Conciliation and discipline
Conciliation and discipline
But how in practice we are to combine love and justice, mercy and severity, and so walk the way of the cross, is often hard to decide and harder still to do. Take ‘conciliation’ or ‘peace-making’ as an example. Christian people are called to be ‘peacemakers’ (Matt. 5:9) and to ‘seek peace and pursue it’ (1 Pet. 3:11). At the same time, it is recognized that peace-making can never be a purely unilateral activity. The instruction to ‘live at peace with everyone’ is qualified by the two conditions ‘if it is possible’ and ‘as far as it depends on you’ (Rom. 12:18). What are we to do, then, when it proves impossible to live at peace with somebody because he or she is unwilling to live at peace with us? The place to begin our answer is with the beatitude already quoted. For there, in pronouncing peacemakers ‘blessed’, Jesus added that ‘they will be called sons (or daughters) of God’.1 He must have meant that peace-making is such a characteristically divine activity, that those who engage in it thereby disclose their identity and demonstrate their authenticity as God’s children.
If our peace-making is to be modelled on our heavenly Father’s, however, we shall conclude at once that it is quite different from appeasement. For the peace which God secures is never cheap peace, but always costly. He is indeed the world’s pre-eminent peacemaker, but when he determined on reconciliation with us, his ‘enemies’, who had rebelled against him, he ‘made peace’ through the blood of Christ’s cross (Col. 1:20). To reconcile himself to us, and us to himself, and Jews, Gentiles and other hostile groups to each other, cost him nothing less than the painful shame of the cross. We have no right to expect, therefore, that we shall be able to engage in conciliation work at no cost to ourselves, whether our involvement in the dispute is as the offending or offended party, or as a third party anxious to help enemies to become friends again.
What form might the cost take? Often it will begin with sustained, painstaking listening to both sides, the distress of witnessing the mutual bitterness and recriminations, the struggle to sympathize with each position, and the effort to understand the misunderstandings which have caused the communication breakdown. Honest listening may uncover unsuspected faults, which will in their turn necessitate their acknowledgment, without resorting to face-saving subterfuges. If we are ourselves to blame, there will be the humiliation of apologizing, the deeper humiliation of making restitution where this is possible, and the deepest humiliation of all, which is to confess that the wounds we have caused will take time to heal and cannot light-heartedly be forgotten. If, on the other hand, the wrong has not been done by us, then we may have to bear the embarrassment of reproving or rebuking the other person, and thereby risk forfeiting his or her friendship. Although the followers of Jesus never have the right to refuse forgiveness, let alone to take revenge, we are not permitted to cheapen forgiveness by offering it prematurely when there has been no repentance. ‘If your brother sins,’ Jesus said, ‘rebuke him’, and only then ‘if he repents, forgive him’ (Luke 17:3).
The incentive to peace-making is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peace-making exhibits the love and justice – and so the pain – of the cross.
Turning from social relationships in general to family life in particular, Christian parents will want their attitude to their children to be marked by the cross. Love is the indispensable atmosphere within which children grow into emotional maturity. Yet this is not the soft, unprincipled love which spoils the children, but the ‘holy love’ which seeks their highest welfare, whatever the cost. Indeed, since the very concept of human fatherhood is derived from the eternal fatherhood of God (Eph. 3:14–15), Christian parents will naturally model their love on his. Consequently, true parental love does not eliminate discipline, since ‘the Lord disciplines those whom he loves’. Indeed, it is when God disciplines us that he is treating us as his sons and daughters. If he did not discipline us, it might show us to be his illegitimate, not his authentic, children (Heb. 12:5–8). Genuine love gets angry too, being hostile to everything in the children which is inimical to their highest good. Justice without mercy is too strict, and mercy without justice too lenient. Besides, children know this instinctively. They have an inborn sense of both. If they have done something which they know is wrong, they also know that they deserve punishment, and they both expect and want to receive it. They also know at once if the punishment is being administered either without love or contrary to justice. The two most poignant cries of a child are ‘Nobody loves me’ and ‘It isn’t fair’. Their sense of love and justice comes from God, who made them in his image, and who revealed himself as holy love at the cross.
The same principle applies to the church family as to the human family. Both kinds of family need discipline, and for the same reason. Yet nowadays church discipline is rare, and where it does take place, it is often administered clumsily. Churches tend to oscillate between the extreme severity which excommunicates members for the most trivial offences and the extreme laxity which never even remonstrates with offenders. Yet the New Testament gives clear instructions about discipline, on the one hand its necessity for the sake of the church’s holiness, and on the other its constructive purpose, namely, if possible, to ‘win over’ and ‘restore’ the offending member. Jesus himself made it abundantly plain that the object of discipline was not to humiliate, let alone to alienate, the person concerned, but rather to reclaim him. He laid down a procedure which would develop by stages. Stage one is a private, one-to-one confrontation with the offender, ‘just between the two of you’, during which, if he listens, he will be won over. If he refuses, stage two is to take several others along in order to establish the rebuke. If he still refuses to listen, the church is to be told, so that he may have a third chance to repent. If he still obstinately refuses to listen, only then is he to be excommunicated (Matt. 18:15–17). Paul’s teaching was similar. A church member ‘caught in a sin’ is to be ‘restored’ in a spirit of gentleness and humility; this would be an example of bearing each other’s burdens and so fulfilling Christ’s law of love (Gal. 6:1–2). Even a ‘handing over to Satan’, by which presumably Paul was referring to the excommunication of a flagrant offender, had a positive purpose, either that he might be ‘taught not to blaspheme’ (1 Tim. 1:20), or at least that ‘his spirit (might be) saved on the day of the Lord’ (1 Cor. 5:5). Thus all disciplinary action was to exhibit the love and justice of the cross.
More perplexing than these examples from the life of individuals, family and church is the administration of justice by the state. Can God’s revelation in the cross be applied to this area too? More particularly, may the state use force, or would this be incompatible with the cross? Of course the cross was itself a conspicuous act of violence by the authorities, involving a gross violation of justice and a brutal execution. Yet it was an equally conspicuous act of non-violence by Jesus, who allowed himself to be unjustly condemned, tortured and executed without resistance, let alone retaliation. Moreover, his behaviour is set forth in the New Testament as the model of ours: ‘if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps’ (1 Pet. 2:20–21). Yet this text provokes many questions. Does the cross commit us to a non-violent acceptance of all violence? Does it invalidate the process of criminal justice and the so-called ‘just war’? Does it prohibit the use of every kind of force, so that it would be incompatible for a Christian to be a soldier, policeman, magistrate or prison officer?