I love you, but...

I love it when Pope Francis speaks, or goes somewhere, because no matter what else, I'm going to:

1. Hear a message of hope and joy that challenges me to be more loving and charitable
2. Have at least a week’s worth of popular media on all sides of the aisle to read, laugh at, criticize etc.

No, the Pope saying we need to not judge doesn’t mean 2000 years of moral teaching is invalid

Of course his latest trip was like that, but times a thousand because he went to the land of hyperbole and spin, the land of the free!  (I’m just teasing, I love the US)  Every presidential hopeful seemed to find some way to be able to say “SEE!  He agrees with me!  I should be president!”  In the aftermath of all of this I read a lot of commentary from Catholics, and I heard two opinions come forth again and again.  One on what the media would assign as the ‘left’ saying that Pope Francis is just sooooo progressive (never mind Pope Benedict XVI laid some key theological foundation and also did a lot of the really cool things that we see Pope Francis doing… Benedict looked like emperor Palpatine so he must be all evil and religious), and on the other, the folks the media would call the ‘right’ lamenting that he’s not firm enough in his condemnation of various cultural sins in the western world.  I think the most extreme thing I read was that the papacy has ‘fully abandoned’ the pro-life movement to the wolves of modern liberalism and was destroying the family.  

The thing I find so fascinating, is that if you look deep enough, both of these seemingly opposing positions come from the teachings of the same guy.

Jesus… the guy is Jesus. I know you were probably thinking Jim Gaffigan or Stephen Colbert

It seems like our religion is forced to split itself into camps.  The people who hear the mercy side of the message, and the ones who answer the call to stamp out sin.  I find folks who tend towards the first camp know the merciful stories like the woman caught in adultery, or Zaccheaus up in the tree, and the folks who tend towards the second camp love the stories like Jesus cleansing the temple.  I actually read an article not long ago about that one that had a title along the lines of ‘5 times Jesus didn't act very Christlike’.  Seriously…  I'm not joking.

Seriously, figs weren't even in season man.

​So then the question is how do we, in our daily lives, navigate these seemingly opposing ways of being, when we’re called to be loving and non-judgemental in a world that endorses all kinds of sin that we’re called to fight against?  I'm not going to pretend my answers to these questions are perfect, but I think if we look at all of our role models together, starting with Jesus, and looking at Popes like Francis and Benedict XVI honestly, we can get a decent idea of how to proceed.  And so with that in mind, please find below my checklist of how to show the love of Christ to someone, and still disagree with sin:

1. Have a relationship with them.  Have you ever been yelled at by a stranger telling you that you or your beliefs are evil, and paused to think ‘hey, that angry stranger might be right, I should re-evaluate my life’?  Me neither.  Jesus formed sincere relationships with sinners, whether it was quickly as with the woman caught in adultery, or over time as with the apostles, tax collectors, and various other sinners he would eat and celebrate with.
   
   
2. Tell the truth.  In Pope Benedict’s encyclical Caritas In Veritate, the opening statement is “Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and all of humanity.”  Love for the people we have relationships with needs to drive us towards courage to be honest with them.  I'm not saying that we form relationships so that we can challenge sin, but when we consider the eternal stakes of this life, love requires us to speak against it.  Think about it this way, even as an adult, do you have parents who will tell you when they think you are making a mistake?  I'm blessed enough to.  I might not agree with them all the time, but I know they love me enough to not want to see me on a path that will have bad consequences.  Be like that.
   
   
3. Don’t be a jerk about #2.  Love is patient, kind, hopeful, charitable, generous… etc.  I've heard so many variations on the theme ‘if they’re shooting at you, you must be doing something right’.  Or to put it in a Gospel context, ‘they didn't crucify Jesus for being a nice guy’.  I get that the truth can be upsetting, and that being wishy washy isn't helping anyone, but the logic doesn't go the other way.  How offended the other person gets isn't a great yardstick for how truthful someone is.  Sure, Jesus offended people.  Sure, he was definitive in his condemnation of certain behaviours, but when I read those stories, he seems to be that way mainly with the sorts of folks who place themselves in between God and others, and use their holiness as a way to lift themselves up.  The Pharisees in short.  He didn't go shouting in the face of Zaccheus, or the Centurion in Capernaum. When they brought the woman caught in adultery to them, who was he kind to and who was he harsh with?  You can be kind and firm at the same time.  He did, after all, tell the woman to sin no more, and Zaccheus promised to pay back everything he had stolen.
   
   
4. After you've done #2, be loving and merciful.  This is the hardest for me.  I've lost friendships over matters where I disagreed with something a friend was doing and mentioned it over and over.  At the same time, one of my best friends in the world is still my friend because he was willing to be merciful when I was doing something that hurt him, even though it took me months to finally quit it.  Jesus commanded his followers to forgive over and over and over (seventy times seven…  so… 490 times?) .  That happens in a series of teachings in Matthew on forgiveness where the slave with no means to repay his master has his debt forgiven, and where He tells us it’s better to enter heaven blind or without a hand, and woe to the one who’s a stumbling block.  The big message there is pretty clear to me.  Be forgiving.  The slave who didn't follow his master’s example didn't do so well in that first parable I mentioned
5. If you're ever unsure of what to do, default to #4.  If we drive a relationship to its breaking point, we no longer have the opportunity to love the other or encourage them to holiness.  For that matter, we also lose the opportunity for them to love us and encourage us to holiness.  We’re all sinners, and God still works through all of us.  One of my favorite passages in the Gospels, because it’s so hopeful and challenging at the same time, is from the Beatitudes in Luke:

​“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon and you will be pardoned.  Give, and it will be given to you.  They will pour into your lap a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.  For by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you in return” (emphasis mine)
- Luke 6: 37-38

I get chills reading that because all at once it demands I act with love and mercy, but still hold a high standard.  I need to measure out my love in the standard of truth and courage because I need others to be truthful and courageous. But, I need to measure out mercy and pardon by the barrelful because over and over again, I've relied on the mercy and pardon of the people I love, and I'm sure as heck gonna need it from God when my judgement comes.

Ryan Fox

---

River guide, Engineer, Youth Minister, and now Teacher.  The path God has given me is anything but straight.  I’ve been blessed with an adventurous life and a wonder wife to share it with.  I spend my days teaching math and physics, and my free time exploring the world’s rivers and mountains.  Sharing the world through the lens of faith with my students is one of the coolest things I can imagine.