I hate confrontation. I think most people also hate confrontation. When I have to confront someone, I can delay and avoid like a champ. Then when I can wait no longer, and the confrontation actually happens, I can say far less than I ought to have said. My emotions and fears take over. I can physically shake. I hate it. But if we are to be people who practice healthy accountability, we need to confront others sometimes. Does the Bible have anything to say about how we can confront others?
In this week’s study of what the Bible says about accountability, we have not read any passages that mention the word “accountability.” But we have read an important principle that undergirds accountability, that of making an evaluation of another person’s spirituality. We learned from Jesus, “by their fruits you will know them.” We are, therefore, to examine the fruit of others’ lives, the produce or products of their lives.
What is flowing from their lives? Is it the good fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. We must evaluate. We must look for those fruits. Do we see them? What do we see? This evaluation is not judgmental. It is simply factual observation. It could be that what we observe is not the Fruit of the Spirit, but produce that is rotten. Sinful. Selfish. Greed. Lack of self-control.
You might think, are we like the Gestapo going around sneakily observing our church family? Doesn’t this sound like some weird Hitler youth kind of thing? No. It is not like that at all. Instead is real life. We are regularly interacting with each other, regularly observing one another. It is normal life. Jesus and Paul are saying, “Don’t ignore it. Don’t act as though bad fruit isn’t happening when you are seeing and experiencing bad fruit. Instead see it. Respond in love.”
That’s accountability. Responding in love to those in our church family who have sinned, who might be struggling with sin, or who might be in danger of sinning. Accountability is making an evaluation about their lives, out of love for them, so that we can lovingly, graciously, point them to Jesus.
Jesus in Matthew 18 talks about this. Verses 15-17,
“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
Notice that there is a three-step accountability process Jesus teaches. What I have experienced over the years is that people ignore Jesus’ process. Instead of following Jesus’ Step 1, where you go to the person, people talk about the person to someone else. It can be very difficult to hold a person accountable, and people will purposefully avoid doing so.
I know the feeling. I hate confrontation. Perhaps you also hate confrontation. It is normal to hate confrontation. Even those people who do not avoid confrontation usually say that they do not like it.
When we give in to fear about confrontation, rather than talk with Person A, who ought to be held accountable, we start divulging our concerns to Persons B, C, and D. In my role as pastor, I’ve had people express their concerns to me about Person A, hoping that I will intervene so they don’t have to. I have sometimes, wrongly, said that I would talk with Person A. That’s wrong of me. In those situations, I should say, “You must first follow Jesus’ step 1, and you go talk to Person A. As Jesus taught, if that doesn’t work, then come talk with me, and together we can follow Jesus’ step 2, and go to Person A.”
But sometimes I say, “Okay, thanks for letting me know. I’ll talk with Person A.” I shouldn’t do that. Why do I? Because I’m giving in to my people pleasing tendency, which is actually a way of avoiding holding someone accountable.
What is really going on when you and I avoid holding Person A accountable, and then you go to Person B and talk with them about Person A? You are (1) avoiding doing what Jesus taught, (2) likely gossiping, and (3) placing Person B in a position where they now should be confronting you. That’s three strikes. Avoid all that by simply doing what Jesus said, lovingly, graciously, talking to Person A. Then, of course, follow the two steps if necessary.
But when you hold someone accountable, do so with gracious love, as Paul writes in Galatians 6:1-5,
“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load.”
What Paul means is that you should not bulldoze people when you confront them. Some people have that bulldozer kind of personality. They might believe they are good at confronting because they are not afraid to do it. They see themselves as speaking their mind. Might take pride in it. Might leave carnage from all their bulldozing. But when the carnage is pointed out to them, they say things like, “The truth hurts. They couldn’t handle the truth. I spoke my mind. I am who I am.”
Paul says, however, that accountability should be done gently and toward restoration. Not everyone is good at that kind of restorative accountability. Don’t assume that you are good at it. Instead pursue gentleness. Pursue restoration and reconciliation. Always remember Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 4:15 to, “speak the truth in love”.
There is reactive accountability and proactive accountability. For the most part, what I’ve been talking about is reactive. A person sins, and we react to them, hoping to restore them. But accountability can also be very very powerfully helpful in a proactive sense. In the next post we’ll talk about proactive accountability.
Photo by Metin Ozer on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 