Truth and Love: Support to Identify What's Wrong
After moving to our present home, I neglected / procrastinated to
look at the side of a building on our property that backed up to a neighbor’s
fence. As a result, the 12 by 24 feet area became a tall thicket, overrunning
the neighbor’s fence but also damaging the back side of my building. After two
seasons, the elderly neighbor, a retired minister, rang my door bell. Kindly he
informed me of the problem. (Kindly, because he was sensitive to the potential
for people to be offended.) I was horrified and embarrassed by my oversight,
hugely apologized, and worked the next several days to correct the problem.
Then I thanked him for informing me.
Well-intending friends sometimes tell me I need to be more positive, that
I tend to identify problems. I respond that it must be part of the equipping
for ministry God has called me to, also because of my temperament type which
tends to focus on what’s wrong. (The world needs a few people like that, you
know.)
Satan (the demonic powers), our sinful nature, and the world’s culture
call us to compromise – that is, to either condemn (to be negative about) what
is right (supports health) or to approve (to be positive or say nothing about)
what is wrong (destroys health). But "speaking the truth in love"
(Ephesians 4:15) requires us to be positive about what is right and grieve
about what is wrong, and if we are called to it and enabled for it, to
communicate that.
