Honoring the Good

It's not truth-telling if we don't tell the full story

There we sat crammed together in a too-small living room, our eyes shifting uncomfortably from the floor to the ceiling, anything to avoid the awkwardness of looking into each other’s faces. Nine unlikely characters with broken hearts and confused minds, trying to cobble together a family out of ruins.

It was my idea, this tragic gathering. I was grasping for something – anything! – to relieve the tension and introduce some harmony to our home. My sister, Emily, had died and our family of six welcomed her three oldest children in, making us a family of nine.

Welcomed is not the right word. Welcome indicates coziness and warmth and ease. It’s more precise to say we were hobbling out of a wicked crash-landing together, dazed and disbelieving, the nine of us.

My husband and I had spent the previous year brawling, begging, and bargaining with social workers, lawyers, judges, police, and even the FBI, to get custody of these children. I can’t count the sleepless nights, or describe the anguished prayers, or recall the humiliations, or tell of the frustrations, or recount the tears shed that led to this moment in which all nine of us were finally sitting together, safely and (somewhat) soundly.

And you wanna know the damndest thing about this scene? None of us really wanted to be there. My sister’s kids wanted their own mom, not me. They wanted their own house, not mine. And my kids? They wanted their routines, not this new “normal.” They wanted the comfort of their own traditions and inside jokes, without the constant fear of excluding my sister’s kids. My husband wanted to be free of the financial, emotional, and relational strain that was now breaking both the bank and our hearts. And me? I wanted peace and some room to heal from what was the most devastating season of my (already hard) life.

None of this was the way it should be. And the last thing any of us wanted was to be sitting in this cramped space for some forced bonding time.

But the Spirit compelled me to gather for the purpose of “love bombing.” I gave the family the assignment: we would each, in turn, go around and tell one another what we loved and appreciated most about them. No lame or generic compliments would be tolerated. The purpose of this exercise was to wipe the tears from our eyes, and bracket the anger in our hearts, long enough to really see the other. And then to reflect back what we see, like mirrors.

Photo by Ion Fet on Unsplash

No one was excited, but since I was allowing no dissent, we awkwardly -- through stutters, pauses, and stumbles -- began.

And you wanna know the damndest thing about this scene? A real-life miracle began to happen right there in our crammed living room. A spirit of tenderness came upon our bound-up hearts, and we softened to one another. As we called out the good in each person, we began to see the goodness all around. As we mirrored the beauty back and forth, each soul seemed to sit up straighter and shine a little brighter. Our eyes met, our spirits expanded and made room for one another again.

That’s how you see me? We marveled together. Yes, this is what is true about you too.

None of this is right, we admitted. No, but we have each other.

What began as an awkward, almost dreaded, moment was transformed into sacred space. We were on holy ground, broken hearts laid bare before the Burning Bush of a God who saw fit to patch us all up together like some pitiful, glorious blanket that just might be sufficient to cover our shivering souls. Nothing substantial changed about our circumstances. Our troubles and challenges were present with us just as they were when we began.

Nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed all at once. We were experiencing the reality that, though much was still not right (and would never fully be right again), we would be alright because we had each other, and we had this goodness, and this goodness was just as real as all that was wrong in our worlds.

Step two in harnessing storytelling for the purpose of bold organizational change is honoring our past.

The article we’ve been referencing in Harvard Business Review, as well as the three years’ worth of research I put into my doctoral project on storytelling, reveal that honoring our past begins with looking at the good as well as the bad.

Our power resides in recognizing that it all belongs.

We are inundated with messaging about American Christianity’s failings. It seems to be a national pastime to drag all the skeletons out of every closet and cancel all the folks who put the skeletons there, along with anyone who has ever so much as associated with them. People are deconstructing down to the studs, and then burning what’s left.

And I get it. Truth telling is essential to healing. I’m not suggesting we stop pulling what’s been too long shrouded in darkness out into the light of Christ. In fact, my next article will deal with this process extensively. I agree with Paul’s exhortation to “take no part in unfruitful works of darkness; rather expose them” (Eph 5:11).

