Kent Reflections XV. A Letter to My Younger Self I. On Rebuke.

(While at work, when I have times I tend to write some of my thoughts down in a running Word document. These notes I have called "Kent Reflections," since my work is in Kent Laboratory at the University of Chicago.

What follows is a letter I wrote "to myself" sometime last week regarding Rebuke. It is not to be read as a proclamation or description of a theology of rebuke. This is more human than that. It is the thoughts and words and ideas and problems that I have been wrestling with as I grappled the Christian problem of Rebuke: When do I rebuke? Why? In what context? Who? What topics are within the domain of rebuke? And etc. It is also notably incomplete... It doesn't really "end" conclusory like I'd like. But I like that about this bit of writing, and I like the epistolary style. Maybe I have read too much Petrarch and am too addicted to letter-writing. Hmm....

In case you find this essay TL;DR, I have even encompassed a basic thesis in the opening paragraphs for you. The rest flows from there.)

XV. Kent Laboratory, November 3^rd, 2016:

A Letter to My Younger Self I. On Rebuke.

Perhaps I have read too much Petrarch, or fancy myself too much like him, that I have undertaken to write you – myself of eight years ago – a letter. You are a lot like me, of course: idealistic in good and bad ways, romantic in the German way, uninterested in monetary gain in general, and deeply in love with a man named Jesus of Nazareth. You are a little different, a little less politically moderate (though definitely not “conservative” or “liberal”!), a little more Pentecostal, a little less uncomfortable with the Charismatic wing of Pentecostalism, a little more uncomfortable with the non-Pentecostal evangelical world. But you aren’t really that different than the me who is writing this right now.

I have undertaken to write you regarding the topic of rebuke, and I think it would be well for you to listen and to hear what I have to say to you, because I think you might find it a little bit of a shocking claim. Here is the thesis: Rebuke – godly rebuke, that is – is a true expression of Compassionate Love and Care toward our Christian family. If you do not Rebuke when you ought, you reveal how little you actually Love them.

Mark this, there will be some Christians, Christians whom you know and love dearly now, that you will be tempted to write off. They will behave in ways clearly un-Christ-like, they will act out of the fruit of the flesh instead of the Spirit, and you will be tempted to say “I want nothing to do with you.”

But that temptation is the devil’s offer, it is not of God. These men and women are your flesh and blood, whether you like it or not, and they have been bought by the same flesh and blood as you. They are family, and you cannot write them off so easily. You cannot just block them on Facebook, or ban them on Twitter, you cannot just quiet them and make them shut up about their heresies and their deceptions. At times, you will feel very angry about them, you will think “Surely, you too are not the same as me, surely you are not one of the redeemed.” And their unredeemed mouths might make you think that way.

But even Jesus did not give up on the Pharisees. We like to read into His rebukes the sort of harshness and authoritarian power that we think leadership looks like, we pattern our rebukes on a false image of His rebukes, but we miss the Compassion and the Care which undergirds His Words. In the American Church, a power vacuum in the realm of authority (caused by our Protestantism and our Rebelliousness, I’d say) opens the way for the powerful and the charismatic to woo our headship. The less structured denominations and movements (re: Charismatic and Baptist) have the danger of false prophets jumping into their pulpits and demanding exacting sacrifice, total submission to the “Word of God,” and implicit trust in the leader. But Christ does not lead that way.

Yet still those rough words – “brood of vipers,” “Herod, that fox,” “whitewashed tombs” – resonate out of the Gospels. We tend to think Jesus is being mean (and then we allow that to justify our own being mean). He’s actually being gracious. The Pharisees have blinded themselves in their “knowledge” and their special privileges, so blinded that they cannot see Jesus for who He is – their awaited Messiah. But Jesus does not give up on them. He pulls away their stained clothes full of blood and fecal matter and reveals their nakedness to the world and to themselves. If He didn’t care, He would let them wallow in dirty garments, thinking themselves clean.

Rebuke, I’ve learned, is a measured sort of caring love. It isn’t a hammer that we use to punish the ungodly, nor a weapon at all. It is, ideally, a manifestation of the Love of God, who is not interested in our self-deceptions and our wicked ways. So, He points out the holes in our arguments and the holes in our clothes, rather than let us go on our merry way thinking ourselves “all-right.”

So, do not write them off, these Christians you might be tempted to call “pseudo-Christians,” or “weak Christians,” or even “baby Christians.” You have a responsibility to them, if you truly love them. Some of them will think that their faith is something lived and performed in a vacuum, that they can believe whatever they want to believe without any accountability. They might loathe this sort of love. Remember, in that day, how much you loathe this sort of love when it was directed at you – when Luke rebuked your impetuousness, when Chris rebuked your antinomianism, when Dylan rebuked your weak soteriology. But “iron sharpens iron,” so they say, and those who love rebuke, Scripture notes, are wise. Sometimes they – these “weak Christians” – will surprise you with Grace and they will respond Graciously, and you will turn to the Lord in Joy and thank Him… not because “you were right” – which is prideful – but because they truly are your brother and your sister, and their repentance brings you to mind of their salvation. You will know, in that moment, why you cannot write them off, why you cannot leave them be to their own devices, why you cannot cease from holding them accountable to the same Scriptures they ought to hold you accountable to.

