HOW SHOULD WE ACT TOWARDS THOSE WHO ARE SO DIFFERENT TO US?

It’s said the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century turned the world upside down, by allowing the mass production of books and a boom in literacy that followed. Six centuries later, we are experiencing a similar revolution. But this one is digital, not hard copy.

 

It has led to an explosion in free speech, as everyone is able to broadcast their opinions to the whole world, knowing the whole world will pay attention as long as what you say is angry and controversial. Quickly, and quietly, we are forming tribes who are joined not by history or ethnicity, but by the views taken on certain buzz topics. People are congratulated for taking clear and certain positions in issues. As most of the conversation online is conducted in a few short sentences, there is no room for nuance or ambiguity. We view other people through our screens as two dimensional; cardboard cutout figures we can be furious with or poke fun at. The tone of conversation online has been raised to shouting pitch where it is easier to do the shouting than attempt to listen to someone against a wall of noise.

 

And into this deafening mix St Paul speak these words:

 

I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some.

 

To say these lines today is to invite the criticism we are shape-shifting people pleasers with no convictions who will say anything to be accepted by others. But that does not describe St Paul’s temperament. He had big convictions. First he persecuted the Church, and then he became its most fearless preacher. He got into serious disputes, not just with people who opposed the Gospel, but those who believed it. The early Church was divided over whether the new Gentile converts should be circumcised and follow dietary laws; a controversy which nearly split the Church. Paul took sides and won the argument, but he showed a quality that speaks into our divided culture:

 

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews…To those outside the law I became as one outside the law…so that I might win those outside the law.

 

He had an overriding goal: to win people for Christ.

 

St Paul’s observation, that he had become all things to all people, is not a superficial connection. Today we tend to listen to people so we can find something in their conversation that we can use to bring it back to us. We think we’re forming a connection but experts call it something else: conversational narcissism, where the other person is just a springboard for us to use.

 

To become all things to all people is to step into someone’s shoes and walk their journey with them. To listen attentively without anxiously filling in any gaps, so that the other person has time to form their thoughts and tell their story. Not to explain their life to them – or what their life should be – but to show empathy and not to judge. Human lives are messy and we show pastoral care by staying with that messiness and not trying to find an escape route because we are embarrassed or don’t know what to say.

 

Mission is initiated and completed by God. We don’t bring God to people at the start. He is already lovingly involved with every person we meet. Our role is to see Christ in them and, by listening carefully, to help them figure out what that means.

 

St Paul talks of having a foot in each camp of Jews and Gentiles, and being all things to each, but he speaks of a third category specifically:

To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak.

 

Our culture is still unwaveringly in love with strength. No-one can afford to look weak in public life, even though we all feel weak from time to time. We feel we must hide our weaknesses, in case others will think less of us. And we have connected strength in our imagination to other qualities: beauty, wealth, success, health, popularity. So we strive after these, too, in a relentless and unforgiving pursuit made all the harder for taking place online as well, in the full glare of others.

 

We should figure out together who is weak in today’s culture, in our communities, and begin our mission there. Weakness takes many forms. It is not a moral state, it is an experience we all have, but which some have to endure longer than others. Those who spend extended times in a state of weakness are highly vulnerable. Our connection with them cannot be superficial, and this will cost us as we begin to experience their weakness with them. Yet here is God’s promise, earlier in the first letter to the Corinthians:

 

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

 

It’s God’s speciality, to turn our values upside down and reverse our expectations.