The Apostle Paul writes to the church at Corinth “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (II Corinthians 6:14). The text at least ought to raise the question in our minds. Would Paul’s admonition here preclude close, personal friendships with those outside the kingdom? To answer properly we need only to answer this question- is such a friendship being bound together? Is it a partnership? Is it fellowship?
This text, for instance, clearly forbids believers from marrying outside the faith. There is no human relationship more tightly bound than husband and wife. I would suggest in turn that this text does not preclude us from doing ordinary business with unbelievers. I am not bound together with my internet service provider. I am not in partnership with my mechanic. I am not in fellowship with the dairy farmer who provides my family with milk. Where it gets tricky is in between these two extremes. Can a Christian doctor share a practice with a non-Christian? And can we have close personal friendships with those outside the faith?
Though it’s not terribly dramatic, the answer, as usual, lies in wisdom. For 25 years I prayed for a beloved friend who, while he claimed to be a Christian when we met, soon left the faith. Our friendship continued and it continues to this day. We speak on the phone a few times each year, catching up on the news, and remembering our times together in the past. On the one hand, this relationship is “close.” On the other, it is not. I’m delighted to report that he has returned to the faith.
My life, day to day, is not caught up in his. My focus, day to day, is on the lives of my wife, my sons, and the work He has called me to. I have neighbors that are “friends” that are outside the faith, neighbors that I likewise pray for. There is nothing wrong with such friendships, as long as they are loose. But my soul can only commune with those whose souls commune with our Lord. Whatever we might have in common, in terms of the image of God, with unbelievers, we are defined by our faith.
Each Lord’s Day we remember that we are not just one local congregation. We remember that on that day we gather with all the saints around the world, the church militant. We remember that we are all lifted up into the heavenly places, to the New Jerusalem where we meet our Lord, and join together with the souls of just men made perfect (Hebrews 12: 22-24.) We remember that we join together with the church triumphant. We remember that we are one body, because we confess one faith. Our loyalty, our hesed, or covenant love, is for those within the body. We are indeed free to reach out to those outside the kingdom, remembering that such once were we. We are not free, however, to juggle our loyalties.
It has long been my complaint that no matter how big the buzz about the latest business book, the truth is that if the book has anything new to say, it is wrong. If it has anything true to say, it is saying nothing new. Back in the stone age The Peter Principle was one such book. Its startling revelation was this- people tend to be promoted to their level of incompetence. That is, Mr. Jones does job A well, and so is promoted to job B. He does job B well and is promoted to job C. He will keep being promoted until one day he finds himself doing a job poorly. So, business men, be careful not to over-promote.
There was once a far wiser man than Laurence J. Peter, the man who gave us the principle above. His principle was this. When confronted with incompetence of the most egregious kind in Peter’s denial of Him, He said, “But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.” To seek to put this wisdom into management terms, the principle is this- those who fail in a peculiar way are well equipped to encourage others who are tempted to fail in similar ways. We have a special calling to recognize our own sins, even when we see them in others. First, we must repent of our own sins. We are to return to Jesus. Then, we strengthen the brethren. We let them know the temptations we are apt to face, and we show them the path to repentance.
Several years ago the church where I served went through some terribly rough times. God sent those challenges, I believe, at least in part to show me my own pride. He had blessed that body so abundantly, and though I gave Him thanks for those blessings, somewhere deep inside I came to believe that I was a source of those blessings. God painfully reminded me that such was not the case. Though pride continues to assault me, even as Peter’s instability showed itself again even after he denied our Lord, at least I can be more on my guard.
Of late being called in to minister to other churches and pastors. My counsel has, not surprisingly, followed the Peter Principle. That is, what we see time and again is pride. Whether pride makes elder A guilty of the sins elder B accuses him of, or whether elder B makes the accusations because of his own pride, or some combination thereof, pride goeth before destruction. We come face to face with the James Principle- For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing will be there (James 3:16). That’s both confusion, and every evil thing, in case you missed it.
