….Peacemaker not peacekeeper
God calls us to love our neighbor as our self (Matt.22:39), and at times that means we should not tolerate sins others commit. God tells us to not conceal sins our loved ones do, by calling them “quirks and innocent mistakes.” Even enabling sinful behavior by cleaning up other people’s mistakes, telling lies to cover for them, doing their chores and carrying their responsibilities, so they can have an easy life while ours is damaged is not seeking the highest good for others. Trying to be a peacekeeper who avoids the truth and tries to keep life conflict-free is not the same as being the peacemaker God calls us to be (Matt.5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”) Please join me as I confirm the difference between seeking others’ highest good, and enabling others’ sin.
God calls us to lovingly confront people he puts into our lives (Matt.18:15). He does not want us to look away when people continue in sinful and destructive patterns. Yet people sometimes believe they should try to keep the peace by not confronting sin, fearing the anger of another. They may have tried to confront another person, even placed consequences that protected themselves and other innocent victims. But when the guilty person becomes angry about the consequences of his (or her) own sin, the victims might back down. Yet when the guilty person does not express sorrow or repentance, that means they have not changed. If peacekeepers remove the consequences, they harm themselves and others. For when the guilty people are angry about the legitimate consequences, they are actually showing they are only thinking about themselves and not about acknowledging the pain they caused the victim, and not about changing their sinful behavior.
To allow a loved one to continue to live in such selfish sin is enabling them to be godless. This is not peacekeeping, nor seeking the other person’s highest good. It is encouraging the sin of death. And this will eventually cause the victim to resent the person who hurt her. She ends up carrying the offense of the guilty person. To confront the guilty person enables the victim to lay down the offense. We need to lay down that offense by setting up consequences (such as not seeing the person until he or she repents) and then choosing to not carry that offense again by feeling guilty about the other person’s anger about those consequences. Often, doing the right thing feels wrong to a person who has been wronged for a long time, and we must do something right that the abuser calls wrong.
Guilty people also like to blame the victim for her past sins. We have to remember Jesus knows our sins. When we confess to him, he cleanses us and heals us. So the people who wound us have no right to blame us for their bad behavior, because we sinned in the past. We did not cause others to sin. We cannot control their behavior, and we cannot cure their sin. Only Jesus can do that.
So trying to keep the peace (being a peacekeeper) means we only cover the anger at the surface. Either the guilty person will angrily sin against us again, or we will feel anger over what they did to us. Anger and sin will remain and grow. But being a peacemaker will mean we call sin “sin.” Even if the person who hurt us is our own child, spouse, best friend or other close person, we really do need to confront the other person if we feel truly hurt. The other person may not have meant to speak or act harshly. The offender may tell you that you have a sensitive or tender area of life where you are more vulnerable to pain. This is true, but if you are hurt, your sorrow should matter to those closest to you. Sometimes people we dearly love are careless and really do hurt us. And if we feel the offense, we need to bring it to Christ, so he can show us what to do. Often we need to tell the person that he or she hurt us, and tell them how they hurt us and what we need for reconciliation.
That is true peacemaking. God genuinely wanted us to have the feelings, thoughts and personalities, that he gave us. We are not mistakes. We have a right to have our feelings and sensitivities. Perhaps you were attacked by an animal when you were young, and now you are sensitive. This does not make you wrong. Perhaps a certain place brings intense sorrow. You don’t need others to feel the same way—you just need them to honor your pain or concern. Forgiving them is easier if we remember that sometimes we hurt others too, and they have a right to tell us when that happens.
Most of us reading this blog would rather be hurt than hurt another, and so we rush to apologize and makes changes. That is only healthy if we also let others know when they hurt us (unless you are a person who easily hurts others but hates to acknowledge when you hurt them—then you must work on humbling yourself to listen to the pain of others). For those of us who hate to admit we were hurt, we must do it, and yet we can also trust that those who truly love us will want to work on the relationship. Gals. 6:1 tells us to confront others with gentleness and humbleness, and perhaps this is the part of Scripture we need to remember. We hate confronting others, but if we ask the Holy Spirit to help us speak in a gentle and humble way, we can see the other person’s heart, so our pent up anger does not erupt.
It is a shock to someone who avoided confrontation to find she erupts in such anger when she considered herself a gentle and peaceful person. But true peace does not come from avoiding confrontation, and that kind of anger can erupt when you keep stuffing it down, like a beach ball you try to push under the water. Our hearts are sinful (Jer. 17:9-10) so we don’t realize the anger we can fill up with. We bless ourselves, the other victims, and even those who hurt us by confronting them, and we should do so after we have prayed and sought the Holy Spirit’s enabling to speak with humility.
I tend to be an avoider, so when I heard two broad casts about being a peacekeeper and enabling sinful behavior, I knew I needed to heed this truth and share it with others. God will keep strengthening us to do what is right, even the hard things like confronting the sin in those we are close to. Then God can enable us to seek the other person’s highest good and be a true peacemaker, as Jesus spoke of. May the Lord enable us to grow in this way!
Thanks for joining us in this post. I pray I have encouraged and strengthened you to live strongly in your faith!