Chapter 8
Put away bad feelings about other people
This has also been translated as “put away all malice.” What is malice? The dictionary defines it as the intention or the desire to do evil to another person. The translation above is from the Amplified Bible and perhaps therefore it is not strong enough.
To feel malice about or towards another person means first of all to feel badly about another person to the extent that we would like bad things to happen to them. We quite literally could not care if that person lived or died. If something bad happened to them we would feel no compassion for them. What might bring us to such a state of mind?
It may be that that person or group of people have done us harm, spoken badly about us, tried to undermine us. Perhaps we have tried to repair the relationship without success. They have persisted in their antipathy towards us. Gradually ill-will has crept into us that has gone beyond mere anger and has settled in us as malice. When we think about the other person, we persist in bad feeling. What has happened here? Let us take Jesus as an example. Some of the religious leaders opposed Jesus. They even got to the stage where they accused him of being an agent of Satan. Eventually they concocted a case against him that was a tissue of lies designed to find him guilty of blasphemy and treason. At the very end of the day they stood without pity at the Cross and mocked him. What did they hear? “Father forgive them because they do not know what they are doing.” What had happened in Jesus? His life and feelings was consistent with his teaching. When asked how often a person should forgive, Jesus indicated that there was no limit to the forgiveness that should be offered by the man and woman of God. He did not harbour anger or grudges. He did not nurse a bad feeling towards his persecutors. Malice can therefore only flourish in a heart where that person has given up on forgiveness or refused to forgive.
We need to remember that here we are dealing with how someone feelings internally about another person. To all appearances they may not be showing how they feel. The effect of malice is destructive and incapacitating. It was cause inner turmoil and a complete lack of peace. The person will not be able to pray meaningfully and their relationship with God will deteriorate to mere words and formality. What is the anti-dote? Let me explain from my own experience. Eilidh, our daughter was abandoned in China when she was only two days old. I always found it difficult to understand how her parents could have done this to her. That feeling of bewilderment led to anger, until when I was standing at her “finding site” [the place where she had been left and abandoned in Hechi City – I am crying even as I write this] I felt such rage I could only despise in my heart what these people had done to my wee girl. I spoke for the first time about my feelings and Linda, my wife, was astonished at my feelings – indeed it caused a real rift between us. Linda had felt nothing but pity and compassion for her Eilidh’s birth parents. While read a book called Total Forgiveness by R. T. Kendall [God bless that man for his open and honest book ministry], I was really challenged to not only forgive Eilidh’s parents but to ask God to bless them. As I did that all of the bad feelings and anger subsided and I began to feel peace – a burden was lifted.
The second form of malice is when it has an outlet with our tongues. To speak in a malicious way is to have a total disregard for the good, reputation or character of the person concerned. It is taking the other person down with the deliberate intent of harming them publicly. To speak from malice is not to speak from haste but from a deliberate and prepared position with intention of hurting or damaging the person who is the object of attack. Why would someone, especially someone who is a Christian, behave in such a manner?
I have seen people behave in this way because they have not got their own way in a church – they are typical of the church bully who thinks that their way of doing things is the only way and heaven help anyone who crosses them! I have seen ministers chased out of their charges as the result of malicious tongues that refused to modify their language or behaviour. What was the minister guilty of? Attempting to make moderate changes to worship in order to attract people into church!! But his or her opponents were people who would be perfectly nice on the surface until someone tried to rob them of their influence and then all hell let loose – sadly often justified by those concerned in the name of God.
But the question is still, why do people behave like this? I can understand people wanting their own way – I often want that myself, and am disappointed when I feel that what I considered a good idea has not been taken on board. Yes, there are times when I even feel angry and slighted – but to go on a malicious campaign against those people who disagreed with me?? There are sadly some people who are so insecure that they feel they must get their own way all the time. Why are they insecure? Most bullies have been bullied. Bullied by a mother, father, sibling, husband, wife, at work – who knows. They then become the bully. But in the small pond of the church when the wrong people are given influence their manner can be quite devastating when they do not get their own way. What they will say about other people can be astonishingly evil. There is an absence of grace and kindness. There is a blatant disregard for the good of the gospel and the unity of the church. They may even be speaking the truth about another person but with no good intent or forgiveness towards that other person.
