3 The Problem of Relationships: How to Treat People with Respect
The Problem of Relationships How to Treat People with Respect One missionary recruit was asked how he was getting on. He had only been in his new country for a few months. He said he was getting on fine, and he only had two problems. The first was that he couldn't stand his fellow missionaries, and the second was that he couldn't get along with the national Christians. But otherwise every thing was fine!
Our third problem of Christian leadership is the problem of relationships, or how to treat people with respect. It's hard to say enough to emphasize the importance of relationships. Life on earth consists of relationships. There is usually a complex network of relationships.
Problems of Christian Leadership "None of us lives to himself alone," said the apostle Paul (Romans 14:7). "No man is an island," said a later Christian. There are family and friends, our colleagues, those we serve, the great people who serve us, and they all have claims on us. It is really important that we learn to propagate good relationships.
Respect Based on Worth:
Creation and Redemption My first section is the basis for Christians for good relationships. I want to suggest that the basis for good relationships is respect, and respect is based on worth. However, we have to have a Christian understanding of worth.
Human worth is not measured by a person's profession or income, or by their good looks or their pleasant personality, or by the size of their house or their car, or by their social status.
Human worth is intrinsic.
Here is a basic difference between the Christian mind and the secular mind. Many secular humanists are dedicated to the service of human beings, and sometimes their compassion puts us to shame. However, if you ask them why they want to save human beings, they usually
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cannot answer except to mutter something about the future of the human race. But there is no basis for caring for the imbecile or the handicapped or the senile if evolutionary potential were the criterion. The logical thing to do then would be to kill people like that lest they hinder the progress of evolution. Secular humanists do not usually reach that conclusion, though, because their hearts are better than their heads and their philanthropy is better than their philosophy.
But Christians have a better basis for serving human beings. It is not because of what they may become in millions of years in the future, but because of what they already are: not evolution but creation. Creation is the first origin of human worth, and the second is redemption.
Let's look at a verse that has been very helpful to me: Acts 20:28. It's in the middle of the famous speech of Paul's given to the Ephesian elders at Miletus. "Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood." Notice the reference to the Trinity in that verse, because the basis of pastors' care for their people is a trinitarian basis. They are the shepherds of the
Problems of Christian Leadership church of God. The manuscripts differ; some say
"God," some say "the Lord." But I think the correct one is "the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood" (kjv). Some translations read "with the blood of his own."
That has to be the Son. In any case, it's a reference to the blood itself. So the church of God is purchased with the blood of Christ, but it is the Holy
Spirit who has made them guardians of this church. That is a great help to me as a pastor.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all committed to the welfare of these people, so it is a privilege for me to be involved in their service too. I think we need to keep reminding ourselves who these people are that we are called to serve.
With some hesitation, I would like to share something from my own life. There are times when I've found some people in our church in London to be a great trial and tribulation. After the church service or meeting, I can see them out of the corner of my eye lining up to speak to me. I can tell you, friends, that I am tempted to be rude to them and either to tell them to go away or to run away myself.
Honestly, this verse is the verse that helped me to cope with them. As I speak out loud to
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them, I am also speaking to them silently in my heart. This is what I'm saying to them silently:
"You may not be much according to some of the world's standards, but you are very precious to God. He made you in his own image. Christ loves you and died for you, and it is a privilege for me to serve you because of your worth." I find I can laugh about it, but I am also serious because it changes my attitude. Instead of finding them merely amusing, I find I can love and care for them. Thus the basis of good relationships is human worth.
"In the Name of the Lord . . . as Working for the Lord"
Secondly, I would like to share with you a revolutionary principle in good relationships, and this time I ask you to turn to Colossians 3:17,
23. "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." Notice that both verses begin with the same words,
"whatever you do." Here are principles of universal application, and they are beautifully com-
Problems of Christian Leadership plementary to one another. Verse 17 speaks of doing things in the name of the Lord Jesus, and to do something in his name is to do it as his representative or as his proxy. But verse 23 speaks rather of doing things under the Lord
Jesus, which means to do things as his servant.
According to the first verse, I'm to treat my neighbor as if I were Jesus Christ, but according to the second I'm to treat my neighbor as if he were Jesus Christ. When I behave to somebody in the name of the Lord, I'm to give him the respect and the courtesy which Jesus Christ would give him. But according to the second verse I'm to give him the respect and the courtesy which I would give to Jesus Christ. So in any relationship, Jesus Christ is in both people. I can treat you as if I were Christ, and I can treat you as if you were Christ. Either of them is revolutionary, and the two together are doubly revolutionary. Let's look at them both briefly.
First, to behave toward people in the name of Christ: in this case we represent Jesus. We are his ambassadors on earth, we learn to think about people as he thought about them, and we learn to treat people as he treated them. We honor women as he honored them. We love
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little children as he did. We show compassion to those in need as he did, and we humble ourselves to wash feet as he did. The question in every situation is, "What would Jesus do?"
