Manuscript

Lie:      I have a right to punish those who hurt me.
Truth: I have a responsibility to love those who hurt me.
Vengeance comes in many ‘christianized’ forms. Many of those forms are accepted or winked at by Christians as harmless and unavoidable – forms such as: the ‘silent treatment’ — ignoring, shunning, avoiding, rejecting in their many forms — so-called righteous indignation, flaming emails, gossip and slander, sowing discord among brethren, ‘evil eyes,’ ‘cold shoulders,’ or intimidating looks. These may appear to be small slights that people shouldn’t ‘be so sensitive about’ or ‘should just get over.’ But while that may be true, these forms of vengeance can also do major

Lie:      To avoid rejection I must pretend or perform an admired role.
Truth: To avoid worrying about rejection, I must enter the ‘secret place.’

We’ve all felt it. I’m talking about that anxious feeling we get at a social event, when we can’t find one familiar face. Some panic, others wade into the crowd with relish. But for both, often the solution is to put on a smile and fake it. That is, we pretend, we put on a role, a persona, perhaps the best version of ourselves or, for some, we assume a completely different personality; others are less subtle – they clam up or hide or avoid the conflict altogether.
The question is ‘why?’ Why do we do this? Why can’t we simply without pretense or bother, strike up conversations with a simple sincerity, taking a genuine interest in the life and well being of those we meet? Why is that so hard? The answer is obvious: . . .

Lie:      I should not judge.
Truth: We should judge rightly.

To judge or not to judge, that is the question. This is such a basic and important dilemma that it requires a careful answer. The word judge has a rich and varied meaning that we must parse carefully and discern its use in context. The most common Greek word translated to judge in the New Testament is krino, which means . . .

Lie: I can’t forgive.
Truth: You must forgive and therefore you can forgive.
. . . Forbearance is the first line of defense against offences. If we’re sufficiently forbearant, we may never need to forgive at all. But it’s usually the little irritations: the snubs, the slurs, the disappointments that build up over time that get to us. Most of us are tolerant enough to forbear the small things, at least for a while, but sometimes they accumulate enough that we need to forgive.
One reason we allow the slights to build up is a general unawareness . . .

Lie:      I can live the Christian life on my own.
Truth: We can live the Christian life only in concert with other believers in Christ.

Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s little book on community, is a beautiful portrait of the communal life of an ‘underground’ seminary in 1930s Finkenwalde, Poland, where students shared their lives in Christian simplicity. We love these idyllic glimpses, and think wistfully of them as quaint, but outdated and impractical. The reality is, most often, we simply live Life Alone.
More accurately though, we tolerate a love-hate relationship with the alone-together dilemma . . .

Lie:      Appearing to care and caring are the same thing.
Truth: Appearing to care is vanity – we must actually care.

. . . Self-forgetfulness, the ability to be unaware of ourselves, is the true attitude of our ‘alms’. Jesus said it: “But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. That your charitable deed may be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.” Matthew 6:3–4
Giving alms in secret is loving in such a way that we are hardly aware of the performance of it ourselves; we simply do it, so focused on the person in need, that we fade into the background in our own minds.
How do we achieve this self-forgetfulness? It can only be gained . . .