Because I'm Guilty, Too--August 9, 2022

Because I'm Guilty, Too--August 9, 2022

"But you yourself wrong and defraud--and believers at that." [1 Corinthians 6:8]

It may be one of the hardest things in the world to admit that we're part of the problem ourselves.  Forgiving others when they have wronged us is often difficult, but it does have the advantage of letting us feel like we have the upper hand.  After all, when I forgive someone else, it's the other person who is in the position to acknowledge a wrong and express gratitude for the forgiveness.  But when I see that I, too, am guilty of having harmed others, it's like having the rug yanked out from underneath me, and I no longer get to stand over anybody else.

It's also really easy to do cherry-picking about what counts as doing wrong, and we have a sneaky, self-serving way of targeting others around us for their actions while letting ourselves off the hook.  A verse like this one here from First Corinthians is a case in point--our translation here talks about "defrauding" people, and it can be really easy to tell ourselves that as long as we haven't committed a criminal act of fraud as defined by a legal code, this verse doesn't apply to us.  Even the idea of "wronging" someone could sound like it's got plenty of wiggle room to let us avoid being guilty.  But the idea in Paul's original language here is pretty broad--it's more like, "Any time you don't do right by a neighbor."  The verb that gets translated "to wrong" has the sense of "do injustice to" or "treat someone unjustly" [let me know if you want the details on the inside baseball of that translation].  

All of that is to say that Paul isn't just narrowly calling out the Bernie Madoff pyramid scheme kind of fraud, but all the countless ways we treat one another unjustly.  It doesn't have be a million-dollar scandal, but any time I act with unfair prejudice toward someone else... any time I take advantage of a situation at the expense of someone else... or any time I regard others as "less-than."  These are all part of what it means to "wrong" someone--to "do injustice" toward another person.  And once we're clear that Paul has those kinds of actions and attitudes in mind as well as official criminal cases of fraud, well, then, yeah, I have to admit: I'm part of the problem, too. I am guilty of acting unjustly toward neighbors, strangers, and to be sure, to faces I have never met, but whose lives are bound up with mine a thousand different ways.

Paul's point here isn't just to threaten everybody with hell, as if he's saying, "You're all wrongdoers, so there's no hope for anybody--you'll all be damned forever!" But rather, Paul is going back to this bigger question of how we resolve disputes among one another.  Paul has just been warning his readers against taking one another to court in order to settle their arguments, and he dared them in yesterday's verse to set aside the whole notion of needing to turn someone into an enemy to be defeated for the sake of our petty need for "rightness."  Today he's just continuing that same train of thought:  we had better be really careful about deciding that every issue needs to be a knockdown, drag-out fight, or else someone is going to call us out for the ways we have been unjust and unfair to others, too.  If we are going to let ourselves be consumed by vindictiveness toward others, we need to be ready to face how we have wronged others, treated others unfairly, and caused harm to relationships in our own lives. 

When I can see my own failures honestly and face the ways I have been unjust toward neighbors in my life, two things happen. First, I can make amends I would otherwise never have seen the need for, and second, I will hopefully see the value in being merciful to others in their disputes with me.  When I see my own need for grace, I will be more likely to extend grace to others.  And if I can see how others have allowed me to make amends without a lawsuit or making me their enemy, I'll be more willing to let other relationship be mended the same way when I'm the one who feels I've been wronged. It's funny: when I cast myself as a perfectly righteous Respectable Religious person, it becomes very easy to condemn others or tell myself they are not worthy of mercy [like solving things outside of court].  But when I have to face the ways that I am also guilty of injustice toward others, all of a sudden I'm all in favor of showing grace.  

The other thing that Paul's point will make me see [and come to terms with] is that I am often entangled in patterns of life and systems of society that are bigger than any one individual person, but for which I still bear some responsibility.  When there is a problem in society, it is so easy to cast myself as an innocent bystander and say, "Hey, I'm not involved in this, and so I don't bear any responsibility for setting things right here."  We can sit back and point blame at others for being the "transgressors," the "lawbreakers," or the "unjust ones."  But Paul calls us back to the Scriptural [and more honest] notion that we are all complicit in wrongdoing toward one another.  And he calls us out for being so busy pointing our fingers at others that no one will notice that we, too, are culpable for injustice and responsible for helping to set things right.  Paul reminds us that every time we want to set ourselves apart from the ones we label "the real problem," we are pretending that we aren't also part of the problem ourselves.  And we are.

So before any of us gets to start rattling off our personal lists of troublemakers we want to see condemned, it would be wise--and truthful--for us first to look at ourselves and to ask, "Where am I still entangled in injustice toward others?  What do I need to make right?"  And if we can see that we have been shown mercy in the ways we set things right where we have gone wrong, perhaps we'll be ready to show mercy to the folks on those lists of ours.  Perhaps we'll be able to see where we have been a part of the problems we wanted to pin on "those people" alone, too.

May we have such courage today to be truthful that way.

Lord God, make us brave enough to see where we have wronged other people, and make us honest enough to extend to others the mercy we have needed ourselves as we seek to make things right.