Posts tagged ‘Christianity’
A Package Bomber and a Synagogue Shooter
Credit: Associated Press
It’s been a tragic week in our nation. And that’s putting it mildly. Beginning last Monday, a series of packages containing explosive devices began to turn up at homes, at business, and in post offices. These packages were addressed to Democratic politicians, including the Obamas and the Clintons, as well as to financier George Soros, actor Robert De Niro, and CNN. Though none of the packages detonated, they were sent by a man who was, to put it mildly, devotedly partisan in his views. He drove a van covered with bumper stickers showing Democratic politicians in crosshairs. He also posted violent and threatening rhetoric on social media.
Then, on Saturday, a gunman armed with an AR-15 and three rifles showed up at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. He shouted, “All Jews must die,” and opened fire. By the time his shots fell silent, eleven were dead and a number of others were injured. As investigators looked into this shooter’s past, he too was found to have posted violent and threatening rhetoric on social media. He was also a member of an egregiously anti-Semitic online community.
It’s no secret that we’re a nation on edge. A lot of people hate a lot of other people. This hate, in turn, when coupled with a mental health crisis that seems to be creeping across our society, erupts in violence – just as it did in the case of these two men.
At this moment, when hatred is hot, Christians must be on the frontlines advocating for love. Our culture is fighting the wrong demons. Our culture sees demons in politicians and positions it doesn’t like. It sees demons in religions and races it doesn’t like. But Scripture is clear. We are called to fight:
…not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12)
If we’re fighting other people, we’re doing it wrong. Our struggle is against the demons the Bible identifies as truly demonic – not against the demons created for us on social media.
In his new book, Them: Why We Hate Each Other – And How To Heal, Senator Ben Sasse offers a convicting analysis of our cultural milieu:
It seems clear that in America today, we’re facing problems that feel too big for us, so we’re lashing out at each other, often over less important matters. Many of us are using politics as a way to distract ourselves from the nagging sense that something bigger is wrong. Not many of us would honestly argue that if our “side” just had more political power, we’d be able to fix what ails us. Fortunately, we can avoid addressing the big problems as long as someone else – some nearer target – is standing in the way of our securing the political power even to try. It’s easier to shriek at people on the other side of the street. It’s comforting to be able to pin the problems on the freaks in the pink hats or the weirdos carrying the pro-life signs.
At least our contempt unites us with other Americans who think like we do.
At least we are not like them.
Senator Sasse speaks specifically to our political climate, but his words can be applied to our broader cultural problems as well. There is an attitude prevalent among many that does not want to solve problems. Instead, it only wants to grab power. There is an attitude prevalent among many that does not seek understanding. Instead, it only traffics in character assassination. And the results, even if they are, thankfully, generally not violent, are certainly not good. People begin to trade transcendent commitments for tribal grievances. They stop looking at others as people who are precious by virtue of being created in God’s image and instead see them as enemies needing to be eradicated. They make demons out of mortals.
The Psalmist describes God’s patience with the Israelites of old like this:
He was merciful; He forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them. Time after time He restrained His anger and did not stir up His full wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return. (Psalm 78:38-39)
God was patient with and merciful to the Israelites because He remembered who the Israelites were – mere, fragile mortals. Their lives were so short and fragile that they were like passing breezes. God is patient with and merciful to us because He remembers who we are – mere, fragile mortals. Our lives are so short and fragile that we are like passing breezes. Perhaps we should see each other like God sees us. Perhaps we should restrain our anger and wrath like God does for us. I hope this past week has taught us at least that much.
Life’s too short to hate.
A Journalist Is Murdered
Credit: POMED
When Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, he was planning to pick up some documents for his upcoming marriage. Instead, he walked into an ambush that took his life. The purported details of the ambush are grim – from dismemberment to acid being used to dispose of his remains.
Mr. Khashoggi wrote articles for The Washington Post that were critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s autocratic tendencies. Suspicions are running high that behind Mr. Khashoggi’s murder is a furious Crown Prince. In a phone call with President Trump, however, the royal vehemently denied any knowledge of or participation in the crime.
On the one hand, as an article by Kevin D. Williamson cautions us, there is still plenty we do not yet know about Mr. Khashoggi’s death. This is why investigators are hot on this case. Leveling ironclad accusations and jumping to confident conclusions now may damage our credibility later. Patience, to modify an old Latin proverb, often winds up being the mother of accuracy.