What I’m saying is this: Christ’s Church is beautiful and worthy. We must return to that truth. We must hold on tight to the goodness, even as we face what’s wrong in the Church.

Why? Because staring too long at what’s evil, dark, broken, and wrong distorts our perspective of reality as much as burying our heads in the sand and pretending all is well. Jesus prayed this over His Church:

“The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent them and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17: 22-23).

We are glory-bearers, you and I. And so are Christian nationalists and militant feminists, Republicans and Democrats, disaffected Gen Z’ers and grumpy Boomers. Jesus didn’t invite us to divide up into groups and designate for ourselves who is wheat-material and who is more like a pesky tare (Matt 13:24-30). Jesus’s prayer for us is that we would access and display divine glory by becoming “completely one.” And we have no hope of becoming an answer to that prayer if we refuse to look at what’s good in the other.

It's not truth-telling if we deny the parts of our story that are good.

So, what’s good?

For starters, we disagree about a lot, but one thing we are solid on is generosity.

We are a beautifully generous organization. Pew Research Center found that among Americans who attend services weekly and pray daily, 45% had done volunteer work during the previous week while, among other Americans, only 27% had volunteered somewhere. Seven out of ten weekly church attenders told Pew they consider “work to help the needy” an essential part of their faith. According to the Philanthropy Roundtable, “philanthropic studies show that people with a religious affiliation give away several times as much every year as other Americans.” And this generosity isn’t just coming out of the blue, with 79% of practicing Christians saying generosity was taught to them in church. That’s no wonder, since there are more than 2,300 verses in the Bible that reference generosity of possessions, not to mention spiritual and relational generosity.

We are also helpers.

Our core Christian tenants revolve around making the world a better place, one person at a time. Studies have proven, again and again, that adhering to the teachings of Christ is strongly associated with pro-social behaviors such as building community, maintaining strong family bonds, helping those in need, and caring about social justice. Interestingly, experimental studies demonstrate that “primed religious concepts (God, divine, holy)” lead to increased honesty, personal sacrifice, decreased revenge, and reduced self-focus. Even those who decry the Church for failing to live up to these standards do so because they understand that helping and caring are, indeed, Christian standards for living.

For every loud, audacious scandal there are faithful Christians doing quiet, holy work in their families, neighborhoods, and the world.

Christians are feeding the hungry, fostering and adopting kids, running soup kitchens, clothing those without homes, taking care of the earth, and protesting injustices. Christians are also forgiving their enemies, blessing those who curse them, cultivating families/homes/churches of love, and bringing hope to the hopeless.

In a world in which hope and trust are scarce, in which suicide and drug addiction are soaring, people are coming into Christianity – yes, even the American Evangelical brand – every single day and experiencing true and lasting transformation.

Marriages are being healed, families are sticking together, and lives are being saved. It’s essential that we bring in this goodness to inform our perspectives, to be a salve to the wounds we’ve inflicted on one another.

“Therefore the evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from without to within. This would be to be overcome by evil. To drink in beauty that is within reach, to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness, to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the Spirit of God in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind – this is always the ultimate answer to the great deception.” – Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart

Photo by Milivoj Kuhar on Unsplash

We capitulate to a great deception and risk being overcome by evil when we choose to see only what’s wrong and damaging and broken about our collective story.

Remember, we are homemaking with God in this world. When we deconstruct down to nothing, we’re left with no shelter.

Like skilled curators remodeling an old home, we must tear down what is damaged while preserving what is priceless. Whatever we do, we must protect our home, together.

Next time we will discuss honoring the truth of our failures but, until then, I leave you with these words from the Apostle Paul:

“Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4:1, 8)

What do you know of the Church that is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise? I invite you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and meditate on this for a while. Let’s love bomb, beautiful Bride of Christ, mirroring back and forth what is most true about us all. In this way, we may become an answer to Jesus’s prayer.