Spiritual Warfare: What Will The Neighbours Think

Thursday, March 30, 2006

What Will The Neighbours Think

There is a great fear shared by many people that if we correct another we are then 'judging' them, this is a misalignment of compassion for to not correct another if we know them to be committing a serious sin is to leave them open to the Judgment of God. What many don't understand is that when we fail to correct another who is going astray, we also stand condemned for it is not love that stops us from speaking the Truth, but fear.

So many of us are terrified to speak God's Revealed Truth, in case we upset our neighbour, so rather than speak the Truth many instead take the option of the fence sitter, who simply wants to get along with everyone. This is a perverted form of loving one's neighbour for it is in essence a love of oneself, in that the focus is not your neighbours well being but rather one's own.

There are many people who instead of living to please God instead place their emphasis on being pleasing to man even if that means accepting sinful lifestyle choices, vulgar and crude behaviour or immodesty, they accept all this not in a spirit of love but in a spirit of fear. This does not spring from God for perfect love drives out all fear, this springs from the enemy who incites us to fear that our friends will turn against us if we correct them. When correction is done in the right spirit then none should take offense but if it is done in the wrong spirit or in a superior attitude then it does a lot of harm, it comes down always to the intent. Even when we correct with love and compassion it still maybe misconstrued but what matter is that if it may cause another to re-think their misguided views when dealing with sin, for when we don't correct another who is living a sinful lifestyle we are then an accomplice in that persons sinful actions. We must face the fact that no-one likes to be corrected, as President Harry Truman once said, "I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it is hell." This is the same with our friends, they may not wish to hear the Truth but that should not prevent us from speaking it.

To correct another is never a comfortable position to be in, but Christians were not meant for save havens. We are not here to make our own lives easier, we are here to live as our Faith requires irrespective if it offends our neighbours as an anonymous source puts it so eloquently and simply, "Live in such a way that those who know you but don’t know God will come to know God because they know you." When we stand by our principles and what we believe to be true, then we become a beacon of light in a world grown dark with sin.

We need to remember it is not love that enchains a soul, but sin. It is this that holds a vice like grip on the individual and stops it from truly enjoying life to the full. We cannot enjoy spiritual freedom when our soul is immersed in the dark, as the great writer Evelyn Underhill wrote, "Heaven is to be in God at last made free." There is no freedom in sin, only despair, for when one willfully sin's they are then separated from God not because God Wills it, but because man wills it by his own choice. When we read the Prodigal son we also rejoice that the son that was once lost has now been saved, we do not read that the son who was once lost returned home the same as he left, unrepentant.

To worry over what others may think of you is to lose focus on why we are Christians and it is not so that we can gain friends and influence people, as Thomas Kempis wrote, "Great tranquility of heart is his who cares for neither praise nor blame." When we spend inordinate time worrying over what others think of us, what does this say about our level of Faith and what we hold to be true? Even if our friends turn away from us it should matter not if we have spoken the Truth with compassion and love.

Our focus should never be on ourselves or in worrying if others will find us offensive it should be to not only speak the Truth but to live the Truth in our own lives, Cardinal Mercia says this very thing, "We must not give only what we have; we must give what we are." We must abide with each other in our faults and failings in full knowledge that none of us are perfect for as Thomas Merton instructs, "In humility is perfect freedom." What we cannot do is accommodate sin as if it were merely a mere trifle, for sin is not a fault it is not a failing it is a choice.

In ending as the Word of God and the Catechism reminds us, "You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you once lived following the age of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the desires of our flesh, following the wishes of the flesh and the impulses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ...For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them." The Catholic Catechism also says, "Man tends by nature toward the truth. He is obliged to honor and bear witness to it: "It is in accordance with their dignity that all men, because they are persons . . . are both impelled by their nature and bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth once they come to know it and direct their whole lives in accordance with the demands of truth."

Let us always remember to speak in Truth rather than live with a lie.

Peace of Christ to ALL