On the other hand, even as new facts continue to tumble in, there does seem to be a preponderance of circumstantial evidence that points to the Crown Prince’s involvement. Thus, provisional, measured, and appropriately humble suspicions that call for further investigation are appropriate.
As it stands right now, this story could have all the makings of a modern-day crime of Cain. Like Cain cultivated bitterness against Abel for bringing to light his faulty sacrifice, a ruler may have nursed jealously against a journalist for uncovering his ruthless rule. Instead of rethinking his ways, he may have exacted his vengeance. If this is, in fact, the case, this we can know: the truth of this crime, one way or another, will come to light. God discovers Cain’s crime against his brother when Abel’s blood cries out to Him from the ground (Genesis 4:10). The victims of sin, it turns out, do not stay silent – even in death. Sin always seems to get discovered and uncovered.
Thankfully, as Christians, we know that sin is not only inexorably revealed, it will also be eventually routed. Abel’s blood spoke the truth of Cain’s crime. But, as the preacher of Hebrews reminds us, there is a “blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24). For this blood doesn’t just speak of foul play; it secures a holy redemption. The blood does not just cry for justice; it confers justification. This blood does not just point to death; it defeats death. And this blood does not just spill because of man’s sin; it flows from the side of a perfect Savior.
Mr. Khashoggi was ruthlessly murdered in an ambush. Jesus was ruthlessly murdered on a cross. But Jesus was also raised. And He is returning to raise those who have died in Him to live with Him. And there will be nothing any royal regime, no matter how repressive and resentful, will be able to do about it.
Jekyll, Hyde, and Mr. Cosby
Credit: Flickr, weisspaarz.com
Last Tuesday, Bill Cosby was sentenced to three to ten years in state prison for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand. Though it was Mrs. Constand’s charges that ultimately landed Mr. Cosby in prison, she is just one of 60 women accusing the famous actor and comedian of sexual assault.
In an age where the ugliness of sexual immorality is bubbling to the top all around us, Mr. Cosby’s case is another reminder of what happens when power, lies, and lust all coalesce. People get used. Tracks get covered. Spirits get shorn.
One of the things that makes Mr. Cosby’s case so difficult to process is the massive disconnect between the doting dad America knew as Dr. Huxtable on the Cosby Show in the 80s and the sickening nature of his alleged and, until recently, secretive crimes with multiple women. “Hypocrisy” feels like too weak a word to describe his actions.
Dallas Willard once wrote, “We are a whole being, and our true character pervades everything we do.” In other words, people may try, as did Mr. Cosby, to be one person in public while being someone completely different in private. Eventually, however, everyone gets revealed for who they really are. Dr. Jekyll inevitably gets mown down by Mr. Hyde. Or, as Jesus puts it:
“There is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.” (Luke 8:17)
The secret sins of Mr. Cosby eventually caught up to the perfect persona of Dr. Huxtable. And now a legacy of laughter is clouded and a whole string of abused women are shattered.
The Bible testifies that human sexuality has been disordered for a very long time. King David used the power of his throne to commit adultery and murder his lover’s husband. A group of religious leaders tried to stone a woman caught in adultery, all the while speciously ignoring the sins of her male counterpart. From marital unrighteousness to incorrigible self-righteousness, there is plenty of sexual sin to go around.
God calls us to something different and better than sexual licentiousness and laziness. God calls us to a sexual commitment that is ultimately selfless instead of selfish. The apostle Paul writes of marital intimacy:
The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. (1 Corinthians 7:3-4)
In a cultural milieu that can egg people on to chase what they want sexually, Scripture invites husbands and wives to serve each other tenderly. Intimacy is not meant to be taken, but given. It is not meant to be violative, but restorative.
Let’s take what intimacy is meant to be, and let’s make a promise: this is what intimacy will be for me. And this is how I will use intimacy for thee. Your spouse will thank you. And others who are struggling in sexual brokenness just might take note of you.
Who Needs Friends When You Have God?
A new study from the University of Michigan suggests that those who have a strong faith in God are often isolated from others. Todd Chan, a doctoral student at the university, explains:
For the socially disconnected, God may serve as a substitutive relationship that compensates for some of the purpose that human relationships would normally provide.
