in a manner that does not violate but strengthens the bonds of civility”. He challenges that it is our duty to not just tolerate those with whom we disagree but to eagerly engage them in love.

How? How do we declare truth without being divisive and unpleasant, causing strife, conflict and wars?

By remembering grace.

By remembering that we can’t even live up to our own standards and yet we are loved.

If we despise anyone or feel superior to anyone, we are living by moral performance rather than grace. And living by moral performance is what brings divisiveness to the truth.

By the way we live, living a life of loving and caring for others, we can show truth and speak truth with no divisiveness at all.

This is what the early Christians did when they loved the poor, empowered women, and brought together the races and classes. This is how the early Church overran the Roman Empire when it wasn’t even trying to gain political power.

This. This is the truth we need.

Because this truth is

a God Who became weak, Who loved and died for the people Who opposed Him, forgiving them. ~ Tim Keller

Will you speak and live this kind of truth to your public? Our world desperately needs Him.

art credits: Medieval image of Peter the Hermit leading the Crusades; Christ Crucified by Diego Velazquez; engraving of the Hotel Dieu; photograph of Christ on the Cross by Asta Rastauskiene

Filed Under: character, conflict, grace, love, Richard John Neuhaus, Timothy Keller, truth