Bittersweet
I just read a quote from someone that has me thinking.The quote had to do with the
difference between "salt" churches and "honey" ones. I don't know what point he was
trying to make, but this is what I heard: Salt churches are ones that speak truth harshly -
"without compromise". Honey churches always sweet-coat truth so people will swallow it - or worse, just feed them honey and skip the truth altogether.
Thinking about this disturbed me because I'm under constant self-examination about
how I handle people. I used to be a Bible-basher. If it was in the Bible, I would defend
it, preach and "proclaim" it. Which is good. But my heart grew proud in the process. I'll
never forget giving a 3 hour seminar in California. My teaching was stout, clear and
unbending. After, the pastor told someone, "He's so holy, it scares me." Maybe you'd be
complimented but I was terrified. I knew pride came before a fall. Plus, I knew my own
heart. I wasn't as holy as I sounded, especially since the filth of pride and
self-righteousness permeated my heart.
I softened up since then. Sometimes I've wondered if I've gotten too soft. For a while, I
was listening to some pretty "humanistic" voices. I still defended God's Word, just less
loudly. In an effort to understand people's hurts, I got too quiet about truth. I guess that's
a typical Christian pendulum swing. I became a honey Christian. I was afraid to tell
people the truth, even in love, because they had been hurt by Bible-bashers. I put honey
on kernels of truth. Sometimes I skipped the kernels altogether.
I used to be very hard on one young man who later backslid. I softened up in the
meantime. We talked for a few months frequently, and he began to tell me about a sin he
was engaged in he had honey coated into being not-sin. I swallowed, took a deep breath
and told him the truth - gently, in love. He was floored! "I thought you'd changed. Now
it's obvious you haven't." I told him, "My approach changed, but I haven't changed my
stand on God's Word one bit."
We don't talk much anymore.
I felt later I had been a little dishonest. I hid behind being a "good listener" in order to
avoid telling the truth. Why? I wanted to be liked. And, I was so sensitive to hurting
people that I was more concerned with their feelings than with God's.
I'm still midstream in God's dealing with me on this, but here's what I've learned so
far:
1. TRUTH HURTS. As long as there is sin in us, it will hurt to be faced with it. As
someone said, "The truth will set you free, but first it will make you mad." Or miserable.
Or both. But we've got to face facts: Man's nature is to avoid facing himself, or God, or
truth. "Adam, where are you?" "Hiding." "Why?" "I'm naked." God knew that. We run, hide,
justify; why? John said it: Because of fear. Fear carries with it the expectation of
punishment. Oh, we're so much like the little boy in the tree saying, "You can't see me,
my eyes are closed and it's too dark to see anything!"
You know what I'm afraid of? I'm afraid we've gone to bending over backwards to make
people feel O.K., so much that we've buried their wounds, not healed them. Man is NOT
O.K. He's sick, sin-bent and self-destructive. But that DOESN'T mean he's not loved! You
see, when we tell people they are O.K., loved "just the way they are", the next step is for
people to think, "I'm wonderful! I deserve God's love - His best!" How frightening. People
begin to expect from God what all saved sinners should only gratefully - and undeservedly
- receive.
I've come back to the truth that only when man understands the depth of his depravity,
sins and utter helplessness without Jesus can he ever know the tremendous life-giving
gift of undeserved favor and love given at the cross.
The Prodigal Son didn't come back saying, "Well, I was struggling with self-image, I
had to 'find myself'. Yeah, I made some boo-boos but I discovered the good in me and so
I'm back. Sorry if you got hurt." It went instead like this: "Father, I have sinned (personal
responsibility and facing the truth) against heaven and in your sight (he recognized sin is
NEVER what you do to yourself - someone else is always hurt - no man lives, or dies, as
an independent person) and I'm no longer worthy to be your son. (He threw himself at
mercy's feet with no bargaining chips.) Make me as one of your hired servants. (The pain
of sin had humbled him so much that he was willing to accept ANYTHING but rejection!)
The father didn't say, "It's O.K. son, you just needed to find your potential, get some
possibility thinking going. You were O.K.. all along. You didn't really sin, you're not
really unworthy." No. It was understood by both: The son DID sin. He WAS unworthy. The
glory of it, a glory so many of us try to rob people of, is that despite ALL his sins and
unworthiness, he was forgiven completely, no questions asked. He could come home. In
fact, because in the slime pits of sin he faced his sins ("he came to himself"), because he
faced it and didn't hide, he was FULLY RESTORED.