This is an interesting hypothesis, but studies like these do not seem to provide consistent results. W. Bradford Wilcox, the Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, has found that:
…religion generally fosters more happiness, greater stability, and a deeper sense of meaning in American family life, provided that family members – especially spouses – share a common faith.
In other words, contrary to what Mr. Chan found, faith in God can actually deepen and sustain relationships instead of serving as a substitute for relationships.
Certainly, there are people of deep faith who find themselves bereft of human companionship and, consequently, lonely. The Bible admits as much, while also seeking to offer comfort and a promise of companionship to those in isolated situations:
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families. (Psalm 68:5-6)
God does indeed promise to be there for someone when they have no one. But He doesn’t stop there. He also “sets the lonely in families.” In other words, He doesn’t just serve as a substitute for human companionship, He actually grants human companionship.
Christianity has always confessed a Triune God, in relationship with Himself from eternity, as the model for and the giver of deeper and better relationships with others. This is part of the reason why Christianity first took root in the more densely populated urban areas and why it was initially less prevalent among more rural areas. As Rodney Stark notes in his book The Triumph of Christianity:
The word pagan derives from the Latin word paganus, which originally meant “rural person,” or more colloquially “country hick.” It came to have religious meaning because after Christianity had triumphed in the cities, most of the pagans were rural people.
Christianity first flourished in cities because those were where the largest communities of people were. Christianity, it turns out, is irreducibly communal.
Jesus famously summarizes the whole of Old Testament law thusly:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-39)
Jesus is clear. A relationship with God can and should lead to better relationships with others. Regardless of what Mr. Chan’s study may assert sociologically, theologically, God is not a second-string substitute for human relationships. Instead, a human, who had an intimate relationship with God and was Himself God, became our substitute on a cross so that we could have a relationship with God in spite of our sin. God is not a last resort relationship when you’re lonely, but a first love relationship who promises never to leave you alone. And there’s just no substitution for that.
A Senator, A Pope, And A Shooter
Credits: Gage Skidmore, Catholic Church, Getty Images
This past weekend was a busy one in the news, to say the least. Friday, it was announced that Senator John McCain would discontinue treatment for his brain cancer. 24 hours later, he passed away. Around this same time Saturday, news broke that Pope Francis may have known of accusations against one of his closest confidants, former Washington D.C. archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who resigned this summer after it was discovered that he may have sexually abused a minor some 50 years ago. Then, yesterday afternoon, a gunman opened fire in a Jacksonville, Florida bar during a Madden 19 video game tournament, killing three and wounding eleven.
After a weekend like this one, it is easy to be left reeling and restive. When cancer takes the life of an American hero, when a spiritual leader is accused of covering for sexual abuse, and when another – yes, another – mass shooting unfolds on another soft target, it can be extremely difficult to take everything in, much less to make sense of much or any of it.
So, how do we process any of this?
During relatively peaceful times, which seem fewer and farther between these days, we can be lured into a false sense of security. We can be tricked into forgetting that, in the words of God to Cain, “sin is crouching at the door” (Genesis 4:7) and it can rear its head at any moment. However, during tumultuous times, which seem to have become all too common, we can become drawn into alarmism and catastrophism. We can have a false sense that, in the words of Chicken Little, “the sky is falling.” Both senses are false. Generally, things are never quite as bad or quite as good as we think they are.
The message of Christ can provide us with a reality check after a weekend like this one. Jesus has no problem warning the world of the full damage and devastation that human sinfulness can wreak. Jesus warns that, in this age, there will be an “increase of wickedness, and the love of most will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12). But Jesus also is clear that He has come to overcome sin. In the words of Jesus’ dear friend John, Jesus is “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). Sin will not ultimately get its way.
Christians can respond to the tragedies of our world with both a sober realism and an indefatigable hope. The death of a man as well regarded and as widely celebrated as John McCain can serve as a reminder of the brokenness of our political system and the often illogical rancor that eats away at any generative discourse. The promise of the man Jesus Christ is that He has come to bring peace between divided peoples and parties. The alleged secrecy of a man like Pope Francis in the face of a terrible crime like the one allegedly committed by Theodore McCarrick reminds us that sin runs for cover so it can continue its damaging and damning work. The promise of the man Jesus Christ is that He has come not only to reveal sin, but to heal those ravaged by it. The murderous intentions of a man like Jacksonville’s mass shooter is a reminder that death comes for everyone – sometimes at the times we least expect it. The promise of the man Jesus Christ is that by His death, He has conquered death.
