It's 5.45am. I've been awake now for 3 hours, after tossing-and-turning the two hours before that. In all, it's been a restless night.
So many things have my mind racing. Not the least of which, how to respond to certain situations -- I'll spare everyone the details -- that initially wanted to release my anger. Now, I'm far more sad.
Responding in anger, I think, is easy. Anger is the emotive response our culture does well. We know how to respond in anger to those who abuse or mistreat us, or those we know. Finding myself emotively angry, even if justifyingly so in others' eyes, isn't necessarily wrong. It's all in what we Christians do with such anger.
Because, let's be honest, anger controls us -- controls me -- in ways we hardly want to admit. We are taught that our anger (along with our happiness) are truer, more trustworthy emotions. I shouldn't deny them, sublimate or control them, because who knows what the long-term effects might be? Better to get that anger out now, act in the culturally-prescribed ways, than to burn and fester.
But what if that anger is tainted, not by something I've done but rather, by something done to me?
Surely I bear a responsibility to act in loving ways.
Even if the loving ways here aren't conciliatory (sometimes relationships are broken in ways I can't heal). Even if the loving ways appear "harsh" by cultural standards.
Because, some relationships are broken in ways that demand the brokenness be named and treated as such. Sometimes, you have to make a clean cut. For your own sake, sure, but also for the sake of the other.
Which brings me to 1 Corinthians 5.
It's a hard text, not to understand, but to do.
In 1 Corinthians 5.1-5, Paul writes of a family so broken, that result is to hand the offender "to Satan". That the disciplinary action is one of Christian love for the other, in this case the offending party. But it's also a matter of loving ourselves; "one bad apple can corrupt the bunch", as the old saying goes. So, rather than perpetuate abusive and sinful relationships, sometimes the reconciliatory thing to do, appears less-than-redemptive, less-than-forgiving. But it's at the heart of loving an other qua another.
Sometimes, you just cut them off. You allow them the freedom to do as they will, even if that freedom means severing relationships.
Because, just as God's love "bears with" our painful abuse and rejection, so our love must seek to live peaceably.
Because, ultimately, to love means to hope. Loving-kindness means the dogged-willingness to stick it out for the good of the other. Even if the sticking-it-out means our walking-away.
Paul's description of God's love in 1 Corinthians 13 is the pattern here.
This is, I think, why Paul forbids legal recourse for Christians later, in 1 Corinthians 6.1-8.
Our human pettiness, Paul suggests, lacks the longer, more loving foresight. It discredits the church's loving witness.
Think Matthew 18.15-20.
But this morning I'm thinking Matthew 5.40: "If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well".
What could that possibly mean in a society driven and controlled by anger -- particularly a litigious society?
I'm a follower of Jesus. And, to be honest, that complicates things. It makes the "simple" responses much less simple. It's why I tossed-and-turned all night. It's why I'm awake long before the sun is up.
There are some responses that, in our society, just aren't so simple, because I follow Jesus.
Anger, in our society, so quickly assumes an adversarial spirit. What does that mean in light of Romans 12.18?
The predacious nature of our culture creates an atmosphere that doesn't create or even promote the sorts of reconciling visions that Paul has in 1 Corinthians 5 (or Jesus even earlier, in Matthew 18).
A Christian who responds in anger -- who runs off to sue -- gets caught up in the bitter, self-righteous and disingenuous mindset that plagues our culture.
This, in turn, blinds us to the hidden blessing of conflict: The opportunity to demonstrate to the world, even if in quiet and unassuming ways, the sorts of godly and loving character that our culture needs to see.
My angry response, I think, minimizes the very "weightier matters of the law" that are at the heart of Jesus' message -- justice, mercy and faithfulness (Matthew 23.23).
Our culture -- and especially our "legal system" -- lacks the wherewithal and the desire to deal with those "weightier matters". Precisely because we don't promote the vision that Paul (and Jesus!) has about reconciliation.
After a lot of prayerful self-examination, I'm wondering if anger is really the appropriate emotion. I'm wondering if it doesn't taint how I treat others.
I'm wondering if Jesus' way is so hard because I'd really rather have my way.
"Deliver this one over to Satan", Paul admonished the Corinthians (1 Cor 5.5). It's the same prescription Jesus gave in Matthew 18.17: "Treat them as [I would] a pagan or tax collector".
And we all know how Jesus treated those folks. In anger? Hardly. Just think Matthew 9.9-13.
No, the idea of severing relationship here isn't to reject them. It's to bring them to their senses. To set them adrift, to deprive them of support, so that they come to their senses. Think Hosea 2.7 or Luke 15.24, 32.
The slow process of personal decline isn't itself the goal. It's the means. Toward what? "That their spirit may be saved" (1 Cor 5.5). The withering that results from being cast out, "handed over to Satan", isn't what I'm after. It grieves me to see any life that doesn't live up to the fullness that God has for us. But I know that, sometimes, I just have to let them go.
The goal here isn't punishment. It isn't to assert my right. It's repentance.
It's a difficult thing to follow Jesus, because such repentance and restoration are the goals. And while I'd rather get my way -- and do it the way our culture deems appropriate, through adversarial means -- I think the reason I've lost so much sleep tonight is, I know I can't.
I'm in the business of second, and third, and ... seven-hundredth chances. Sure, those chances bring with them responsibilities. But those responsibilities have to be on Jesus' terms. Not mine.
It's now 7am. I've been writing and staring at the screen for over an hour. I think the last paragraph finally answered my question.
So much for easy answers. But thank God, ethics aren't about answers, but vocation -- living out who I'm called to be in Jesus.