"Be patient and speak the truth in love..."

Dear Friends,

My Pastoral Theology professor was a sage: proverbial sayings, experience, the “look” — he had it all. The only Anglo-Catholic priest at my evangelical Episcopal seminary, he was the least likely source of radical grace.

Surrounded by young seminarians eager to change the world, he would drop adages like “people can’t hear you until they’re moving towards you.” Not exactly words of encouragement for fresh activists looking for immediate results, but maybe everything we need to hear in what will undoubtedly need to be “a long obedience in the same direction.”

Another of his sayings that seems appropriate for impatient New Yorkers was “dormant faith is not awakened by telling people to have more faith.” In this long overdue season of truth-telling, I think the truth of my professor’s adage will save us from a lot of disillusionment. Yes, we preach about the need for personal and corporate repentance, but if this were the only word to say, well, we’d be giving a whole lot of unheeded ultimatums.

All of this demonstrates that people don’t change just because you tell them to. They have to come to the solution on their own. At least, they have to feel like they’ve come to it on their own. What these adages show is that the people we are trying to change need to be loved. Constant criticism and lectures alone — the very tools we think will change the ignorant — don’t have the power to bring about their desired ends. In fact, these tools, at times, make things worse. So, more than merely calling people out, my professor would say that we need to be patient, speak the truth in love, and we need the power of the one who “raises the dead, and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” (Rom. 4:17)

Grace and Peace,

Ben