Every tragedy yearns for a Savior. Christianity promises that every tragedy has a Savior. And after a weekend like this one, that’s what we need to know most – and believe deeply.
Another Revelation Rocks Willow Creek
This year was one unlike any other for the Willow Creek Association’s Global Leadership Summit, which was held last week. The annual event, which began in 1995 at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, has drawn some of the biggest names in the world as its speakers – from U2’s Bono to President Bill Clinton to Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Summit is broadcast all over the world, including at over 600 locations in the U.S. alone. But when the Chicago Tribune published an expose last March accusing the Summit’s founder and former Senior Pastor at Willow Creek, Bill Hybels, of making sexually inappropriate advances toward multiple women over a period of decades, the event found itself facing an unprecedented crisis. Over 100 congregations withdrew as satellite host sites. Speakers who were scheduled to teach at the Summit, including Denzel Washington, cancelled their appearances.
This past week, the Summit and Willow Creek suffered yet another blow as the New York Times published its own bombshell report chronicling a new story of another woman accusing Mr. Hybels of making sexually illicit advances toward her. The revelations were so shocking that the church’s lead teaching pastor, Steve Carter, resigned his position the next day, citing his grave concern about the:
…church’s official response, and its ongoing approach to these painful issues. After many frank conversations with our elders, it became clear that there is a fundamental difference in judgment between what I believe is necessary for Willow Creek to move in a positive direction, and what they think is best.
This past Wednesday, the congregation’s other lead pastor, Heather Larson, along with the elder board, resigned their positions after apologizing for not more sensitively and thoroughly addressing and investigating the accusations leveled against Mr. Hybels. A church that was once the gold standard for leadership, witness, teaching, and worship has been laid low in a matter of months.
As I have written before, Willow Creek has had a formative influence on me in my ministry. I am thankful for all the congregation has given the worldwide Church. Unfortunately, it is now offering the Church a lesson it certainly never planned or wanted to – a first-hand warning of what happens when hypocrisy and secrecy overtakes integrity and transparency. The results speak for themselves.
Several years ago, Bill Hybels wrote a book titled, Who You Are When No One’s Looking. In it, he extolled the value of character, which he defined as “what we do when no one is looking.” Character is being the same person in private as you present yourself to be in public. He was right in what he wrote. It appears he was very wrong in how he lived. And now, not only are he and his legacy left in tatters, the church and Summit he founded, the staff he led, and the family who thought they knew him are paying an inestimably steep price. Lapses in integrity never affect only the perpetrator.
Because we are all sinful, none of us live with full integrity. We are all, to one extent or another, hypocrites. The best way to deal with inevitable lapses in integrity is to tell the truth about them fully and immediately. Sin is killed by confession. Unfortunately, our reflex is not to confess our sin, but to cover it up. When Adam and Eve committed history’s first sin by eating fruit from a tree of which God had commanded they should not, Genesis 3:8 says, “They hid from the LORD.” Adam and Eve thought it would be better to keep the secret of their sin than to tell the truth about their sin. They were wrong – a fact to which all of history is still testifying as we endure the effects of their first sin and cover-up.
Secrets, especially when they cover shameful realities, can be awfully easy to keep. And the truth, when it is embarrassing and damaging, can be awfully hard to tell. But secrets come with a steep price, as Willow Creek is painfully learning. The truth, however, even when it is tough to tell, comes with a blessed return of freedom. Which, in the long run, do you think is better?
The Biggest Humanitarian Crisis In The World
Credit: USAID
Katherine Zimmerman, a Middle East expert, has called it the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world. In 2014, war broke out in the poverty-stricken nation of Yemen when Iranian-backed rebels stormed and occupied Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa. Since then, a Saudi-led coalition, along with the Yemeni government, has been trying to take back the city. Over 10,000 people have died, half of which have been civilians, as a direct result of the fighting. Indirect casualties are even higher. Save the Children reports that 130 children are dying every day in Yemen. Ms. Zimmerman fears that conditions in the country will continue to deteriorate, explaining, “As the conflict goes on, the people are suffering, and it’s to the point now where we’re looking at a cholera epidemic, and massive risk of famine.”