My counsel? Watch out for pride, for envy and self-seeking. If you don’t see it in yourself, you’ve already stepped into confusion and self-delusion. Instead find it, and repent of it, fully. Then, go strengthen the brethren.
Of course I am. That is, if you define a narcissist as someone who thinks too highly of himself, who is blind to many of his own flaws, who is given to self-interest. Exhibit A- this blog piece. I ask the question. I answer the question. The question is about me. Case closed. That said, my goal in writing this isn’t to help you understand me better but to help you understand you better, and Jesus better. The truth is that with a definition as broad as the one I gave above we all are found guilty. I am a narcissist because I am an I, just like you.
If, however, the question is, does my behavior, mindset meet the standard set by the DSM-5, psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for narcissism, then the answer gets rather more complicated. First, to their credit, the creators of the DSM-5 acknowledge that they haven’t arrived at all truth. Which is why they have created 5 manuals already, with more on the way. Psychiatry’s assessments tend to be moving targets. Second, even if the standard never changed, it is less than precise and notoriously difficult to apply to actual people. Third, narcissism isn’t really a thing. It might work as a description of a behavior or mindset but it’s not a virus you catch. Am I then a narcissist in this sense? Of course not. And neither are you. Neither, I suspect, is anyone. It’s not an “is” thing. As soon as it becomes an “is” thing we’re back to our fallen nature, to sin.
Because of this equivocation on the word it has become a potent weapon in the hands of narcissists. Because we are all surrounded by selfish people, everywhere we turn, we can present anyone as a narcissist in the first sense, while hoping to lay the condemnation of the second sense on others all so, wait for it… the one we’re talking to will listen to us talk further about ourselves and feel deeper sympathy for us. Or to put it another way, we accuse others of abusing us with their narcissism to feed our own narcissism.
On the other hand, if instead of slandering someone with the accusation we are accusing someone to their face, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy. I call you a narcissist. If you admit it, I win. I mean, how narcissistic do you have to be to actually admit it? If, however, I accuse and you deny, I win. Isn’t it just like a narcissist to be blind to his narcissism? Heads I win, tails you lose. Which is why we probably ought to expunge the word from our working vocabulary.
The Bible is clear when dealing with the hard realities of our sins. It clearly condemns us all for our propensity for selfishness. It calls on us to die to self, to not think too highly of ourselves, to esteem others above ourselves. Note, however, that it’s us, ourselves, not them, others. Narcissus got stuck looking into the mirror of the pond, utterly entranced by his own image. Let us instead look to the mirror of God’s Word, acknowledge our flaws, repent and be entranced by the beauty of our Redeemer. He died for narcissists like us.
When I grumble that some people aspire to be “more pious than God” my beef isn’t that these folks are adamant in their pursuit of godliness. My beef is that their standards are more narrow than the liberty God has given us. It is one thing to heed God’s command to be modest. It is another thing to suggest that anything more revealing than a burka is an abomination. It is one thing to rightly note that God hates divorce. It is another thing to therefore forbid divorce where God leaves room for it.
Yet another place this propensity pops up is in our insistence that we never give up in seeking to persuade others of biblical truths. Which, of course, misses this biblical truth, that we are commanded by the living God to shake the dust off our feet (Matthew 10:14), to not answer a fool (Proverbs 26:4) and to not cast our pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6). We are not out pious-ing God when we leave the dust on our feet, answer the fool and cast pearls before swine. We are demonstrating our own foolishness.
Of course one may make the mistake of shaking off the dust too early, of prematurely judging someone as a fool or as swine. We can also, however, stubbornly refuse to see the brick wall right in front of our nose. We may as well talk to our own hand, because the wall isn’t hearing us. The democratization of discourse that social media has wrought not only requires of us that we all have a take on everything, but encourages us to defend our take against all challengers and to challenge all takes we disagree with.
