Courageous Conversations - Jonathan Voos

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Courageous Conversations

Is your American-ness preventing you from loving your neighbor?

Is your American-ness preventing you from loving your neighbor?

Dear reader,

American small talk is strange. We are very adept at using lots of words to say nothing. If we make it past the obligatory “How are you?”, “I’m fine and you?” part of the conversation, we’ll often prattle on about the weather or the Dallas Mavericks’ brilliant front office decisions until the next surface-level topic arises.

Nothing discussed seems to matter, which brings me to today’s topic: is our lack of conversational intentionality preventing us from living up to God’s call for our lives?

Meaningless small talk isn’t always a bad thing—minute-long church service greeting sessions don’t often lend themselves to heartfelt discussions. And you can’t exactly share the gospel with Julie from HR when she says hi while you’re running off to a meeting. The time, place, and manner of conversations matter, and a quick word of acknowledgment is better than outright ignoring someone. Tact can be good.

But for many of us, “time, place, and manner” is just a convenient excuse to avoid the discomfort of talking about difficult subjects. Even our longer conversations center on immaterial things. American small talk is easy, thoughtless, unlikely to offend anyone, and meshes perfectly with the seemingly cardinal virtue of corporate conversation—cheap, outward “niceness.” We think that as long as we say vaguely nice things to people, we will be safe and things will go well for us.

But our unwillingness to talk about things that matter is poisonous to our society, friends, and families. Technology addictions are ubiquitous, fewer and fewer people have close friends, and loneliness runs rampant in American communities. We might even see our own family members hurtling down dangerous, soul-threatening paths without giving so much as a half-hearted warning. We chronically lack intentionality, courage, and attentiveness. This is not love.

Love is more than cheap, outward niceness.

Nowhere does the Bible say that love is easy. Instead, Paul tells us that love always protects, always perseveres, and rejoices with the truth, and John tells us that loving God means keeping his commands—even in difficult or awkward situations. Accordingly, Christians should follow biblical examples, have meaningful conversations, and regularly reject the comfort of meaningless small talk.

When Jesus and Paul encountered personal and cultural problems in their ministry, they addressed those problems directly and immediately. Jesus and Paul did not tell people like the rich young ruler or the Corinthian church members what they wanted or expected to hear. No, Jesus and Paul told them exactly what they needed to hear out of a deep sense of love.

The standard-bearers of God’s Word in the Old Testament did the same and rarely minced their words. Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel deeply loved Israel—Jeremiah even wrote the Book of Lamentations over the plight of his people. But that didn’t stop the prophets from correctly calling the people of Israel and Judah apostate prostitutes upon whom God’s righteous judgment was coming.1

Perhaps the most stark and militant warning against meaningless prattling comes from God’s call to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 3 and Ezekiel 33. In Chapter 33, God tells Ezekiel:

I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, give them a warning from me. If I say to the wicked, ‘Wicked one, you will surely die,’ but you do not speak out to warn him about his way, that wicked person will die for his iniquity, yet I will hold you responsible for his blood. But if you warn a wicked person to turn from his way and he doesn’t turn from it, he will die for his iniquity, but you will have rescued yourself (emphases added).

Paul took this warning seriously too. In both Acts Chapters 18 and 20, he declares himself innocent of the blood of the people to whom he preached because he “did not avoid declaring . . . the whole plan of God.” So, to say Christians must care to act when their brothers and sisters are straying down the wrong path is an understatement.

We cannot allow comfort, apathy, and fear to prevent us from intervening when a brother is straying from Christ. We cannot fail to warn others of the many stumbling blocks present in our culture. The early Christians weren’t comfortable—many of them daily took up their cross to the point of death. This call has not changed in 2000 years—as Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in The Cost of Discipleship, “discipleship never consists in this or that specific action: it is always a decision, either for or against Jesus Christ. . . . Christ speaks to us exactly as he spoke to them.”

Having meaningful and difficult conversations is uncomfortable. Excuses are easy. But like a bad-tasting medicine, such conversations are necessary if things are to improve. Ultimately, when we avoid difficult conversations, we show that we love our own comfort more than we love our neighbor, friend, or family member. Let that not be us.