Sadly, this crisis, half a world away, has been regularly eclipsed by a steady stream of riveting domestic intrigue. But the cries of these victims of war deserve our listening ears and concerned hearts.
One of the most common prayers in the Bible, especially in the Psalms, is that the Lord would hear the cries of the oppressed:
- “Hear my cry for help, my King and my God, for to You I pray.” (Psalm 5:2)
- “Hear my cry for mercy as I call to You for help, as I lift up my hands toward Your Most Holy Place.” (Psalm 28:2)
- “Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer.” (Psalm 61:1)
The glorious promise is that the Lord does hear the cries of the oppressed:
- “The LORD has heard my cry for mercy; the LORD accepts my prayer.” (Psalm 6:9)
- “Praise be to the LORD, for He has heard my cry for mercy.” (Psalm 28:6)
- “I love the LORD, for He heard my voice; He heard my cry for mercy.” (Psalm 116:1)
If the Lord hears the cries of the downtrodden, we should too. So please join me in lending your prayers to the cries of the Yemenis, asking God to bring this crisis to an end. Pray also that famine and disease would not overtake this land.
In a world where our news cycles regularly revolve around the powerful, it can be all too easy to forget about those on the margins of our societies. The gospel, however, reminds us that we worship a God who marginalized Himself by being born into a poor village called Bethlehem and growing up as a poor carpenter from Nazareth only to become a poor rabbi who was executed by His enemies on a cross. Jesus lived His life as a marginalized man. This man on the margins, however, has promised to use His very marginalization on the cross to draw all people to Himself (cf. John 12:32). This man on the margins has turned out to be nothing less than the very center of history.
Jesus’ method of marginalization should most certainly inform our mission of reaching and loving the world for Him and in Him. So, let’s keep our peripheral vision peeled to see those others miss and love those our world overlooks. For this is what Jesus has done with us.
Digitizing Life After Death
Credit: Martin420
There seems to be something hardwired into humans that wants to cheat death. Writing for NBC News, Kevin Van Aelst, in his article “Disrupting death: Technologists explore ways to digitize life,” chronicles a new bevy of scientific experiments designed to con the grim reaper.
In one experiment, researchers work at mapping brain connections in an attempt to digitize the mind so that, even after a body dies, a “human being can live in on virtual form.” In another experiment:
Artificial intelligence specialists are developing digital avatars that replicate users’ personalities and can continue to communicate with loved ones after their owners have passed away … The program, Augmented Eternity, will then be able to communicate memories of your life and answer questions on certain topics, such as your political views, depending on what information is stored in your data.
Even before these technologies have been thoroughly tested and refined, their limits are glaring. Having someone live on as a digitized mind makes bioethicist John Harris wonder, because “we are so much flesh and blood creatures,” what it would be like to “continue to exist in a disembodied state.” Another woman, who created an avatar of a friend she lost, describes the avatar as a “sort of digital tomb to come to and mourn” and freely admits that her friend is no longer alive – at least in any sort of meaningful way. In other words, for all of science and technology’s attempts to cheat death, its reality and finality still loom large.
Christ does what science and technology cannot. All of our experiments, from digitizing minds to fashioning avatars, only succeed in mimicking life after death. Christ actually gives life after death. As He says to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25). The Christian hope is much more than a digital grave that a person can pay a visit to in order to hear a phantom voice. It is a real life that we are promised.
The scientific and technological advances that address life and death are both problematic in that they blur distinctions between the two and promising in that they give us insight into the two. But whatever their problems and promises may be, this much is clear: they will always only be partial. Only Christ can give real life – a life that is “to the full” (John 10:10).
Hope From the Cave
Credit: Jayakarthi Natarajan
In a saga that began June 23, twelve boys from a Thai soccer team found themselves trapped in Thailand’s Tham Luang cave system for over two weeks. What began as an assistant coach taking his team on a rite of passage through a cave wound up teetering on the brink of disaster after the sky outside opened up while the boys were in the cave and the rains flooded their exit route from the cave. It took a team of 1,000 local army and navy troops along with teams from the U.S., the U.K., China, and Australia, as well as a crack team of Thai Navy SEALs, to find and rescue the boys. Even with all these people on site, the rescue still spanned multiple days. But now, the boys are out safely and a nation – along with many across the world – is celebrating.
