Compassion / Offense

I am not here to monopolize the definition of a Christian response to social, political, or personal conflict. I respect God enough to know He does not only work through my way of doing or thinking. But I do see surface solutions to deeply rooted issues left unaddressed by people more concerned with defending themselves and their perspective than standing in a truth that should ideally make them unoffendable.

Jesus knew the truth, lived the truth, breathed the truth because He was the truth. He did not need others to validate who He was, what He believed, or what He did in order be, do, and say what God had sent Him to be, do, and say.

When Jesus saw people outside of this truth He did not ignore, belittle, or betray them, He had compassion on them. Compassion - the act that follows empathy. Empathy - relating to another person’s pain as if it is your own.

Your own.

Psalm 35 holds the desperate words of a man with enemies - people who have unjustly sought to ruin him. Some of us may be familiar with this kind of persecution. Others of us may be calling something persecution what is really just an uncomfortable manifestation of a difference in opinion. Regardless, in the midst of his troubles and crying out to God for help with no answer (yet), his enemies become sick and this man exemplifies what I believe is a proper response for a Christian in times of conflict:

“Yet when they were ill, I put on sack cloth and humbled myself with fasting…as though for my friend or brother…as though weeping for my mother” - vs. 13-14

We are not to view or treat those living outside of Biblical truth as our enemies but as our own. Why? Everything changes when the person you cannot stand becomes the person you cannot stand to lose.

Our focus should not be proving our point or getting others to obey certain ways of living, but winning hearts. Everything we do flows from the heart. A heart for Jesus becomes a changed life and a saved soul not because of our own convincing words but because of a relationship with the One you, me, and everyone we cannot believe lives or acts a certain way was made for. We cannot take part in what Jesus has called us to do if we are busy defending ourselves and how we think we should be respected.

It’s not our job to defend the truth in the way I think many of us believe it is. I’m sure there is a time and place for many things that I do not currently see as appropriate because I'm unfamiliar with the places where they would be, so I will repeat: I am not here to monopolize the definition of a Christian response to conflict.

What I do know is that His truth remains true no matter who believes it.

As Christians, we already have Jesus, we already have His promises, and we already have a place in heaven. If we are to try and prove anything, let us prove it with the way we live our lives and watch the fruit of abiding in obedience and in His presence speak for itself.

Opposing views are not bricks to build walls but doors to the hearts of our friends, our brothers, our sisters - our own.