Sometimes I Let Things Get To Me

Posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm

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We have all seen someone snap at something that just seems so small and irrational that the reaction seems completely out of touch with what just happened.  The person in line who finally looses it and just starts yelling at both the checker and at everyone else in line because the line is too slow; the driver, stuck in traffic who lays on the horn as if that is going to get the traffic moving (like there are people at the front of the traffic jam just sitting there daydreaming and when they hear the horn, that gets them going); you can fill in your own blank here.  What happens in those situations?  I have a theory.

My theory is that problems build up like burdens on a proverbial camel.  They come a little at a time, more and more until one day, the unlucky person who happens to be in the one who finally pushes the one burden, problem, or issue that just sends someone over the edge.  Maybe you’ve seen that person.  Maybe you’ve even been that person.  I have a tendency to let small things bother me, but not to tell anyone.  As I teach at Knox Seminary sometimes I let some small student issue bother me much more than it should.  At the church sometimes the slightest complaint can send me into a tailspin.

But I should be better.  I should be

In the church this is not a good thing.  We should, in obedience to Matthew 18, be willing to speak to a brother or sister who has offended us or if we are not willing to speak to them, then to let it go.  If we are not willing to speak to a person whom we think has wronged us, how can the matter ever be settled?  This is a difficult issue and I am in no way saying that I have always or even nearly always done the right thing, but I can say that I believe that I know what the right thing is.  Relationships are often damaged forever by the failure of individuals to come to one another and speak.  To say to a person “I feel that you have hurt me in doing this . . . “ is to force them to come to grips with the fact that wronging another human being is a sin.

These things are hard, though.  Sometimes the person feels terribly offended and some sort of war starts.  Casualties arise that no-one could have seen and battles rage on for years over things that should have been settled in seconds if not minutes.  It seems that we who are members of Christ’s church should be better than that.  It seems like we ought to conduct ourselves in a way that is different from those who don’t know the grace of the saviour.

I have often thought that those who claim to hold to the doctrines of Grace (Calvinism) are sometimes the most ungracious of people.  How can we understand grace so well in our minds and yet not have one whit of an idea of how it works out in our lives?  Put more starkly how can we speak with such eloquence about grace and live with such evil in our hearts?  Shouldn’t the church be making more of a difference?

I think that it does make a difference.  After all who knows how mean I would be if I were not a Christian?  But I think that we all need to examine our lives and ask ourselves about our own grace.  Are we willing to be gracious to others and if not what does Matthew, at the end of his 18th chapter, have to say to us?  What do we say to ourselves when we say the Lord’s prayer (forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtor’s).  I ought to be more gracious.  I ought not to let things get to me.  I ought to show the gentleness of Christ more in the way I act.  Perhaps that is what is wrong with our Christianity.  It is not that it is not working, it is that we are not changed.

Just a thought,

DrSamLam