Learning to See, Learning to Be Honest

Peter’s 3-fold denial (I’m reading Mar 14 right now) connects with my story WAY too closely. How often in my life do I simply tell people what they want to hear so as to avoid confrontation? I have done this with my bosses for my entire life it seems. Whether at my present position or when speaking with bishops or archdeacons or even peers…I so often do not share my true mind.

Where did this come from? Well, the Shakespearean advice (from Polonius to Laertes in Hamlet) is to “give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.” And my own father has quoted those very words to me many times. The Biblical equivalent is (James 1:19-20) “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because our anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”

However, is James telling us to be slow to speak out of self-preservation (ie. avoiding conflict) or out of care for others? In the context of the passage, it seems to clearly be the latter. James is warning against angry, hateful, and damaging speech. What James is not advising, though, is to bottle up our convictions and never share them. To bottle up our convictions is to become double-minded – a concept that James twice renounces in his epistle (James 1:8 and 4:8).

So, what is the way forward? How can I learn to avoid my double-mindedness, while at the same time avoiding becoming a person who does speak but in anger?

Perhaps the call is to see each person as redeemable by God. The call is to see (as Darrell Johnson once said to me) Jesus as the final goal (the telos in Greek) for each person on earth. If I really saw people that way, perhaps I would be able to care “that much” about them to not be willing to lie to anyone. I would care enough and see them in such a way (as redeemable in Jesus) that I would have to share my heart with them. And finally, because of all of this, it goes without saying that such heart-sharing must be done with humility, love, compassion, patience, and grace. O Lord, help me to learn to see this way and to speak accordingly! O Lord, today!