Why are we harshest with our friends and most forgiving with strangers?
When it is someone we hardly know, the excuses come to mind so quickly. Maybe they were having a bad day, going through something rough. Or maybe they didn’t mean those words to sound so critical, or that rebuke to be so stern. I’m sure they don’t realize how they come across to people. We assume they need room to be themselves. We give them permission to breathe.
But when a friend doesn’t call back, a sister makes a wrong choice, a brother stumbles in front of us: suddenly they have committed the greatest sin of all. They know what they are doing. They are fully informed, completely knowledgeable, and yet persisting in their obnoxious behavior. Even if they admit it, we should remind them of it once more. To be sure they don’t think we have forgotten. To provide incentive for them to never mess up again.
And we push away the people that we are supposed to always love. We say love must be tough, over and over in our minds, allowing for our reactions to be reconciled. But tough love is not retribution. It is not estrangement. The reason “tough love” became a buzz word among Christians was to help the beaten wife, the drug-addicted teenagers, the alcoholic husband, who need people around them to whisper that because they are loved so much, they will be helped. Love them through the withdrawals, through the distorted pain, through the therapy.
As if in some delusional world our disapproval will change their behavior, or withdrawal of our support will bring them to their knees. As if their wrongdoing was against us, instead of Jesus.
But we can’t let people get off easy! That would be too much. More than they deserve. It would be unfair, unjust. It would be grace.
Stop shoving me away. Love me through my imperfections and grotesque flaws, forgive my mistakes and doesn’t punish me with your eyes. I confuse your rejection with my standing before Christ, something that hell itself could never take from me. I am loved by Him, this I know. The Bible, the precious words of Christ, tell me so.