How do we deal with malice? It takes great humility to recognise it in our lives and relationships – but we must not resist the Spirit when he show this fault to us and we must not resist other people if they have the courage to speak to us about our malice [it does take great courage to confront someone about this because we run the risk of becoming the object of their malice]. We must never allow ourselves to be drawn into a battle with someone who is speaking maliciously about us. It is not a battle we will win, because they are wilfully blind to their fault. To go to war with such a person is futile – you lose, they lose, the church loses and Satan smiles! Better, with a spirit of forgiveness to keep our own counsel, even if it will be perceived by some as weakness.
The third outlet of malice is in the actions that some people might take against us. Jesus bore the brunt, ultimately, of the malice of a few. It was not the Jewish people who had Jesus crucified, but the malicious actions of a few Jews who ultimately grew to hate the Lord. The same thing happens to Christians all over the world today. As they are facing the malice of the State, individuals, other religions – some are in prison and many have lost their lives. Indeed in the 20th Century more Christians lost their lives because of their faith than in all the 1900 years since the advent of Jesus. What lessons do we learn?
This is an extreme example of forgiveness, but consider this scene from a recent courtroom trial in South Africa:
A frail black woman stands slowly to her feet. She is something over seventy years of age. Facing her from across the room are several white security police officers, one of whom, Mr. Van der Broek, has just been tried and found implicated in the murders of both the woman’s son and her husband some years before. It was indeed Mr. Van der Broek, it has now been established, who had come to the woman’s home a number of years back, taken her son, shot him at point-blank range and then burned the young man’s body on a fire while he and his officer partied nearby.
Several years later, Van der Broek and his cohorts had returned to take away her husband as well. For many months she heard nothing of his whereabouts. Then, almost two years after her husband’s disappearance, Van der Broek came back to fetch the woman herself, How vividly she remembers that evening, going down to a place beside a river where she was shown her husband, bound and beaten, but still strong in spirit, lying on a pile of wood. The last words she heard from his lips as the officers poured gasoline over his body and set him aflame were, “Father, forgive them.”
And now the woman stands in the courtroom and listens to the confessions offered by Mr. Van der Broek. A member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission turns to her and asks, “So what do you want? How should justice be done to this man who has so brutally destroyed your family?”
“I want three things,” begins the old woman calmly, but confidently. “I want first to be taken to the place where my husband’s body was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial.”
She pauses, then continues. “My husband and son were my only family. I want, secondly, therefore, for Mr. Van der Broek to become my son. I would like for him to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can pour out on him whatever love I still have remaining within me.”
“And finally,” she says, “I want a third thing. I would like Mr. Van der Broek to know that I offer him forgiveness because Jesus Christ died to forgive. This was also the wish of my husband. And so, I would kindly ask someone to come to my side and lead me across this courtroom so that I can take Mr. Van der Broek in my arms, embrace him and let him know that he is truly forgiven.”
As the courtroom assistants came to lead the elderly woman across the room, Mr. Van der Broek, overwhelmed by what he had just heard faints. And as he does, those in the courtroom, friends, family, neighbours – all victims of decades of oppression and injustice – begin to sing softly, but assuredly, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”
– James Kraybill, in Keep the Faith, Share the Peace, the newsletter of the Mennonite Church Peace and Justice Committee.
How did you feel as you read that? I wept as I read that in church. I know who I would rather be – painful though it must be, the believer must go the way of the Lord and all and any malice put away.
Have I been guilty of malice? I have come close to it, but I have always considered the good reputation of Jesus and His Church more important than me expressing my anger and bitterness. The path of forgiveness, though difficult as it is always coupled with the feeling of self-justification, is always the most blessed and right road – any other path not only destroys other people and the good name of the church, but ourselves.
