What Went Wrong?

I had lunch with an old friend who was leaving Reuters after 3 years here, and we started talking abt being unequally yoked.

He started to talk about how it wasn’t a good idea to be unequally yoked, and I pretty much knew all the reasons why. And its not like I disagreed with him… but I guess it made me think abt my take on the issue, and why its different from his.

Most people come from the angle of what’s right and what’s wrong about dating someone who isn’t Christian. And there’s nothing wrong in doing that. I agree that we should always measure ourselves against a benchmark of where to draw the lines, so to not rationalize away everything we do and end up being blameless in our own eyes. Sure – if you get attached to a non-christian, you need to know that when people say you are wrong, they have a point.

You’re not allowed to feel as though you’ve done nothing wrong.

And I think that’s where my friend was coming from.

On the other hand, I was a lot more concerned abt the scenario that led up to the Christian finding companionship outside of the church. Discounting the peripheral Christians who need to be worried abt a lot more than holding the hands of a non-Christian, I wonder abt the lay leaders in the church… people who display a greater maturity in church… and what could have driven them to find understanding outside of church.

And I’d be more concerned abt that instead.

If I hear that a prominent youth leader in my church had hooked up with a NC, I wouldn’t go on a run of recriminations, and embark on the process of ‘counselling’ that person, hoping that he’d repent of his ways. At least, it won’t be first thing I do.

Because I understand.

I understand how hard it is to find someone within the church. As a leader in the church, your r/s would be under the microscope amongst those you’re around… Wanting to retain your rights to privacy gets you branded as not being accountable. Make a mistake and you have the full force and effect of the church community’s judgment taking place behind your back.

There’s so much pressure on the couple to “do what’s right”, that there’s no room for them, to learn from their mistakes. The first mistake is fatal. And like all newbies who are fresh in this game of love, the mistakes they make are usually the most prominent and common ones (read: physical intimacy, exclusivity, imbalance of priorities…). And the price to pay for making the most common mistakes of all is the overwhelming response that is communicated as “concern”, but is experienced as judgment and maybe even condemnation.

Its funny how the church community never turns on itself, to ask where they themselves went wrong. As a body that is supposed to be keeping each other in check, and keeping each other accountable, how have we “loved each other as we love ourselves”? When a member of the body fails, when was the last time we looked at how we may have failed him or her? Instead of only seeing where he or she went wrong, mebbe its time to look in the mirror and ask God how we have been deficient in treating each other as part of ourselves.

I used to wonder why people who are non-Christians keep saying that we Christians like to judge people. I used to wonder abt the ‘misunderstanding’. Now I see that if we judge our own family so harshly, how much more we must be intolerant towards those outside the family.

I think of the verse that says “he who is forgiven little forgives little…”, and I find myself reminded that the next time I have an automatic reaction of judging how someone was right or wrong, I really need to remember the grace and mercy accorded to me, and make every effort to make the offending party feel more accepted and forgiven than condemned.