I have an app on my laptop and phone called Ever Accountable. It’s there to monitor everything I do online. It is watching me. I can’t see it, of course, but I know it is there because I installed it.
It’s not perfect. It doesn’t have God-like abilities to know everything. But it’s good enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Here’s why: When I installed it years ago, part of the installation process is a requirement to pick a person whom the app will notify if it saw me looking at websites that are inappropriate.
That is the app’s genius. It involves a friend who knows me, who cares about me, and who will check up on me. When I’m browsing online, I know the app is watching, and will notify my friend, so I am much more motivated to say No to temptation. I’m glad for that.
I also have to admit that I don’t like it. Why do I need accountability? I can tell myself, I don’t need it. Or that I shouldn’t need it.
Some therapists believe that accountability can be hurtful, holding people back, perhaps even creating unhealthy dependency on others. Some spiritual leaders believe accountability is detrimental to spiritual growth. We need to be free in Christ. In other words, when we are so in love with Jesus, we shouldn’t need human accountability.
How do you feel about that? I hear some truth in that. One ancient Christian famously said, “Love God and do what you please.” If you love God, you’ll only do what God loves, so the argument goes. Therefore, if you truly love God, you won’t need accountability.
But how likely is it that we Christians, we disciples of Jesus, will so thoroughly love God that we will always and only do what God loves?
Perhaps accountability, done well, can actually be a good thing. Perhaps accountability is a realistic and helpful approach to human nature, and to what we’ve talked about already the previous two weeks: encouraging one another and meeting together. We need each other, we need community, and part of the beauty of being in community with other people is a willingness to hold one another accountable.
What, then, does the Bible say about accountability? Can you think of a passage of Scripture, a teaching of Jesus in fact, that might support the idea that accountability is damaging to a person’s spiritual life?
Here’s a clue: holding one another accountable usually involves making judgments about the person you’re holding accountable. Jesus taught, “Do not judge”! Does holding people accountable mean we will be disobeying Jesus?
Jesus teaches that famous phrase in Matthew chapters 5-7, near the conclusion of his Sermon on the Mount, a sermon focused on giving us a powerful description of what a person with a Kingdom-minded heart looks like. In chapter 7, verse 1, Jesus teaches, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” As a result we followers of Jesus have just cause to avoid behaviors or attitudes that could be described as judging others. We should not be judgmental people. Jesus is particularly concerned about people who have a judgmental posture toward others, when those judgmental people have plenty of issues of their own. Like our phrase, “Well, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.”
So some have interpreted Jesus as meaning that his followers should never make any judgments against other people, and thus we should not hold people accountable. Is that what Jesus intends here?
We’ll discuss it further in the next post.
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 