How Can I Help?

“We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.” – Romans 15:1-2 (NIV)

I was at a Bible study recently where someone shared the beginning of Romans 15 from Eugene Peterson’s The Message:

Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?”

Because The Message is a paraphrase and not a literal translation, Peterson was able to add layers of meaning to the Bible’s words—and I think this is one case where that really worked. To me, “Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up” doesn’t pack the same punch as “Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, ‘How can I help?’”

It’s completely natural to make decisions based on what would be most convenient or most pleasing to me. And yet, for Paul, following Jesus means taking the unnatural step of setting those considerations aside and, instead, asking ‘What would be best for the people around me’?

Maria Skobtsova

Maria Skobtsova was a Russian Orthodox missionary in France, who spent her life serving the poor, those with mental illnesses, addicts, and others in Paris, until the Nazis invaded and eventually murdered her in a concentration camp. “Mother Maria,” as people called her, knew a thing or two about caring for the people around her. She once wrote that, if we want to serve others, our attitude must be

… conscious renunciation of oneself, in a readiness always to follow the will of God, in a desire to become the fulfiller of God’s design in the world, a tool in His hands, a means and not an end.

This is what Paul’s talking about in Romans. A “conscious renunciation of oneself” means choosing not to pursue my own convenience or pleasure. A desire to become “a means and not an end” is a way of saying that my life—my words, my actions, my plans—my life is aimed at the good of others, rather than at myself.

When you do that, you become “the fulfiller of God’s design in the world.” In other words, you make the world look more like God always intended. Yes, you. Your selfless love makes, even just in small ways, the Kingdom come and God’s will be done on earth.

But that’s only possible when Jesus’s people begin to look at the world with new eyes, no longer asking “what’s most convenient for me?” but asking ourselves “How can I help?”

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A Part of the Solution

Do you know that really inconvenient line in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount about ‘turning the other cheek’? He says:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well… (Matt 5:38-40)

Paul says something similar in Romans chapter 12. He writes:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil… Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
    if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (12:17, 19-21)

Okay. We get it. When someone wrongs us, we aren’t supposed to try and get even or get payback. When we’re attacked, we don’t return fire or seek revenge. Message received.

But… why not? Clearly, that’s what Jesus expects from us, but why turn the other cheek instead of slapping theirs back?

I think that commands like this in scripture aren’t arbitrary. This isn’t just what Jesus expects from his followers, so deal with it. Our Lord actually has a good reason for saying something so seemingly crazy.

With Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this Monday, I thought I'd look back through Where Do We Go from Here, to see if Dr. King might have a word for us this week. And he, in a pretty famous passage, discusses this same topic. Only, he gets at the why: why on earth not slap back?

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it… Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. (64-65)

When you slap back, fire off that stinging retort, or somehow try to give them a taste of their own medicine, you’re only begetting more of the thing you sought to destroy. You’re contributing to the hurt and viciousness. Like Paul said, you’re adding to the evil: repaying more evil for the evil done to you.

But our aim as followers of Jesus is not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. Not to embrace hate, supposedly to drive out hatred, but to drive out hatred with love.

We’ll never heal the problems in our homes, churches, communities, or world by contributing to them. Christians should never be a part of the problem. We’re called to be a part of God’s solution.

Flee!

“Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace... Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.” - 2 Timothy 2:22-24

Two things occur to me as I read these verses from 2 Timothy.

First, he begins with an exhortation to flee the evil desires of youth or "youthful passions" (NRSV). Exactly what youthful desires and passions does he have in mind? At very least, the ones mentioned in the next verses: foolish and stupid arguments, quarrels. Flee these things.