There's an American book by Charles Sheldon called In His Steps. The story belongs to the late nineteenth century. It was Friday morning, and the pastor was sitting in his study preparing his sermon. His text was 1 Peter 2:21, "Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps." So he was preparing a sermon about following in the steps of Jesus when suddenly there was a ring at the front doorbell. The pastor looked out of the window and there was a tramp, what you call a bum in America, I think, obviously unemployed. Then the front doorbell rang again. When the pastor went down to talk to the man, the tramp told him a long story about his suffering and unemployment. I forget if the pastor gave him some money, but at least he sent him away as soon as he could and went back to preparing his sermon.
Sunday came and the pastor gave a brilliant and eloquent sermon. But just as he finished, to his great dismay, there was a disturbance at the back of the church. Somebody came walking up
Problems of Christian Leadership the center aisle, and to his horror it was this tramp. When the tramp got to the front, he turned around and addressed the congregation.
He said, "I was wondering as I sat there in the gallery if what you call following Jesus is the same thing as what he taught." He went on to tell his story, and he ended, "What do you Christians mean by following the steps of Jesus?" At that point he fainted for lack of food. The pastor went down from the pulpit in amazement and brought him to his own house, but a few days later the man died. You can understand that this experience revolutionized the congregation.
It was the next Sunday that the pastor challenged the people as to how many of them would enter into a covenant with him that they would not do anything without first asking the question, "What would Jesus do?'' The rest of the book is the story of what happened to different people. Part of the book may be a little sentimental, but he makes the point quite strongly that whatever we do, we are to do it in the name of the Lord Jesus as his representative.
Now we come to the opposite principle, which is to do everything as unto the Lord. This is verse 23. It is in the middle of the instructions
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to the slaves. They were to be obedient and hardworking, conscientious and honest. Why?
Because they were to look behind and beyond their earthly masters and they were to see their heavenly Master and to do everything as unto him and not unto people. In serving their heavenly Lord, they would serve their earthly lord all the better. In this second principle the roles are reversed. The respect and honor we should give people are now not those which Christ would give, but those that Christ would get. Isn't this what Jesus meant about the ministry of love to the hungry and thirsty, the sick and the naked, the strangers and the prisoners?
"In as much as you did it unto one of the least of these, you did it to me."
This is the principle that we can apply to every thing we do. It's possible to clean a room as if we were expecting a visit from Jesus Christ. It's possible to cook a meal as if we were Martha and Jesus were going to eat with us. It's possible to serve the student as if he were Christ. It's possible to write a letter as if Christ were going to read it. It's possible to visit a home as if Jesus lived there. Let me give you one or two other quick examples.
Problems of Christian Leadership There was a Methodist leader in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century named Samuel
Chadwick, and he tells us of his conversion as a boy of ten. It was the Sunday school anniversary, and the visiting preacher happened to say something which struck this little boy. He said that if he were a shiner of shoes, he would be the best shiner of shoes in the village, because he would shine them as if Jesus Christ were going to wear them.
That touched that little boy because it was his job at home to clean his father's shoes, and to him it was the most unpleasant job he was given to do.
On Monday morning he began to clean his father's shoes. He began with the rubber boots on the principle that it's best to get the worst over first. But when he'd finished, the preacher's words happened to come to his mind, and he looked at the boots that he'd cleaned. He asked himself whether they would look well on the feet of Jesus Christ. For an answer, he picked them up and cleaned them a second time. He reckons that's the most important thing he ever did in his life. He learned to do everything as unto the Lord.
If I may say so, I think Mother Teresa is a wonderful modern example. I have visited her
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hospital in Calcutta. I wonder if you know what is written on the board where these Christians work. It is the motto of the Sisters of Charity, and they're Mother Teresa's own words: "Let each sister see Jesus Christ in the person of the poor. The more repugnant the work or the person, the greater answer must be her faith and love in ministering to our Lord in this distressing disguise." I love that phrase "in this distressing disguise." And with Mother Teresa this was customary. She once said to a visitor, "I see Christ in every person I touch, because he has said, 'I was hungry, thirsty, naked, sick.' It is as simple as that. Every time I give a piece of bread, I give it to him."
Thus the revolutionary principle I'm talking about is to introduce Christ at both ends of the relationship. On the one hand we serve in the name of Christ as if we were Christ, and on the other we serve for the sake of Christ as if those we serve were Christ and we were serving him.
Respect in Listening Could I finish thirdly with some examples of respect? The first has to do with individuals and the need to listen to people. To shut somebody
Problems of Christian Leadership up, to tell somebody to shut up and refuse to listen to him or her, is to treat him with great disrespect, but to listen to somebody is to express our sense of his worth. There's a lot in the Bible about listening. "The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice"
(Proverbs 12:15), and James 1:19, "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak."
