A Forgotten Discipline

Something a Facebook friend wrote on his wall yesterday really stuck with me. Because I don’t know if he would want to be quoted, (and I wrote this before I asked him ) I have decided to paraphrase it for you. Basically he said that if he were paid money for every time a follower of Jesus Christ criticized another, he would be a rich man.

It reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately…

The forgotten principal of restraint.

I think it’s been proven by our reputation for spiritual catfights that we are a people who love to get things off our chest. Running our mouth, we are good at. When it comes to saying the first thing that comes to our mind, we do well, too. And when something really messes with our insides, we have no qualms about making sure that at the very least, we let someone besides us know.

We even use God sometimes in our right fighting. One of our primary uses of this is when we reference a Scripture to threaten, accuse or imply things we are angry or irritated about, yet feel we need back up to support. Though, as followers of God, aren’t we supposed to follow His example…practice His behavior?

Consider Isaiah 53: 7…
“He was beaten, He was tortured, but He didn’t say a word.” {msg}

Now if ever there was a time for protesting, this was His moment. If He ever wanted to cite the wrongs against Him, it would have been then. But instead, He practiced the supernatural principle of restraint.

I’m wondering…where has that principal gone?

I’m afraid it’s been replaced with our over-spiritualized view of ourselves. We throw Scripture out when it is convenient for us, often with a peppering of our own opinion and pieces of our own baggage. Sometimes, it’s just more convenient to throw hurtful words at one another than drill down on what is really going on inside our own soul.

How do we justify it? We tell ourselves we should be able to say whatever we want to say. If we feel it, it has to be shared. If we know something we consider news worthy about someone else, we feel suddenly and conveniently spiritual enough to be the one to help others “see the light” about something or someone.

It leaves me thinking about the fact that though we have the freedom to say what we want; it takes much more courage and character to refrain from it.

I’m assuming here, but I think that one of the goals Jesus had in keeping silent was to keep mob-like behavior from further breaking out. Because of His infinite wisdom, I believe that He knew how powerful any word He spoke would be at that moment, and He chose His words specifically and carefully, with thought to the result. He possessed the kind of holiness that innately knew those kinds of things.

Jesus practiced the beautiful principle of restraint.

And yet, we have someone who hurts us and we lash back with holier-than-though vengeance. We experience something we don’t like, and we do and say everything in our power to create a victim in ourselves. We shout from the rooftops when we feel someone is against us, yet we expect nothing less than the gracious benefit of the doubt from others.

We hurt each other, believers, because we do not practice the principal of Godly restraint.

The question then becomes: don’t we need to admonish each other in the Word? Don’t we need to confront one another in love when we know they have done wrong?

Yes, Scripture talks about that. Yes, I think it is right, in certain circumstances. But I’m not delving into that right now because that is not what this post is about.

And the reality is, most of us don’t know how to do that without adding our baggage, feelings or opinions into it. Most of us don’t fall in the category of one who admonishes in the Word. Instead, we are typically more in the category of one who needs to feel better by verbally accosting someone else.

So until we are living holy enough to know what time that is, I highly propose that it would be better to say nothing at all. Working on holiness is our first order of business. When we do, suddenly this issue becomes less complicated.

Bottom line:

Can we? Yes.

Do we want to? Oh, so bad.

Would He? Maybe not.

Let’s recommit to following His example and practicing the powerful principal of restraint. I think we’ve given people courtside seats to our battles long enough.