David and Golaith

The other day, I rebuked my brother. I don't remember what it was that I was rebuking, but I remember being very convinced of my righteousness in the matter. I am still convinced of it. My brother was clearly in the wrong. The words I chose were carefully selected to rebuke - a little sting with a little correction hopefully to encourage a new line of thinking and a new more right spirit within my brother. At the end of this rebuke, I reminded my brother of my love in him through Jesus Christ.

Needless to say, I was quite shocked by the response I got.

The gist of it was quite simple - you claim to be a follower of Christ and yet, here you are rebuking me and making me feel like a big turd. Where is the love in that!?

Whoah! If you could have seen how far my jaw had dropped. I sat there and read and reread the message over and over and then I reread the "offending" passages that I had used. I was still convinced of the validity of my message and I did not think the rebuke was out of line, but the pain of the response was evident. My brother was clearly hurt that I would cut so deeply and use Christ as the scalpel.

I did not understand it then, except to say that on some level I realized that I had made a mistake. I replied to my brother that I was very sorry and that I had not meant to attack him and that perhaps it was best if I took myself out of the equation. That seemed to work much better than my words ever had. Within a couple of months, normal relations were restored and there's been some healing between us and some correction on behalf of my brother. I took myself out of the equation and let God do His work.

A few days ago, I reread Romans 14 and the words floated through my brain for a while before they took root. In Romans 14, Paul says:

1Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. 2One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 4Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

5One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. 8If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

9For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. 10You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat.

Its easy for me to put myself above my brother and to say that I was right and he was wrong, but the situation is more complex than that. While I was trying to correct my brother, God had other plans and used my brother to correct me. I know now to choose my words more carefully and to be certain that someone can understand a rebuke before I use it. Wielded in the hands of a surgeon a scalpel can save a man's life, wielded in the hands of an amateur it is as deadly a weapon as was ever created. We must never use Christ as a weapon, no matter how much we think we're saving someone's life. But, almost as important, we must never appear to be using Christ as a weapon, for that perception can be almost as deadly. My brother did not understand that I was trying to correct him. I had not prepared him for that kind of correction by simply loving and accepting him first. He was not yet ready to hear that he was wrong. And in my rebuke, I made a correction into a weapon and I brought the love of Christ down hard like a hammer. And the wonder of it all is that through the grace of Christ, the teacher became the student, and I learned a valuable lesson about loving my brother.