We live in a society where we are constantly encouraged to be honest and blunt but a lot of us equate honesty with being rude and borderline disrespectful. we offer words that hurt, leave the heart and soul scarred on a gold platter, expecting people to absorb them under the premise of "tough Love".
It is not foreign to me and although the way in which people deliver it sometimes makes me question if there is love buried under some of the words that are said, I understand the idea of it. It is a concept in which we supposedly give people the “red pill”. And if you are familiar with the matrix, then you know that the red pill is supposed to be the one that gives you the truth/ reality (although reality is subjective) while the blue pill maintains you into blissful ignorance. So to speak. Something happened to me earlier today and I thought I would make it a practical case of writing and perhaps helping someone be more mindful of the way tough love is being delivered by them. As people we are to correct the people we love in order to see them do well ( and also be better) in life. To rebuke and correct as a Christian is something that is prescribed in the Bible. However, it is a task we should not be carrying haphazardly. I will take my personal example and say that I get sensitive to criticism. And perhaps my sensitivity to it has shaped and weighed a lot more in the way I chose to offer criticism/feedback to people when warranted. Not only has it shaped the way I offer criticism, it has also shaped the way I correct people. People sometimes offer tough love from a place that is only tough, with no love as a foundation to support the feedback that is being delivered. Someone can offer tough love with their words with their energy still being warm and loving. And that is something you cannot fake. That is how you know that the person means good for you and not evil. Tough love still has love as the foundation. Or at least, it should. It is not disrespectful and it is given in a way that points you into a direction that is better and higher than where you stand at the moment. As Christians, we are to represent Christ and the way we correct/ rebuke others is not to be excluded from the ways we represent Him. We are called to do everything in love (1co16:14), including expressing disapproval and correction. The Bible says in Hebrews 5:2 “He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and misguided, since he himself is beset by weakness.” I love how that passage deals with the two kinds that we will have to correct: the ignorant and the misguided. And people are misguided by all kinds of things including themselves. But there are also the people that genuinely do not know better. Whichever category they find themselves in doesn’t matter. The thing that matters is that we are to deal with them gently as Christ himself deals with them gently.
Not too long ago, someone reached out to me regarding a task they had to complete (and that I would generally provide guidance on) and notified me that they were done. But when I went ahead to check, the task was absolutely nowhere to be completed. I quickly reached out and laid out the steps that the person had to complete before coming back to me and marking the task as complete. But something about my rebuttal/correction was wrong and the Lord convicted me quickly about it. My correction came from a place of belittling and making the person feel small. The person might not have picked it up, but I did. It came from a place of subconsciously making the person feel dumb. I didn’t disrespect the person. I was polite but the undertone and the way in which I matter-of-factly laid out the steps made me realize that I didn’t come from a loving and healthy place. Which led to me writing these words. Warren Wiersbe once said “Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.” My personal experience walking this earth everyday is that I am witnessing more and more people offering “the truth” without love as the foundation. And a lot of times it is brutal and emotional manhandling at best, emotional manslaughter in the worst case scenario. A lot of good messages are being lost in translation because people are not building their delivery of truth on love. They want to be right, they want to hurt, they want to prove a point. No truth is cute or easy to say, but there is a way to show up and deliver it that can (and will) save someone. I am not saying we should be sugarcoating things and dancing around issues when they are there. What I am saying is we should work on finding better ways to deliver our messages of rebuttal/correction; ways that make people feel seen, heard, respected. Ways that makes them feel like they matter and that our delivery of what we deem the truth is more for their good than your own gain.
Maybe this will fall into the pit of the never ending criticism and the resounding hymn of people claiming that my generation is too sensitive, that we cannot take criticism or be told wrong. But I hope and pray that it will stay on your mind. I hope and pray that before you go ahead and correct someone and/or offer feedback, you will pause for a moment and wonder where that correction/ feedback and rebuttal is coming from. Is it coming from a place of love? Is the criticism laid on the foundation of love? Or is it coming from a place of hurt or self gain? I hope and pray this week, you go around and “do everything in love” whether you believe in God or not, because in the actual state of this world, we could all use a little bit of it.
Until next time,
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