Why Do I Find It So Easy to Think the Worst?
The importance of Christian charity was first impressed upon me in university by a friend named James. He was the older brother of a close friend, doing graduate studies in history. We were involved together in an evangelism project on our university campus. I don’t remember the context anymore, but he once gently chided me for thinking the worst of someone. James told me that, as Christians, we should strive to be charitable. Little things said a long time ago sometimes stick with you.
When I was in seminary, one of my professors told a story from a congregation he’d once served in the Netherlands. It was in a small town where everyone watched everyone else. There was a poor widow everyone knew was receiving help from the deacons. One day she was seen around town wearing a brand new coat, one which was obviously far beyond her means. The tongues began wagging about how she was abusing the help she was getting from the church. She was judged harshly in the court of public opinion. As it turned out, the coat had been a generous gift, but of course, a falsehood travels round the world while the truth is still pulling up its pants.
Ed Welch tells a similar story:
I once met with a man who appeared teachable, yet he seemed resistant to counsel. I had asked him to read a chapter in the Bible that I was confident would be very helpful for him. Yet each time we met he confessed, with what I thought was feigned embarrassment, that he had not yet read it. I was about to stop meeting with the man when I thought I would try one more thing – we would read the chapter together. It was then that I discovered that his ‘obstinance’ was actually something else. The man could not read. (Blame It on the Brain, pp. 56-57)
Other examples could be added: the divorced person who lives under a cloud because “it always takes two to tango,” the person falling asleep in church who is adjusting to a new medication, or the newcomer to church who is gossiped about for shopping on Sunday but has never been taught that it’s wrong. Many are the ways to be uncharitable.
It’s easier to be uncharitable than the reverse. But why? In general terms, you could just say that it’s easier to sin than it is to do righteousness. That’s too broad to be helpful. I think we should ask what’s at the root of our lack of charity. If I dig down deep, I have to admit that it’s my pride. I think I know someone’s situation. I don’t have the humility to admit that I’m not omniscient. Moreover, I actually want other people to be bad. It succours my conscience when I know other people are bad. I can even rationalize this by mentally appealing to the Reformed doctrine of pervasive depravity. People are sinful, that person is sinful, therefore I must be uncharitable to them. Grace comes from Christ to me, but it can’t flow onward from me to them.
That’s really the heart of the matter. Christ told the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18 to impress upon us the need for grace to flow on towards others. A servant who owed millions was forgiven by his master, but then refused to forgive the debt of someone who owed him dozens. The point: if we have been shown much grace — and we have — we ought to be gracious. That happens in forgiveness, but also in daily charity.
If we would be consistently “kind to one another, tender-hearted” (Eph. 4:32), we would be charitable always. If we would be thinking of ourselves “with sober judgment” (Rom.12:3), we wouldn’t be jumping to unkind conclusions about others. If we had the love which “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Cor.13:6), we wouldn’t be so inclined to automatically think the worst of someone else.
If you and I would become more charitable Christians, we will need more of the gracious work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. We will have to pray for God to give us hearts that are less judgmental and more inclined to believe the best. We will have to look to Jesus not only for grace to cover our mean ill-will, not only for his charitable obedience to satisfy God’s law, but also for his strength to think, speak, and act kindly.
