By being more vulnerable. In a recent segment of my podcast, Jesus Changes Everything, I was speaking with my beloved wife on burnout among pastors. She had the great insight that not only do pastors often struggle with the burden of not feeling depression but add to that the burden of not being free to express that struggle. The pastor is expected to be something he is not. Though perhaps to a lesser degree, the same is true of all of us. This hardship is so common we even have a clichéd response at the ready when faced with this reality- “The church is the only army that shoots its wounded.”
I get this complaint. I’ve lived this complaint. That said, we won’t get better until we realize it’s an “us” problem, not just a “them” problem. That is, people will be more free to be open and vulnerable when we embrace the freedom we don’t have to be open and vulnerable. When we go to battle we want to break through the enemy lines. We don’t want to get hurt though. In the end, it depends on what we want more. You can avoid the hurt and not break through or break through and get hurt. There is no option where you don’t get hurt and you break through.
So it is in all our relationships. The only way to lower the risk is to take the risk. We ought, of course, to call out those who turn on the wounded. There are plenty in the church who attack us when we are down. I suspect, however, that the even bigger problem is that we want to be thought well of. We want a reputation and a standing that we haven’t earned. We’d rather people think well of us through not knowing the real us than to know the real us and not think well of us. To put it more straightforwardly, there are mean people, and we may well be among them. But there are also cowardly people, and we may be among them. We’ll never know if the mean people are getting better if the cowardly people live in their fears. And don’t forget, it’s not just possible but likely that we each have both of these issues-mean toward others and cowardly with respect to ourselves.
The cure for both problems is the same- the gospel of Jesus Christ. When I see my brothers and sisters, whatever they struggle with, as those for whom my Lord died, I can embrace them without a mean spirit. And when I see myself as beloved of the Father, because of Jesus, despite whatever I struggle with, I have no reason to fear the mean spirit in others. When I am disinterested in pleasing men I will find genuine friends. My greatest Friend, after all, told us that if we lose our lives we will find them. Let us then be of good cheer, and lift one another up. If we sting the hurting, let us repent. If we are stung in our hurt, let us forgive. And let us all together look to Jesus.