“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
(Matthew 18:15-17)
This is probably the most straightforward text in the entirety of the Scriptures about interpersonal conflicts and how believers are to handle them. Yet it also portrays a system that I’ve never rarely seen followed, as gossiping and backbiting seems to take the form many Christians resort to instead, whenever they have a problem with another believer or group.
The principles laid out in this particular Scripture are for when a serious offense has occurred, where witnesses are required. But based on the totality of Scriptures, we already know the principle here is that you speak to someone, not everybody else about someone.
Consider Matthew 5:23:24;
So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
Jesus was teaching these things to Jewish listeners, who were still going to temple, and leaving gifts on the altar. While we no longer do that as believers under the new covenant, the principle we glean from on reconciling with our brothers and sisters in Christ still applies.
Below I’ll share something that happened to me to help me be more careful not to fall into the trap of skipping the first step, talking to the original offender.
But first…
When “Getting Someone’s Advice” Borders On Gossipping
When people tell me a problem they have with someone, I’ve been known to say “have you talked to them about it before coming to me?” If they say no, then I say something like “well, then I’m giving you 48 hours to do so or else I’ll tell them myself that you’ve come to me about them behind their back.”
I’m hardly ever made the recipient of anybody’s gossip anymore as a result. Go figure.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as guilty as anybody for falling to this trap and doing the gossiping, and have had it bite me in the butt when people I’ve spoken about have found out. In recent months I’ve had people point out when I was slipping down that slope. But in the last several years of my life I’ve become a lot more careful at trying to avoid talking about any of my problems with other people TO other people — you know, different ‘other’ people who are not involved or don’t need to be involved. At least not until or unless I’ve spoken to the original person first. If that’s not possible, then I resort to other communication like email to the offending person
Nobody likes finding out everybody’s mad at them about something, but nobody has the guts (or character) to tell you gently to your face, as per the instructions in Matthew 18:15-17.
Why This Matters To Me a Great Deal
When I was 20 years old in Bible school in Pensacola, Florida, I experienced something like this on the receiving end that rattled my cage enough that I learned to try not doing the same to anybody else.
During the Christmas break I’d stayed in town while many of my classmates went home. I was talking over instant messenger with a friend who was offended with me regarding something in which I felt at the time was not a concern to him; that I shouldn’t have received financial aid from the school for my next semester’s tuition because “it’s for people who need it”. I felt I needed it, applied for it, and the powers that be decided I could use some, and paid 3/4 of my tuition for me that next semester.
This brother, for whatever reasons, felt I shouldn’t have received it because in his mind I wasn’t entitled to any.
That was what we were talking about when the conversation changed direction on me.
The Tables Were Turned on Me
After reading all of his answers (this was over the ancient MSN Instant Messenger) I politely tried following Matthew 18, and telling him one on one I thought he was being out of line and fairly unreasonable, and that he should back off and not worry about this particular thing.
It had been something I felt like I should say to him for a number of weeks already, and now this moment seemed to me to be a moment that made it more obvious to do so. I approached it by trying to articulate he had an immature tendency to try running other peoples’ lives (well, specifically mine) and this was a moment where I felt he was doing that.
To my horror at the moment he turned the tables on me, and rebuked ME in return, telling me basically “everybody” thinks I’m a sarcastic jerk and I’ve made lots of people cry and go to him for advice on how to deal with me, since he was a long time friend who knew me better than everybody.
I was stunned and hurt at the same time because, now, I was thinking about myself and lost track of what I was trying to bring up in that conversation with him.
I took his accusation seriously and now felt terrible that I’d allegedly “offended so many people”. I thought about it for days and perhaps even weeks after that.
Now, don’t get me wrong, his concerns were based in truth — I still have a tendency to rub people the wrong way. I can be blunt, sarcastic, sassy, and so on, and I often find myself getting humble and apologizing to people.
Often.
If you have never met me in real life and only know me from writing, understand that writing has more of a filter since I can carefully process what I’m trying to say. I’ve been repeatedly told in person, I have no such filter and am unnecessarily blunt for most people’s tastes.
So, consequently, this would be even more true if you go back ten years in time to when I was less mature than I am now!
During that conversation I had asked this brother to give me specific examples, and he provided a few, naming names and saying what I had done in various situations. I asked him to give me examples because part of me felt he was bluffing and I wanted to catch him on it. But if this were all true, I planned to humble myself and go apologize to people I owed apologies to.
As a result, for the first month of my second semester I became much more reclusive and introverted and had very little social interaction with anybody, especially at school. Remember, “nobody” liked me, after all and I was convinced this was true.
It bugged me so deep I even contemplated dropping out of school and going back home to Canada, as an embarrassment or failure, or both. But I reached a breaking point when I realized this whole matter was quite a ridiculous reason to drop out of school and go home. I was there for a reason, far away from home and when that realization overpowered how much I was hurt by the thoughts of what I needed to do to change, I took action.
The Imaginary Army of Wounded Soldiers
Finally, after I’d been stewing on this for almost or at least a month, I couldn’t take it anymore and the next time I saw any of the individuals my friend told me I’d offended, I approached them individually and explained why I was apologizing, and apologized. The first person looked at me funny, and then asked me why I thought he had gotten offended, and he genuinedly seemed to not remember the incident I was apologizing for.
Then he asked me who told him that.
I told him “brother so and so”, and this friend said basically said “don’t listen to him, he’s full of crap and I’ve had to deal with stuff with him myself.” I may be paraphrasing, but the takeaway was for me not to worry about it.
That hit me like a ton of bricks, both because of the relief it brought, but the realization I’d been hanging on to an offense for the last month I probably didn’t need to.
This gave me the courage to approach the next person on my list, and virtually the same thing happened.
And then I approached person number three, with the same pattern and results:
“Steve, what are you talking about? I don’t remember that.”
Once I had realized I had been letting something eat my lunch for more than a month for nothing, I approached the initial brother and brought the conversation up and told him I had spoken to each of those people. I’m not sure whether he was embarrassed that I approached him coming out of the bathroom at school, or because I had bothered to go speak to everybody he had named. Either way, he responded with “we’ll talk about this later.“
My response was “no, we won’t.“
After that I rather harshly suggested not to ever bring up situations or people that had not actually been offended or angry with me unless they actually were. I probably was frustrated enough that I didn’t share my thoughts with him in a very spiritual way. But I felt liberated and learned a painful lesson. At that point forward I decided as best as I can to try never to do to someone else what I had put myself through with a false accusation. I’m sure I’ve fallen short, and the slippery slope into gossip is admittedly a steep one, and it’s all too easy to defend ourselves to others instead of speaking to the person we have a problem with.
But life is so much easier and enjoyable when we don’t do stuff like that, or let it rub off our shoulders if someone plays the “everybody else feels the way I do” card on us.
Questions To Ponder
Have you ever found yourself using the “everybody else feels the way I do” line when trying to rebuke someone or out of defensiveness in some situation? Does it work or add credence to your accusation?
Has anybody ever done that to you? How did it make you feel?
Check out an episode of Fire On Your Head I did a few months later after writing this with Dave Edwards.