There are blessings that come with this wide open agora. One is that someone may just help me. I’ve had takes that were challenged, and challenged well. I’ve actually changed my mind about something because someone, a stranger I didn’t even know, had an argument superior to my own that they made across the interwebs. One sure way to recognize a fool is that the fool despises wise counsel. The counsel you may be seeking to give at any given moment may not be so good. But if the person you are giving it to has never, ever, not even once so much as conceded that he might need to rethink something, chances are, even if your counsel were good, it would still be wasted. Shouting louder won’t help those with their own fingers in their ears hear you. It will just make you look like a shouting fool.
Walking away doesn’t make you intimidated, impious or incapable. It may demonstrate your own wisdom. It may also be the best thing you can do for those whose dust you leave behind. As long as they are arguing, trolling, or have their fingers in their ears, that is, as long as you continue to engage, they won’t have the blessed opportunity to be alone with their thoughts and face the emptiness of their arguments.
It isn’t piety, persistence or passion that keep us talking to brick walls, but a desire to win, a desire to be thought pious, persistent and passionate. It is us with our fingers in our ears as the God of heaven and earth speaks to us.
The serpent, who is more cunning than any of the beasts of the field, is a counterfeiter. It is his wily custom to not merely construct an alternate realm to the realm of Christ, but to craft every piece of that realm as a copy of the real. He is a mimic. Anti-Christ does not merely mean “against Christ” but likewise means “instead of Christ.” He is a false messiah of a false kingdom. And like the true Messiah, he is seeking those who would worship him. As such, he is a false prophet, a false priest, and a false king. For every blessing our Father above bestows upon His children, the Devil below has a faux blessing. And it is his unholy habit to encourage us to confuse the two.
One of the telling measures of our own cultural decline is the steady erosion of a sane understanding of the family. Family, we should remember, is on one level what we call a common blessing. God has not restricted the freedom to marry and to raise up children to His redeemed. He has instead blessed all mankind with that liberty, with that calling. The serpent, however, has countless versions of the false family, a dizzying array of communities held together by base and foolish affections. He entices us to look for love in all the wrong places, to draw circles in the sand that will wash away with the tide.
Some draw their lines through their experience, seeking family in those who shared a common illness, or even a common hobby. They see themselves as united with those who have survived cancer like them, or who raise prize roses, like them. Or as united with those who vote like them. Still others draw lines based on secondary genetic markers. They believe that their family consists of those who share a common genetic makeup. Their loyalties go to a particular skin color. These folks consider my own family to be “race traitors” because God has blessed us with two young men whose ancestors hail from Africa. They may have brown hair, brown eyes, and brown knees, but they are Sprouls, and like the rest of us, they are called to seek first the kingdom of God.
It is sad to see those outside the kingdom looking for identity, looking for belonging in such pointless ways. Sadder still, however, is that the same kinds of ties bind too many of us within the church. We call ourselves Christians, but we are more loyal to our favorite football team (and its fans) than we are to Christ and those He has bought. We call ourselves Christians, but we would rather spend our time with a peer group defined by age, gender, and socio-economic status. We call ourselves Christians, but we define ourselves, and those around us, by just about anything but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Our Father in heaven told us all, that is, all that are His, to pray to Him as our Father in heaven. This is what defines us, as us. We are those who have God as our Father. Our lines of loyalty then are clearly drawn. My kin are not bald fifty-somethings. My kin are not those who can trace their lineage back to the British Isles. My kin are those who have been bought by the blood of the Lamb. They are my brothers and my sisters, even if they root for the wrong football team. My calling is to love them like family, for they are family. They, like me, have been born a second time, born into the family of God. We share a common Father, we share a common mother, the church, and we share a common brother, Jesus our Lord. This is now how our family is described,
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2: 9–10).
May we by His grace live as sojourners and pilgrims, our identity held not here on earth, but with our Father in heaven. May we live as His family.