What occurs to me when reading those verses is: We don’t flee this stuff. We actually invite it into our lives, every single day. You'd better cancel your cable subscription and delete your Facebook and Twitter accounts, if you don't want to have anything to do with "foolish and stupid arguments." Even if we're only watching, liking, or sharing those things we agree with, comfortably insulated from any other opinions by cable news biases and social media algorithms that feed us the content we prefer, we're still participating in those arguments. We're allowing one side to inform us and shape our perspectives (both of the topic and of any people who disagree), while we cheer them on in fighting the good fight. As long as we're interacting with partisan political or culture wars content online, we are very much having something to do with foolish and stupid arguments. And while some folks do their best to avoid that sort of content on social media, I imagine most of us join in with relish, running towards those youthful passions, rather than fleeing from them.

But there's something else I notice, while reading in 2 Timothy 2. He rejects, outright, any quarrelling among Christians. If your “faithfulness” leads you to be quarrelsome, it’s not faithfulness at all. Your convictions may be biblical and true, but the actions your convictions have resulted in are in defiance of scripture. If you find yourself getting into a heated argument anytime a certain topic comes up, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and rethink how your convictions need to be expressed and practiced in your life. That may be normal, acceptable behavior in our world today, but "it will not be so among you." (Matthew 20:26) Far from reflecting the normal, acceptable behaviors in our world, followers of Jesus are implored: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Rom 12:2) If we sound just like everyone else, that's a pretty good indicator that our minds have not been renewed.

Of course, it's one thing to read 2 Timothy or read my words and think 'Yeah! It's time to stop all the fighting and quarreling'. It's another thing to take concrete steps to remove quarrelsome voices from your life. After all, one compelling Bible verse usually can't stand up to the tidal wave of media influences that crashes into our brains every day.

So what step do you need to take? What app do you need to open less often—or delete entirely? What show should you probably skip tonight? Who should you mute on your Facebook feed, because their posts always leave you hankering for a fight? 

Flee those who know how to stir up "the evil desires of youth" in you. Instead, find another voice or pastime that encourages you in the pursuit of righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

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How to Wait for God

“But you! Return to your God
        with faithful love and justice,
        and wait continually for your God.” – Hosea 12:6 CEB

Hosea is probably my favorite of the minor prophets in the Old Testament, and when I reread it recently, this verse caught my attention. What does it mean to “return to your God with faithful love and justice, and wait continually for your God”?

Some other translations, like the NIV or the NASB, make the first half of that sentence a little clearer: return to your God, “maintain” love and justice, they tell us. This is a call for God’s people to observe and hold fast to love and justice in their communal life. To me, that is sort of the “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31) dimension of this call to “return to your God.”

Then comes the “love the Lord your God” (Mark 12:30) dimension: “wait continually for your God.”

But what exactly does that look like? How are you supposed to go about ‘waiting for God’?

This is why the verse jumped out at me. When I hear “wait for God,” I’m immediately reminded of something that John Wesley said in his classic sermon, “The Means of Grace.” A means of grace, according to Wesley, is some action ordained by God to be a regular, consistent means of receiving God’s grace in your life. Prayer, for instance, is a means of grace: when we pray, we can be confident that God has made this activity a reliable way of receiving his grace. If you’re searching for the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, go to prayer and you will find it.

What does this have to do with waiting? Wesley says, “all who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in the means which he hath ordained.” If you desire grace, God’s unearned, loving action in your life, then you wait for it by using the means of grace. If you wait for God by praying, by studying scripture, by fasting, by worshipping, by engaging in holy conversations, then your wait is going to pay off. God has ordained these practices as dependable sources of his life-changing grace, so if you actively wait by using them, eventually they will yield the grace you’re after.

When Hosea calls the people to “wait for your God continually,” I don’t think that means sit around and kill time until God shows up. I think ‘wait continually’ is a challenge to wait actively, not just anticipating God’s arrival, but inviting God’s arrival. And that is what the means of grace do. ‘Here I am, God. You said that when we receive communion, you are here. So, meet me here’. By steadily using these spiritual practices, you invite God into your life, ringing the doorbell to heaven that the Lord’s given us. And when you knock, the door will be opened to you. (Matt 7:7)

Today, let’s listen to Hosea (and Wesley): Return to your God. Observe faithful love and justice. Wait continually for your God in the means which he hath ordained.

You can also listen to this week's devotional!