In an age where so many tragedies end tragically, tragedies that are hijacked into victories buoy our spirits because they bring into sharp clarity the reality and the persistence of hope. Today’s state, no matter how dire it may seem, does not have to be tomorrow’s fate. This is why the message of Christ continues to find resonance in people’s lives and take up residence in people’s hearts. For Christ came to bring hope – a hope that the sin and calamity of this world could and would be undone and defeated by Him. And though we still await the final consummation of this hope upon His return, we get glimpses of this hope every time a vaccine for a dreaded disease appears promising, a crippled airliner lands safely, and a group of boys escape from a waterlogged cave.
Come to think of it, these boys aren’t the first ones to make a miraculous escape from a cave that seemed impermeable. Jesus pulled that off 2,000 years ago on a morning we now call Easter.
Is it any wonder He is our source of hope?
Keeping It Quiet
Last week, The Wall Street Journal published a disturbing article on the kind of access that many app developers are able to gain to Gmail accounts, which now number over one billion. Writing for the Journal, Douglas MacMillan opens his nearly 2,300-word article:
Google said a year ago it would stop its computers from scanning the inboxes of Gmail users for information to personalize advertisements, saying it wanted users to “remain confident that Google will keep privacy and security paramount.”
But the internet giant continues to let hundreds of outside software developers scan the inboxes of millions of Gmail users who signed up for email-based services offering shopping price comparisons, automated travel-itinerary planners or other tools. Google does little to police those developers, who train their computers – and, in some cases, employees – to read their users’ emails, a Wall Street Journal examination has found.
One of those companies is Return Path Inc., which collects data for marketers by scanning the inboxes of more than two million people who have signed up for one of the free apps in Return Path’s partner network using a Gmail, Microsoft Corp. or Yahoo email address. Computers normally do the scanning, analyzing about 100 million emails a day. At one point about two years ago, Return Path employees read about 8,000 unredacted emails to help train the company’s software, people familiar with the episode say …
Letting employees read user emails has become “common practice” for companies that collect this type of data, says Thede Loder, the former chief technology officer at eDataSource Inc., a rival to Return Path. He says engineers at eDataSource occasionally reviewed emails when building and improving software algorithms.
“Some people might consider that to be a dirty secret,” says Mr. Loder. “It’s kind of reality.”
This report serves as yet another reminder that the data and conversations one sends and stores on email might be personal, but they are probably not private. Understanding you is too critical to too many companies who want to market to you. So these companies, when you download one of their apps, ask you to check a box at the bottom of some long end-user agreement that almost no one reads that gives them permission to sneak-a-peak into your inbox.
This story can serve as a great reminder of the importance – and, really, the sanctity – of keeping a confidence. Some information, no matter what a legal end-user agreement may allow, is not best morally bought, sold, and shared. As Proverbs 11:13 pithily puts it: “A gossip goes around revealing a secret, but a trustworthy person keeps a confidence.”
Confidences in our culture are far too easily betrayed. From a person’s presumably private information being shared and sold by large tech companies under a cloud of legalese to the steady drip of politically laced leaks meant to damage people in public positions to the titillating headlines about this or that celebrity splashed across the front pages of our tabloids to the more modest office gossip that happens around water coolers across America, not only are we bad at keeping confidences, we often delight in breaking confidences if we think doing so will gain us friends and get us power. Unlike Christ, who sacrificed Himself for the sake of others, we, with giddily gossipy tongues, sacrifice others for the sake of ourselves.
Certainly, confidences can never be turned into excuses for cover-ups of sin. Morally illicit behavior, when it comes to one’s attention, needs to be confronted frankly, even if also compassionately, by someone in a position of authority to do so, which means that sometimes, something that comes to your attention needs to be shared with someone who is equipped to address it. But it can still be shared in strict confidence for a specific purpose – not to get the word out, but to privately and poignantly call someone to repentance.
At its heart, keeping a confidence is simply a vow to treat people’s tender spots tenderly. We all have points of pain and shame in our lives. To be able to share those with a person we can trust is often necessary for healing. In a culture that delights in the damaging and devastating weaponry of gossip, may we practice the restorative and healing power of keeping a confidence. As my mother used to say: “Sometimes, you’ve just got to zip your lips.”
This is most certainly true.
Pastor Zach's Blog 