“Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”
It's amazing how much information you can find out nowadays. You hear about some allegations being leveled against someone as unknown as a pastor (let's face it: even some of the most well-known pastors are only well-known because most Christians live in a bubble), and a couple of Google searches and Facebook posts later you've learned all that you need to know. Or at least, all that you can know by looking on the internet. Suddenly your mind is filled with information that you almost certainly don't need, and you are left to your own devices to sort it all out.
Let's call them "non-relational reflections". Or something of the sort. It's the type of thing you think about when you don't really know a person and all you have in front of you is data. At least, you think it's data. It may be gossip. Or it may be true. It's hard to say.
It got me thinking a little bit about responsibility, and what I'm supposed to do with all this "truth" I discovered online. And then it got me thinking about my own story; the one that I'm living right now. The one that I actually am responsible for.
I've been reading The Horse and His Boy with my boys, Michael & Anthony. Does that make me the horse? If it does, then I am a wild stallion. Or perhaps one of those Budweiser horses. But I digress.
As Aslan explains to the boy, Shasta, why things happened for him the way that they have, Shasta eventually begins asking questions about his traveling companion, Aravis. What was the meaning of her story? Aslan's response stuck with me: "Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own." Later, Aravis receives the same reprimand from the Lion when she asks about Shasta.
It stuck with me because of the regularity with which I can and do find out about what is going on in someone else's life; someone else's story. It starts with curiosity. Then I form opinions. Eventually I act as if what is happening in someone else's story–a person I don't know and have never met–is somehow my responsibility. Either my responsibility to call out their bad behavior; my responsibility to reprimand them or warn others about them; or my responsibility to simply know. Then it's my responsibility to let everyone else know what I think. Judging by all the information and opinions I found on the internet, I'm not the only one who has a problem.
The trouble is that it can lead to at least two really dangerous paths. The first path is that we start wishing that we had someone else's story. The second path is when we start criticizing someone for how they are living their story.
The first path–wishing we had someone else's story–is human nature. We already know that we're prone to coveting what someone else has. More often than I care to admit I find myself wanting what someone else has; I wish that what happened to them would happen to me: they get a new house, new car, new clothes, their church grows faster than the one I'm at, etc.
The second path, however, is much more subtle: criticizing others for how they are living their story. The reason it's more subtle–and I think, more dangerous–is because we can couch it in a whole lot of nice sounding things like "brotherly concern", or treat it as if we're just trying to "protect the sheep from wolves", or "hold them accountable!" or whatever other spiritual jargon we want to throw at it.
No one says, "for your own good and the glory of God I think you should give me your house." There's no way to be spiritual about your covetousness. But it's easy to be spiritual about your criticism.
Here's the thing. Well, the two things. First of all, we're all going to have different stories and Jesus makes pretty clear that when he's talking to Peter at the end of the book of John that it's a really good idea for us to worry about the story God has for us and not the one he has for someone else. And secondly, and I think, as a result of the first, we need to be really careful about these "non-relational reflections" into or about other people's lives.
Yes, we should hold people accountable–but it's supposed to happen in relationships. The proximity of our relationship has a major impact on the responsibility of our relationship. If you don't have a relationship with someone, no matter how much information you can Google about them, no matter how many blogs you read about them, it's almost always going to be best to keep the criticism to yourself. Better yet, stop reading it altogether. What good does it do? If you have no responsibility to correct this person in the midst of their story, and you aren't going to do anything with the information but sit there thinking about how screwed up that persons story is or how stupid they are, then just leave it be. Most of the time, the people we are quick to criticize are people that we don't know and therefore have no responsibility for.
So I'm left with the data in front of me and I have to sort it out and then I conclude with this: it doesn't matter. It's almost impossible to figure out what's true and what's not true, and at the end of the day, it's almost never even information that I need. I'm responsible for me, my family, how I live my life, the choices that I make, and how I lead the people that God has told me to lead. I hope to live my story well, and I hope you live yours well.
I guess at the end of the day I hope that the pastors I read about on the internet live their story well, too. I'm just going to stop worrying about it so much. I have enough responsibility already.
“When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!””