Stay In The Conversation

 It's a blustery Sunday afternoon, and I'm out to lunch with some out-of-town visitors. We've been sharing each other's mutual desire to meet the needs of the vulnerable and marginalized, asking ourselves how you balance truth and love in a world of outrage... how you learn to lean-in instead of running away from the difficult conversations, covering the unlovable with a compassion that comes from the heart of God. Each of us agrees that it's becoming increasingly harder to go beyond the surface level issues and get to the root of someone's pain. So many of us are carrying around stories we can hardly hold ourselves, let alone trust someone else to gently share, and the constant barrage of opinion and critique is more likely to keep us all imprisoned in our suffering than to set us free to be healed. 

She tells me that the whole thing comes down to what you can't see. The subject you are addressing isn't often the real issue, prompting a whole other conversation that maybe you didn't plan to have and, unless you are patient and willing enough to keep going down the hole of their ache, you will unknowingly push them away rather than love them into Grace. So often, those of the community of faith lack the self-awareness of their own shadow sides and thus are unable to be understanding with the shadow sides of others. It's easy to toss out theological proofs, to quote Bible verses, to tell all manner of truths, to point out the speck in another's eye (Matthew 7:3-5) while you fail to address what is broken and missing in your own life. It's natural to speak from your own unhealed places and add to the pain of this fractured world; it's harder to do the work to become someone who can pour salve into the open wounds. 

My mind runs to a different conversation I had years ago with somebody who was fed up with the social and political stance of a certain organization and told me they had decided to boycott them. They shared their frustration, and I could see where they were coming from. But I also had friends who worked there - good people who were not part of the problem that was coming from the top leadership but were simply trying to be solid employees making a livelihood - and I told this person that I felt there was a way to disagree with organizational policy yet also support the honest people who were trying to make a stand within the company and change it from the inside out. Boycotting the company would just be taking away employment from people I cared about. They hadn't thought about it that way. And to this day, that person says they've never forgotten that. My perspective moved them from a two-way debate of stark contrasts to a third option that perhaps wasn't so direct and divisive. 

Sitting across from this woman sharing, I can't help but realize that most of us have lost our ability to stay in the conversation. If we disagree on something or don't support another's decisions or lifestyle, we're instantly out of the discussion... sometimes before it's even gotten started. We form conclusions so quickly and respond so fast that we often never get to that place where we truly hear somebody out and learn from their experience. We are so afraid of getting polluted by what we consider to be "the other side" of something that our whole posture is one of self-defense and protection instead of openness and grace. I think of Jesus with the ostracized woman at the communal well and how He went beyond a simple request for water into a transforming conversation that made her feel seen for the first time ever (John 4). She would have never opened up the Messiah and found the "living water" she didn't know she craved unless He had broken some societal norms in order to speak to her - an outsider. 

The Master's usage of breaking barriers with transformative truth sets the greatest example of how to approach people who are deemed "different." He interacted all the time with broken humanity, never afraid to acknowledge their failings and pains while also calling them to rise into something far greater. And His harshest words were for those who were stuck in their religiosity, content to scapegoat and point fingers of accusation while dismissing His equally powerful invitation to them to come and be changed. His worst critics were the ones who kept all the rules yet judged the Creator of the Universe for breaking bread with sinners and talking to outsiders. Perhaps not much has changed between His time and ours. 

The cross is the greatest evidence that God stayed in the conversation with fallible, imperfect people. When humanity turned its back on Him, that could've been it. Over. Done. But instead, He set a plan in motion to give us the opportunity to be restored. He didn't have to do that. He chose to do that. Which goes to prove that the greatest kind of love is always chosen, never earned. Track records matter. Trust is important. But the love that sticks with you is when you know you don't deserve it. Someone comes to you and tells you they see your humanness and love you anyway. If this is the pattern of the Maker of all living things, then why should we as His creation be any different? 

We are called to so much more than casting stones and pointing out failures and telling people to clean up their act before they can be found worthy of compassion or love. How would it change how we see people who have chosen an alternative lifestyle from ours if we realize that, by the percentages, most have ended up there because they were abused and rejected at some point and it's the only space they ever found that loved without judgement? How would it impact the way we interact with an opposing viewpoint on social or political subjects when we understand that they often have just as good an intention as ours for the welfare of society but they have just gone about it a different way? How would it alter our perspective on spiritual debates if we quit shooting down our own and realized that Jesus died for and saved them also and they are not our enemy after all? 

I heard someone say recently that we're addicted to outrage. We've grown accustomed to having enemies. It makes us feel superior. I wonder if that's actually true. And perhaps that's why the way of Jesus feels so contrary: He asks us to go lower, to dive deeper, to choose humbler, to set aside our need to win and be successful. His way is the last going first (Matthew 20:16), the prodigals being celebrated (Luke 15:11-32), and the messed up ones being given a second chance at abundant life (Luke 5:32). To live the way of the Savior is to stoop down. That's why He said that when we feed the hungry, quench the thirst of the thirsty, take strangers into our home, clothe the naked, nurse the sick, and visit the prisoner, we do so as unto Him (Matthew 25:35-40). And what if the prisoner isn't just a person behind literal bars but a living soul locked within the confines of their own insecurity and pain? 

Our calling is to stay in the conversation with others because God stays in the conversation with us. We may want to run from God, turn our back on Him, accuse Him, mistake His ways... but He never leaves. Like the father in the parable, He waits for us to return when we are ready to receive the abundance He wants to bestow on us. We need to ask Him for patience to keep listening, keep leaning-in even when we don't understand why someone is where they're at in life. You may the very first individual who has ever shown up that way for them.Sometimes the simple fact that you choose to see them as a person and not a problem is enough to open their spirit to a God who does the same for us.