Get rid of cursing and slander.
“It can be using the name of God to invoke his power against someone, or the use of offensive language in anger at someone. Slander, is to make false or untrue statements knowingly about another person, thus damaging their reputation.”
Again, we ask the question, can Paul really be speaking about this kind of behaviour going on in a church? Why would Paul waste his time if there was no issue here? Let’s break this down because what Paul is speaking about here is not exactly the same as what has gone before.
There are people who feel that they are so correct, that they feel they have the right, in the name of God, to condemn another believer. As we have seen before, the Christian has no legitimate right to condemn anyone. Judgment and condemnation are the business of God alone.
There are times when Christians feel that there is some sin that stands out from among others that deserves special condemnation. This is quite simply not the case. All sin is offensive to God and equally all, and any, sin can be forgiven by God and is accounted for in the Cross.
We ought to be careful between being against the sin and not against the sinner. Jesus always reached out to the sinner to rescue them both from the sin and the consequences of sin. Statements like, “God hates the homosexual”, is simply not true. He hates the sin of homosexuality but he also hates the love of money, gossip etc. That does not mean he hates the person who is rich or the person who gossips. We might hate what someone does and are unable to distinguish what they do from the need of the person to be forgiven. Here is another story of forgiveness:
"The man I ate dinner with tonight killed my brother." The words, spoken by a stylish woman at a PF banquet in Seattle, amazed me. She told how John H. had murdered her brother during a robbery, served 18 years at Walla Walla, then settled into life on a dairy farm, where she had met him in 1983, 20 years after his crime. Compelled by Christ's command to forgive, Ruth Youngsman had gone to her enemy and pronounced forgiveness. Then she had taken him to her father's deathbed, prompting reconciliation. Some wouldn't call this a success story: John didn't dedicate his life to Christ. But at that PF banquet last fall, his voice cracked as he said, "Christians are the only people I know that you can kill their son, and they'll make you a part of their family. I don't know the Man Upstairs, but He sure is hounding me." John's story is unfinished; he hasn't yet accepted Christ. But just as Christ died for us regardless of our actions or acceptance, so Ruth forgave him without qualification. Even more so, she became his friend - Albert H. Quie, President of Prison Fellowship Ministries
The point of this illustration? It would feel very easy and right to stand and make judgmental statements and invoke the name of God to justify how we feel, but there is never a place for us to take the Lord’s name in vain – which is what we do when we invoke his name against someone.
Paul also tells us that we have not to use offensive language at someone. I have heard people use swear words in almost every sentence they speak, yet there is an absence of anger or malice from their tone. It never sounds good when you listen to such people, but there is not an intention to be offensive. However there is a difference when we use “swear” words because we have lost our temper with another person – we are deliberately using offensive language to get at the other person. When this happens, we have lost control.
I remember walking through a large high school and from time to time hearing the high pitched voice of a teacher either berating a class or an individual. My wife is a teacher, and I remember relating to her how disturbing I found the loud use of abusive language by the teachers concerned. To this day what she says sticks with me: “Any teacher who behaves in that way has lost the control of the class.” Linda would be the first person to admit that she does not live perfectly to the principle of control over her temper in her home and in all her relationships, but she is right – when we lose our temper and use abusive and intemperate language, we have lost it, and things can and will be said that will cause damage, and might never be forgotten.
So far we have been looking at what happens when we lose control over our feelings and act without due thought, care and attention. The damage that can be done to our reputation, the good name of Christ and his church is incalculable. What are to do when we are guilty of acting in this way? As soon as we can, we should humbly apologise to the person or persons concerned, without reservation. This is one of the hardest things to do. We may have spoken harshly and without due care and control to someone or some group of people about a legitimate issue of wrongdoing or concern to us – however, it is the manner and inappropriate or intemperate language used that we have to repent of.
