Breaking the Cycle--September 1, 2020
"When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with proclaiming the word, testifying to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus. When they opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and said to them, 'Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.' Then he left the synagogue and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the official of the synagogue, became a believer in the Lord, together with all his household; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul became believers and were baptized." [Acts 18:5-8]
The old saying is true: you don't have to attend every argument you're invited to.
In fact, sometimes the refusal to sink down to the level of the name-callers and saber-rattlers is the most powerful response to an instigator you can offer. Sometimes the way we refuse to get drawn into a fight turns out to be the way we break the old cycles of hatred, too. And maybe your mature silence in the face childish trolling will turn out to be the thing that persuades someone to listen when you do speak.
I stumbled upon this passage from Acts today unintentionally, as it turns out. I was flipping through my New Testament, and the pages happened to fall here, as I was trying to get further toward the back to one of Paul's letters. But the part where it says that Paul "in protest shook the dust from his clothes" caught my eye, and I had to read more to remind myself of this story that I hadn't read for years. It caught my attention because it is almost word for word the way Jesus had taught his original group of disciples to respond in case a town rejected them when they came as strangers bringing news of the Reign of God. He had told them not to call down fire from the sky (the way they sometimes wanted to do), and not to yell back, or fight, or demand their "rights" while they brandished swords or clubs, but rather, simply to shake the dust of the town off their feet in protest, and then move on. In other words, when someone tried to bait them into hostility or violence or even childish name-calling, they were to refuse to accept those terms of engagement, and to move on. When someone else goes low, the followers of Jesus are to go high. They could register their discontent by shaking off the dust, and then move on, rather than getting drawn into a hateful exchange that would poison their own hearts, too.
I think we sometimes forget that, especially in this sharply polarized time. We forget that when we give into the impulse to lob insults, or resort to untruths, or threaten somebody with violence, in the name of trying to defeat them, we have actually already lost. In the attempt to hurt someone by hurling venomous words or actions at someone else, we end up poisoning ourselves, too. Like Dr. King put it so well, "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." And when we resort to the same childish name-calling or dangerous weapon-waving (the kind that fills our screens all the time these days), I don't think we realize how toxic that becomes for us ourselves, not merely the people we think we are trying to intimidate or insult. We become poisoned. We become part of the problem.
And here in this little scene from an obscure chapter of Acts, we get a glimpse of a real-life alternative. Paul is met with hostility, and instead of digging his heels in and yelling back, or pulling out his sword and insisting he was going to "defend his rights" and fight off anyone who tried to confront him, or some such nonsense, Paul let his walking away be his protest. They were inviting him to a fight, and he didn't have to accept the invitation. They were trying to goad him into giving in to hatred, and he wouldn't do it. He walked away.
The stakes don't have to be so big for us still to practice the same non-violent approach. It doesn't have to be the verge of a riot like happens so often in the book of Acts (and interestingly, the book of Acts records how often a peaceable sermon or speech on the street corner from Paul was framed as a "riot" by his opponents), or like the tense confrontations unfolding in places like Portland and Kenosha in our day. Even just the tiny slights, the hidden jabs, that you face in the course of a day. When you have been trying to be respectful of strangers and wearing a mask in public and someone mutters under their breath that you're part of "that cult," you have the choice of making this a fight, or in continuing to love your neighbor even if they don't get what you are doing or why you are doing it. (That's the beauty of kindness--the other person doesn't have to appreciate it for you still to act with compassion; they don't have the power over you to kill your love.) Or maybe it's the willingness to take a deep breath and pray, "How can I respond like Jesus?" before firing off the snarky comment to someone's social media post. Or maybe it's just that the angry, pot-stirring meme someone else invites you to forward comes to a halt when you see it and you refuse to share it yourself.
You get to voice that you do not agree, but you don't have to let them pull you into a fight like you're Marty McFly in every single Back to the Future movie. You don't have to get goaded into answering their childishness with some of your own. You don't have to dignify their provocations with a response. Paul's approach, shaking the dust off his feet, allows him to make it clear he doesn't agree with them, but he won't let them provoke him into attacking them, and then giving his opponents more ammunition to attack him with. Paul knows they want him to lash out--that will confirm their suspicions that he's just a rabble-rouser and a trouble-maker, and they are looking for reasons to hate Paul, to dismiss him, and to ignore him. Paul just refuses to play their game, and he refuses to be pulled into their kind of a fight.
Look, I get it--these are days when tempers flare and our nerves are running out of patience. We get touchy about masks and school re-openings and who did or didn't come to your event because of coronavirus, and that's not even touching yet the polarized opinions about protests across the country, police actions, protestors and counter-protesters, or the hot mess that is an election season. Feel what you feel, own your convictions, know why you believe them, and, yes, much like the letter we call First Peter says, be ready to give an account for why you believe what you believe. I don't think Paul's example here is meant to silence anybody--but rather to call us to speak without perpetuating the cycle of hatred. Paul says what he needs to say, and then he won't let himself get dragged into a fistfight. He won't let himself become captive to someone else's hatred and bitterness.
Let's face it: the divisions we live with and walk amidst these days are not all heal-able by only sharing puppy dog pictures and rainbows on your social media, and we're not going to be able to persuade folks who disagree with us as long as we each just retreat to our own echo chambers of voices, news sources, and pundits who reinforce the things we already want to believe. There's more to healing our divisions than a single conversation over a cup of coffee can fix. But we can at least resolve not to make things worse. We can commit not to feed the beast, not to perpetuate the cycle, and not to sink to the level of the pettiest and most childish among us. We don't have to accept the terms others engage us with. And even if others won't hold themselves accountable to make their points with facts rather than with fear, or to back up their claims with solid reasons and data, or to listen openly to others who disagree with them, we can still commit to doing those things. We can be the ones who won't get suckered into a fight. We can be the ones who won't agitate a tense situation with saber-rattling. We can be the ones who blow out the matches being tossed so casually around powder kegs. We can be the ones who respond to hatred with love, to threats with intentional silence, and to provocation simply with the dust shaken off of our clothing and sandals.
And maybe in that silence... that distance... that little bit of breathing space... we can all find the tension level ratcheted down a little bit, and can get to a place of listening, of reasoning together, and of empathy. Even those meager milestones may be far down the road, but at least we can be a part of moving in the right direction.
I don't know what kinds of tiny aggressions and little slights are coming your way today--and I'm aware that there are a lot of those that I don't pick up on because they're not aimed at me. But it does seem to me that we empower those who most want to draw us into a bitter (and bigger) fight when we let them provoke us to hatred or threats back at them. And maybe the best way to leave open the possibility of things being put right is to break the cycle of hatred when it turns toward us and we are expected to volley it back with force. Today, the choice may just be between being drawn into that pattern of bitterness on the one hand, and being free to be fully alive as we step back on other.
You don't have to give anybody else the power over you to make you hate, or threaten, or bully. You are free, and empowered, to break the cycle.
Lord God give us the wisdom, the love, and the strength to know when not to engage with the voices that want us us to sink to their level.
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