Wisdom: Part 2

In his book, “Learning to Love,” Willard Tate has a segment where talks about going through life like a referee.  What is the job of a referee?  He goes around looking for trouble, and when he finds it, he makes everyone aware of it.  Willard Tate’s point was that too often, we also go around like referees looking for trouble and making it our mission to point it out.  Sometimes it seems our sole purpose here is to point out what’s wrong with everyone else.  When you read Matthew 18:15 - “if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault,” you might think that’s just the verse for us.  We can certainly go around an point out faults in others.  There might be some basis for us to do that from what Jesus said, if that was all he said.  But to limit what he said to just the segment of this verse I quoted, would be to take what Jesus said out of context.

What Jesus was talking about was not simply pointing out flaws or faults in others.  We like doing that.  That’s easy.  Anyone can do that.  All of us actually do that.  There’s some amount of fun in doing that.  But that’s not what Jesus wants us to do.  When you take that statement in its context, you realize you are showing your brother his fault in order for you and your brother to be on the same page.  In order to be in a oneness, and rightness of relationship.  Jesus says the purpose of this action, and how you do it (alone, not in public), is to win your brother over, to gain your brother.  Showing error is not the end of the process.  It’s one step in a process for you and your brother to come to a unity.

Back to the referee analogy.  Jesus doesn’t want us to be a referee.  To point out someone’s flaw or fault, and then let them deal with whatever comes from that.  I’d say Jesus wants us to be more like a coach.  A coach will also point out flaws and faults in his players.  But he does so in a way so that the coach and the player can work on those flaws, learn how to recognize and adjust for them, practice doing things the right way so those flaws wont materialize.  Can you imagine the scene if a referee called a foul in a basketball game, then took the player who had committed the foul aside and started coaching him up on what he did wrong, what he could have done right, and then given him a drill or two to work on right there before the fouled player took his free throws?  That would be nuts.  That’s what Jesus calls us to be and to do.  He doesn’t call us to be referees and go around telling the world of their faults.  He expects us to tell them their faults and then work with them to mitigate and limit their faults.  He expects us to love the person enough to invest time and effort into them, to help them become better people.  Help them because we love them, as Jesus loves them.  Not to be a referee who points out flaws and then invests nothing into the person in order to make them better, or help them to be better.

When we do this, when we invest time and effort in our brother, as opposed to simply standing off in a distance and pointing out flaws, we are actually practicing the second greatest commandment.  Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love God, which in a sense meant that for us, nothing was to be more important than God.  The second greatest commandment was like it, Jesus said.  It was to love our neighbor.  I would think that other than God, there was to be nothing more important than loving our neighbor.  I say that to say this - sometimes we love a point, or an issue, or a truth more than we actually love a person.  It may be that when Jesus is telling us the two greatest commandments, that nothing is to be more important than God, and secondly, nothing is to be more important than our neighbor.  And when we act like a referee, we are loving an issue, a truth, more than we love the person who is in violation of that truth or issue.  Loving that issue could be tantamount to being an idol that prevents us from loving our neighbor.  Jesus was accused several times of violating the Sabbath.  But what was he doing when he did that - taking care of people.  And he told the religious leaders that it was better to heal on the Sabbath.  Or put another way, it was better to love your neighbor than to love keeping the Sabbath commands.

James talks about the value we are to have for our brothers.  James says we should not curse our brother, and he gives a reason why - we are made in the image of God.  The image of God is valuable.  Jesus says to point out error, but he doesn’t limit his statement to that.  In addition to pointing out error, do that out of love for your brother.  Win your brother over.  Be a coach to your brother, not a referee.  See more value in your brother than in whatever issue or truth he may be violating.  And if we are to love our brother as Jesus did, sometimes that may mean we are called to suffer for that brother.  But doing so in a love for that brother.

-Mike Hendricks