Have I acted in this way? Yes of course, and much to my regret, every time I lose my temper. When I was a younger man, I would be too proud to appear to back down, especially when a wrong done to me cause my temper to flare. But I have painfully learned that more heat does not generate more light. I deeply regret those times when I have used the pulpit as a place to voice my angst and “had a go at people” – inevitably the people that the words were directed at would not have recognised their culpability or would have become more resentful. Intemperate language rarely solves anything and creates more problems than it solves.
What about slanderous talk, how is that different from offensive language? With offensive language we may have “lost it” because of a real wrong that was done to us. Slander is when we try to ruin the reputation when we know what we are saying is not true. What form of slander takes place within the context of the church?
There is gossip. Listen to how some people have described both the essence and effect of gossip:
Gossip is the devil's radio – Anon
Gossip is a sin that comes very naturally to a lot of people, especially women. We love to talk about other people, but often we are cutting down those people and not lifting them up. Our Gossip can tear apart even the closest friends. Make an effort to bring up something good about a person every time that you hear a negative comment and try to refrain from making negative comments yourself - Streams of Light
They'll come to you & talk about me, but they'll come to me & talk about
you! – Anon
Great minds discuss ideas
Average minds discuss events
Small minds discuss people - Eleanor Roosevelt
Why is gossip a three-pronged tongue? Because it destroys three
people: the person who says it, the person who listens to it, and the
person about whom it is told – Talmud
Of all the things that have caused me the most grief as a minister I think gossip would come near to or at the top of the list. The problem with gossip is that most people think that it is harmless and certainly not as bad as some of the seemingly greater sins. Why is gossip such a problem?
Information is passed between people about other people most often without checking if there is any truth to what is being said.
Gossip becomes slander [or quite simply is slander] because there is a careless disregard for the person whose reputation is the object of the gossiping tongues. Information is passed around that could, and often does, ruin the reputation of a person.
Gossip in a church is serious because it should be the business of the people of God to protect one another’s reputation.
It has grieved me more than anything else to see how much some people have enjoyed tearing into the reputation of another believer. Perhaps they have not liked the person involved and so there is a perverse enjoyment or pleasure in bringing that person down. Whether the gossip is true is never a consideration because the gossip has their own agenda to fulfil and truth does not enter into the equation.
Why then is slander/gossip so serious? Notice that I am putting the two together because I don’t think there is fundamentally a difference. “It’s only a wee bit of gossip,” does not hold any water with me. Gossip and slander comes from the Father of Lies and not from the Holy Spirit and cannot therefore honour God. Gossip/slander is serious because there is no love in it. Love is of the essence in relationships within the church. Gossip destroys the reputation of a church and makes it less worthy than the world because the church knows better.
Far from treating gossip lightly, the church should call it by its more serious name – slander. When people come to us with a bit of unsubstantiated gossip, we should stop it in its tracks and let the person concerned that we do not want to hear it and we do not want the gossip to continue. Of course it might be subtly dressed up. “Of course it is only out of Christian love that I am coming to you to tell you about…..” What rubbish! As soon as I hear that prefix, I know immediately that it has nothing to do with Christian love – quite the opposite. When someone comes to us with a word about someone else – simply direct them to stop their conversation, and go and take what they have to say about the person, to the person concerned. Above all, no matter how much a person feels insulted by our refusal to entertain slander/gossip, we must bring it to an end for the sake of all concerned but principally for the sake of Christ and his church.
Do I gossip? Not now – I used to, until I realised how many hurtful lies were regularly spoken about me. When I felt the pain I realised how much other people must feel it too. Why did I gossip? Inevitably I was eager to hear negative things about people that I did not like. That was wrong and totally lacking in grace and love and I am ashamed when I think of how I tried to justify my actions. What do I do now? People know there is no point coming to me with concerns/gossip/slander because they will not get a welcome or an audience. That is how it ought to be with all of us at all times.