We preachers don't realize the crime we perpetrate by not helping people face
themselves. We rob them of the precious experience of full pardon. Instead of producing
Davids by saying, "Thou art the man", we produce Sauls who run around saying, "Doesn't
anyone feel sorry for me?" I'll be honest - the life-changing moments in my life were
when God showed my own heart, either alone in the prayer closet or through another
when I was too blind to see. (I prefer the closet;) TRUTH HURT ME! But oh, the RELEASE
that came! The RELIEF! Because truth is just the sword that cuts deeply enough to allow
healing oil to be poured in.
2. Telling the truth is not yelling and making people feel guilty.
I've been quite devastated by some very soft-spoken words. "A soft answer breaks the
bone." A loud, haranguing preacher isn't automatically a "prophet of righteousness",
neither is the Anointing to be judged by the decibel of the preaching. Such a preacher
may be getting a secret thrill out of yelling at people - you know, sin is what YOU do that
HE DOESN'T. We've got to be full of love when we tell the truth. "Mercy and truth are met
together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." (Psalms) The two, together.
Never forget, we're to be the salt - not the VINEGAR - of the earth. Moody said, "If we
must peach on hell, we might at least do it with tears in our eyes."
3. You don't have to honey-coat truth. Someone said you can catch more flies with
honey than vinegar. I have to wonder what anyone would want with a church full of flies
anyway. We should always be sensitive to people's needs, but not so much that we slight
God. Always honey coating truth or just pouring on honey to make people feel good about
themselves, we're "healing slightly the hurt of His people." You don't give aspirin alone
to a cancer patient. You don't give a little Band-Aid to the blind and bleeding.
4. There IS honey to be had. But it's found IN THE ROCK. Inside the unbendable truth
of God's Word is the sweetness of grace.
I guess some hard-liners will be thrilled by what I just said. NOTSOFAST! TRUTH
ALONE does not heal. The letter can KILL. Some of you kill with truth. You'd prefer
calling people perverts than making them converts. How wrong you are. Jesus said, you
do all the right things but neglect mercy and justice. The truth needs to search, convict
and break your heart before you EVER point your finger at the next guy.
I hesitate to use the word balance, because I tend to agree that it usually is a code-
word for compromise. But I believe there IS a balance between salt and honey. In Exodus,
Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea and they were in the wilderness 3 days without
water. They came to Marah but couldn't drink the waters because they were bitter. (Marah
means bitter.) Moses cried to the Lord and God showed him a tree, and when the tree was
thrown into the water, it became sweet. (Exodus 15:22-25)
SIN has made the water of life BITTER. Moses didn't say, "Oh, we'll just find sweeter
water." They had to face the BITTER. They either found a way to drink it, or died. We
have to face the bitter fact of sin's destruction in our lives first. But there is a TREE...it is
called CALVARY. That tree shows us truth and the reality of sin's horrible consequences. But when we throw that tree into the bitter waters of our lives...when we come to that place of Calvary and receive His forgiveness, the waters become SWEET!
We need to stop lying to people about the bitter waters of sin. Stop leading them to
"sweeter" waters. Jim Jones killed almost 1,000 people with sweet, sweet Kool-Aid - laced
with poison. Many of man's ways are sweet-tasting but poisoned waters. But when we face
the bitter waters, really facing our lostness and sin, there is a TREE, where Jesus King
tasted and drank the full cup of sin's bitter water. The cross is the only healing, the balm,
the honey. It's only for those who come naked, "Just as I am, without one plea." If you try to
circumvent the cross you bypass the only cure and your honey will become a bowl of vipers.
I want to be a "bittersweet" believer. A salt AND honey Christian. Sometimes someone
DOES need just honey. I don't want to pour on salt when they do. But I don't want to baste
someone in sweet words when they need the sting of truth. I'm committed to finding that
"balance" without compromising God's heart. I'll have to become less fearful of being
disliked, more willing to be cut myself, more sensitive to what is needed most in any
situation, listening for that "word in due season" whether it interferes with my planned
speech or not. I'll have to be more into God's words than man's ideas, to "cease from man
whose breath is in his nostrils" and stay close to God whose breath is in ME. Truth in love - it is one word - separated, they become two counterfeits - truth which is pride and fear in
disguise - or love which is compromise. The salt and honey - truth and grace - the judgment
and the pardon - the water and the tree - to be whole, holy and loved, you must know both. If you know just one, you'll be a proud lawgiver or weak and immoral. God give us grace to
know them both.