I had a very important experience about fifteen years ago. I was still the rector of All
Souls Church. Those were the years we had built up a pastoral team, and we had every Monday morning for a staff meeting. We read the Scriptures and prayed together, and then we would discuss the work of the church and go through the coming week together. On one occasion we were discussing something of importance. It was a sharp discussion, and in the middle of it one of my colleagues interrupted, and he turned to me and said, "John, you're not listening." He was completely right; I wasn't listening. I had found the discussion a little boring, and I confess that my mind had gone on ahead to something else. That challenge from one of my colleagues was very important in my life, and from that time on I've sought the grace of God to listen. I
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believe that our relationships deteriorate when we don't listen to one another.
Let me give you three points about listening.
First, listening is right in itself because it is respectful. Second, listening is therapeutic. It gives the person who is speaking the opportunity to put their trouble into words, and when you put your problem into words you automatically diminish it. Our problems are at their worst when they lurk in the dark corners of our hearts, but when we bring them out and articulate them and look at them, they immediately become smaller. Therefore listening to somebody who is bringing out their problems is therapeutic to that person.
Third, listening is productive, especially if we are listening to people with whom we disagree.
People who disagree with one another usually avoid one another. They keep apart, and then they write books against one another and lob hand grenades at one another across no man's land. Then a grotesque image of that person develops in my mind, and I can clearly see his image, his horns and hoof and tail. This develops within my mind when he is thousands of miles away. But once we have the courage to
Problems of Christian Leadership meet one another and look one another in the face and listen to one another, we discover to our surprise that he is a human being. And not only a human being but a brother or sister in the Lord, and even reasonable!
I've had a number of examples of this in international consultations. Let me tell you about a consultation on the relationship between evangelism and social action. There has been a fierce debate between those who believe that the mission of their church is only evangelistic and those who believe that evangelism and social action belong together in the mission of the church. Some of you know Arthur Johnston's book called The Battle for World Evangelism, and I can sum up its thesis in about three sentences.
The World Council of Churches began with great evangelistic zeal in 1910 but has gradually lost its evangelistic impetus ever since. This historical analysis is accurate and helpful. The second point is that the Lausanne movement is going in the same direction. It is becoming liberal on the Bible and it is embracing the social gospel. His third point was this: the villain of the piece is a man called Stott.
Arthur Johnston and I are now good friends,
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but he had written part of this book against me.
I then wrote an open letter to Arthur Johnston, which the editor of Christianity Today agreed to publish, so there we are writing against one another. Afterwards, however, I wrote to Art
Johnston and suggested that we could have a consultation about it and meet face to face. He and I could both be on the planning committee, and we would both ensure that our two points of view were adequately represented.
That is what happened when we met in Grand Rapids. When I arrived, I was nearly in despair because a number of synopses had been circulated in advance. The disagreement was very sharp, and some of the papers were rude and even shrill in their criticism. I wondered if we could ever come to any degree of agreement.
For the first three days we made no progress as people had to get their convictions off their chests, but gradually we began to listen to one another. Listen carefully to this: we not only listened to what people were saying but we listened to what was behind what they were saying, what were their real concerns and what was it that they were really anxious to safeguard. Then we found
Problems of Christian Leadership to our surprise that we wanted to safeguard it too.
Once we had really listened to one other, there was hope. The result was a document about the relationship between evangelism and social action. It doesn't express a total agreement, but it expresses a very substantial agreement.
Respect in Decision Making One final thing. I move from listening to decision making. This has to do more with groups than with individuals. Once again the Christian mind and the secular mind are different from each other. We Christians assume too rigidly that we can simply take over secular methods of decision making. In the secular democratic process, decisions are made by simple majority: fifty-one for, fifty against, and the motion is won.
There are many churches and church bodies that make decisions in the same way, but I'm certain that the Holy Spirit is grieved by it. To make decisions by simple majority vote is a sign of no confidence in the Holy Spirit, and a regretful lack of respect for the minority. The Holy Spirit is a spirit of truth and of love, and we, the Christian mind, should surely look for substantial agreement.
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I will finish with one more example, if I may, from my experience. This is going back again fifteen or twenty years. Our church council would go away for a complete day every year.
We would keep for our day conference important matters of debate. This particular year the major project was whether we would use modern language in church services. Would we continue to address God as "thee" and "thou" or permit "you"? I was personally convinced that we needed to move into modern language, but there were a number of older members of the congregation who loved the beauty of the Elizabethan English.
There was a sharp debate, and it was evident that the council was almost equally divided. We could have settled it by vote, but we had decided not to use that method of decision making. "So,"
I said at the end of the day, "let us leave the matter as it is. We will wait a whole year. We will think further about the matter. We will pray about it. If any of you wishes to circulate a memorandum about your convictions, feel free to do so."
Well, the next year arrived. I can remember very well leaving my study before I went to the day conference, and I said to the Lord, "If all you
Problems of Christian Leadership can give me is one evening a month [to use the modern language], I will accept that." We had a further discussion, and I am telling you the truth, the decision was unanimous to have modern English every Sunday evening. And we have never gone back. Again it was a wonderful example for me of the need to listen to one another, to respect one another, to expect the Holy
Spirit to lead us to a common mind, and to give him time in which to do so.