Scenes from an Intervention--July 20, 2022

Scenes from an Intervention--July 20, 2022

"When you are assembled, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord." [ 1 Corinthians 5:4b-5]

Believe it or not, this is an intervention, not an eternal damnation. 

I know the language in this verse and a half sounds very final, hopeless, and cruel [it's hard to hear the phrase, "hand someone over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh" and think otherwise, I'll grant].  But I'm going to ask you to give me the benefit of the doubt for a moment and hear this passage again in the context of the letter we've been working through.  If you get to the end of this reflection and still aren't convinced, message me or leave a comment and we'll go from there.  But for now, let's take another step into this minefield.

When you love someone very much who is also doing something very destructive--whether to to themselves, to others, or both--sometimes you get that person's whole circle of family, friends, and close relationships together and you hold an intervention.  You confront the person, sometimes with prepared statements written in advance, describing the harm they are causing and the importance of this person in your life.  And after everybody in the circle has said the things they need to say, the whole group basically makes an ultimatum to their wayward friend: either the behavior needs to change, or this person will be cut off from everyone else until they get the help they need to make the change.  The person struggling with an addiction needs to get help from rehab.  The one who is wasting the family's money on uncontrollable gambling needs to get help to get back in control and quit.  Whatever the particulars, the idea is that you care enough about this person to confront them with the truth, and with the refusal to enable their destructive behavior anymore.

And then, with that ultimatum made, the choice falls back to the person they have confronted:  will you get help and change the behavior, or will you walk away and refuse?  At that point--and it is heartbreaking and scary to be in that moment of decision--it really can go either way, and all the gathered family and friends cannot be bluffing.  They really have to be prepared to refuse contact, financial support, or whatever else if the person with the destructive behavior will not listen.  If the person decides they cannot bring themselves to part with their demons, the rest of the family and friends have to let them choose to walk out the door with those same demons.  

But even if it comes to that, there is still the hope of change.  It is an even more painful sort of change-producing situation, but there is hope.  If a person walks out of an intervention and refuses to get help, the prospect is that they will sooner or later hit "rock bottom" for real.  Without the help of friends or family to bail them out, without other people enabling their behavior or perpetuating their addiction, the person eventually [this is the thinking at least] gets to a point of desperation where they finally do realize how much they needed the support of everyone else and decides they will seek help.  Sometimes it takes a long while after an intervention has ended in what looked like failure, but still it can happen.  Maybe once you're left alone with your demons, you realize how much your loved ones were right after all.  At least that's the idea.

I can't help but here Paul's words here in similar terms:  he is organizing an intervention from a distance, knowing he can't be there in person to stand in solidarity with the rest of the community that needs to confront destructive behavior, but that he can at least offer his voice through his letter.  And the goal of this intervention is the same as any other--to bring the person who is entangled in that destructive behavior to a place where they must choose either to get help and turn from the old patterns or to walk away with only their demons, but not their friends.  Paul is advising the community in Corinth to make it clear that if the man they are confronting won't see that he needs to change his actions, the community simply makes it clear they cannot continue to enable those old, destructive actions any longer.  His actions will have already broken fellowship with them, but they will not go back to enabling him to continue in them.  It's a move rather like Jesus' direction to his disciples when they go to a town but are not received--the most they can do is to walk away and shake the dust of the town off of their feet in protest, but then they move on.

The hope, of course, is that like in an intervention, that sets the stage for the person who still will not accept the call to get help to really feel what it is like without the support of that community, and that they will then see the need to change their behaviors.  The intervention isn't a final condemnation--it's a last-resort wake-up call to try and get through to someone who hasn't been listening, in the hopes that they will finally be made so uncomfortable by the consequences of their choices that they will seek the help and make the changes they need to make.  When a family confronts someone with a drug addiction, for example, and the person storms out of the intervention insistent they don't want any of their help or advice, the remaining hope is that the person will be forced by unpleasant circumstances to see their need for change.  They may get pulled over for driving while under the influence, or they may get evicted from their apartment and no longer have a family members' couch to crash on.  They may see the risk of their children being placed in protective custody.  They may have a close call in some other way--and the hope is that even those unpleasant situations may finally be what gets through to the person.

That's the idea behind Paul's wording about "handing this man over to Satan."  It's not a final punishment--it's a reminder to the community that at some point they cannot do anything more constructive to assist their friend to make the changes he needs to make.  They can simply draw the line they need to make, and then hope that if their words didn't get through, that the unpleasantness of facing life without their support as a community will get through to them.  And that means that even holding their ground as a community and refusing to keep enabling the person with the destructive behavior is an act of love, and even of hope.  The other thing I think it really important to notice here is that Paul doesn't advice the Christian community to use violence, threats, or intimidation to coerce people to change.  There is only--at most, as a last resort--the willingness of the community to say, "We cannot condone or support your current course of action, and we will not participate in it or enable it.  Until you are willing to get the help needed to get back on track, we will not be able to be in touch."  It is essentially civil disobedience--it's non-violent resistance.  Except instead of a sit-in at a restaurant or a walk across the bridge at Selma, aimed outward at the governing authorities, it's aimed inward at a member of the community.  But notice--nobody is supposed to punch the person or kick them into submission.  Nobody beats up anybody else to make them change.  And nobody threatens to bring this person to the Roman authorities for an imperial flogging or imprisonment.  

What amazes me when I read this passage these days is actually how restrained the actions of the community are.  Paul never takes an approach that we have to round up the "sinners" and throw 'em in jail or beat them up or execute them.  He doesn't see the church as the community that serves up vengeance or punishment.  Paul doesn't see the Christian community doling out judgments--the most we can do is to have and hold good boundaries.  When others won't listen, we don't "force" them to listen or do what we want.  The most we can do is the most a family can do for one of their own who is entangled in a mess of destructive behavior like addiction--they hold an intervention, and if the person still refuses to wake up to the truth, we have to part ways, in the hopes that it is only temporary.  But the action, even when it is neither fun nor easy, always comes from a place of genuine love--love both for the rest of the community which is threatened by one person's destructive actions, but also love for that person and the hope that change can come for them, too.  This kind of intervention-style approach is not to be taken lightly--you don't trot out these extreme, last-resort kinds of measures because someone was late to a meeting or the preacher's sermon was too long [please don't do it over the sermon length]. But it is sometimes the only way the community can get through to another person while still respecting their autonomy to make their own choices--even if they persist for a while longer in making bad choices.

This is one of those tools I hope we don't have to use very often in life.  It is painful all around to be brought to this point.  But it is good to know that, like the ability to hold an intervention for a family member with a drinking problem or a gambling addiction, we do not have to keep enabling destructive behavior, and we do not have to make ourselves the judge, jury, and executioner.  We can simply tell the truths we know to tell, and hope that one way or another, we can all be brought back together in good and healthy ways.

And if I am honest, part of what gives me hope is the assurance that there is a community of people who care enough about me to hold me accountable, too, and who will speak truths I need to hear to my ears, even when it is not easy to do.  That, too, is mercy.

Lord God, give us the courage to care for one another enough to confront when necessary, and enough to listen when others have difficult truths they need to tell us.