Remember, of course, that we American evangelicals have a weak accountability structure. We hate it when other people tell us we’re wrong. We don’t have the humility of the Catholics to go to our pastors day in and day out and say “Father, I have sinned.” We’d rather strut our soteriologically-sound assurance in front of our pulpits and altars and pretend that our heavenly-bound justification (which is true) makes us naturally pretty, like a peacock. For our neighbor, our brother, our friend to point out our hidden nakednesses feels embarrassing in that sort of culture. It’d be better if he went about looking to his own issues, rather than bothering ours!

But remember, too, Paul’s instructions to Timothy and to Titus, the reminder about overseers being “above reproach.” The statement isn’t, of course, to set the episkopos in a state of unassailable dignity – as though that were possible – but to give them credibility when they stand in clarification, correction, and rebuke before the ekklesia. (And excommunication, should that dreadful consequence need manifest.) You cannot challenge or rebuke unless you have first checked and double-checked and triple-checked yourself, after all, being “sure of yourself” is the first step to deception, and to falling into the same boat as those whom you are responding to.

A friend of mine (and yours, but not yet!) reminded me recently about how crucial it is to first see what there is of merit in the oppositional argument. And even if that oppositional argument is totally rubbish (and sometimes it most definitely is), what of the spirit behind it is of merit? And even if that spirit is utterly demonic (and sometimes it most definitely is), what of that brother or sister’s character is of merit? A good man or woman, even a godly man or woman, might believe a “wind of doctrine” from the devil and be backing it because they say they love the Truth. They do not hate the Truth simply because their logic or argument is faulty, or because they do not understand Christian epistemology well, or because they believe certain anti-Christian presuppositions! They may well love the truth and just happen to be really bad at discerning it. Have mercy and grace with them and do not call them “foolish” or “evil” or “haters of the Truth” – unless they prove themselves to be clearly those things.

The truth is, unfortunately, that the Reformation, needful though it was, has created incredible, at times insurmountable, rifts in our theologies. Martin Luther was not interested in creating a denomination but in transforming the Roman Church from her Pelagian pitfalls. He did not hate the Roman Church, but loved her, and he risked his theological credibility by challenging her in loving rebuke. Erasmus was not his enemy, but his interlocutor.

But be mindful of this: because we American evangelicals hate accountability, your friends and brothers and sisters will do more than just balk at your challenges. They will begin accusing you of being “judgmental” or “bringing harsh judgment” or of “being deceived” yourself, or even – and this has happened to you and me – of being a “Marxist,” a “leftist,” a “progressive,” a “liberal,” a “statist,” as though your challenge against their inconsistent Christian witness has something to do with politics! I won’t tell you about what’s been happening in 2016, because it will terrify and sadden your apolitical, idealist, hyper-positive soul. You will see a glimpse of it in 2012, though, and that will be enough to convince you that there is a dangerous Kool-Aid in evanelicalism called “political ideology.” Be wary of it.

When they say these things, don’t forget to check yourself – again! It never hurts to go over your proofs, your arguments, your claims. Sort out their grounds, the way the arguments function, sort out your Scriptures. Compare your heart to the heart of Christ – do you say what you say out of Love or out of a desire to Hurt? Are you more interested in caring for your “opponent’s” (not “enemy”!) well-being than in “getting them back,” or are you committed to getting in “the last word”? Be careful of the desire to “get even,” to retort your own “rightness,” to express your “perfect, holy orthodoxy.” Be open to a broader diversity of opinions than your opponents, because then their accusation of your “narrow-mindedness” becomes hypocritical and unsustainable.

But when you have done all this, when you have checked your own soul, confided in your wife’s wisdom, leaned into the wisdom of your Christian friends and brothers and sisters and allies, and you are still convinced that your friend and brother and sister with whom you argue is not only wrong, but wrong in such a way that hurts their Christian morality, then stand firm! Do not waver at that juncture. Remember Ezekiel, whom God told to sound the alarm and let the people face the consequence if they do not listen. Remember Jeremiah, who was hated for the Word of the Lord. Remember Isaiah, who went before the Holy Throne and said “Here am I!” only to be given a impossible task: “Say to this people, Be ever hearing and never understanding, ever seeing and never perceiving.” You are not accountable to how “nice” people perceive you to be – although doing all this in a spirit of kindness really gets under some folk’s skin – but you are accountable to the Truth revealed to you by the Spirit of God. To waver on that is not “judgmental” or “mean,” but is actually Loving and True in the deep sense of the terms.

You’ll find the hypocrisy deeply frustrating. One minute you will see these Christians make an undue judgment regarding a matter of no actual importance and based on little to no real evidence – matters on politics or social conversations, often – and later when you challenge them on something of real importance and based on Scriptural evidence – matters on theological and moral topics – they will accuse you of being judgmental. It is at times infuriating. You will want to give up again. You will want to just “cast them out to Satan.” And some you will have to just ignore because they are so unteachable, and you will wait for them to grow in humility, or hope that their pastoral headship speaks to them (which is, unfortunately, not likely).

This last group is the vast minority, though. You must Love, you must Care, and to Love and to Care you must lean in to the nonsense your friends and loved ones say. You cannot dismiss it as you would dismiss the theoretical crap coming through the news media (which is what you should do with the theoretical crap coming through the news media). These are your people, the ones that God has set in your life and you in theirs. Whether long-distance or short-distance, your Calling is to Care for them, holistically.