Being people of grace
I was having a conversation with my dad a few days ago about how to deal with people who take a hard lined, black and white approach to politics, environmentalism, faith or just life in general. We both related stories where we were dealing with someone who wanted us to make a particular choice based on their skewed (in our opinion, anyway) worldview and were debating how best to engage or not engage.
I think we are instinctively drawn to a corrective approach. There is a famous XKCD comic where the character in the strip can’t go to bed because, in his words, “Someone is wrong on the internet.”
I’ve done my fair share of reposting or forwarding links to Wikipedia or Snopes with the goal of bringing enlightenment to the offending party, but in the end how often am I doing this for my own self-righteous need to be right, and how often am I doing it with grace and humility? Ok, maybe I’m being a little melodramatic, but I do think it’s true that we are so often quick to bring our own judgement and righteousness into online discussion and conversation that we type things we would never say out loud.
It has been interesting observing the United Methodist General Conference taking place right now in Tampa, Florida as both an outside member of another denomination, and someone who now works for the United Methodist Church. In all of the debates over legislation and rule changes, there is certainly much concurrent and follow-up online commentary. Sadly, much of it—even that which I agree with—takes a biting and unforgiving tone toward others in the debate. Accusations of one side being exclusionary, phobic or even hateful followed by retorts of biblical “unsoundness” and theological liberalism bordering on heresy. Precious few are the voices in the middle recognizing that efforts by people on both sides of every issue are trying to live out God’s will and call for the church as they understand it. I myself have certainly been guilty of jumping to conclusions about the state of someone’s faith based on a single Tweet or Facebook post.
Russell Brand—hardly a source I would have sought for theological inspiration—was testifying recently to the British Parliament about drug laws and addiction in the U.K. As a former addict, Brand said that the laws on the books were irrelevant to users on the street. An addict will find a high no matter what the penalty. So instead of a ‘carrot and stick’ approach administered by the penal system, Brand called for a ‘love and compassion’ approach administered by society as a whole.
How often to we treat others in the church and society with a ‘carrot and stick’ approach? How often do we make inclusion the carrot and exclusion the stick? How often does our righteousness become our self-righteousness? When was the last time we tried a ‘love and compassion’ approach, greeting and meeting each other in the love of Christ.
When we fight—whether it is against injustice in the world, or injustice in the church—let us remember that we are called to be people of grace.
