The Walk
bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Colossians 3:13 NASB
Bearing– Paul says what we all want to hear—applied to someone else! Yes, you need to bear my burdens! Lord knows I need someone to talk to, to understand my struggles, to comfort me (and maybe give me some advice). Yes, absolutely, I need you to put up with me. At least that’s how we usually read this verse. We acknowledge that it applies to us. We should be willing to listen to the other person’s real story, recognize the pain and trauma, and offer relief. But you first. There’s a wide gap between should and did.
Of course, Paul realized that this instruction comes at a price. In fact, the price isn’t ours to pay. Yeshua did exactly what we are asked to do, and he paid for it. The word Paul uses has this in mind. It is the present particle of anĕchŏmai, a Greek term from two words: “through” (intensely) and “possess” or “accompany.” In other words, if you are going to bear another’s burden, you’ll have to intentionally, deliberately walk a ways with them. Maybe even hold hands. And not just today. You’ll need to hold hands while you walk through the past, just as Yeshua stuck it out with his friends.
“I am inclined to believe that God’s chief purpose in giving us memory is to enable us to go back in time so that if we didn’t play those roles right the first time round, we can still have another go at it now. We cannot undo our old mistakes or their consequences any more that we can erase old wounds that we have both suffered and inflicted, but through the power that memory gives us of thinking, feeling, imagining our way back through time we can at long last finally finish with the past in the sense of removing its power to hurt us and other people and to stunt our growth as human beings.”[1]
Bearing another’s burden means hearing the story, the real story, of his or her life—unfiltered. And that doesn’t happen if you don’t make the space safe. When condemnation hangs in the air, when reprisal or rejection waits in the shadows, bearing—walking with deliberate intensity on the path with another—just won’t happen. Oh, you can still hear what he has to say, but you won’t be listening, and he’ll know it. It won’t be safe to tell the whole story, the good and the bad, the victories and failures. And if it’s not safe to tell you, then it isn’t safe for you to tell either. “I am my secrets. And you are your secrets. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it is to be human.”[2]
I need someone who will bear my burdens, but I won’t find that person until Iam a safe person myself.
Topical Index: burdens, secrets, safe, Colossians 3:13
[1]Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life(HarperOne, 1992), p. 322.
When living your life do as the legendary psychiatrist and Holocaust-survivor Viktor Frankl suggested “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” Likewise, in bearing and sharing another’s burden I would paraphrase Frankl and suggest,
‘Love as if YOU were living already for the second time and as if the other had acted as secretly and shamefully the first time as they are about to act now!’
Isn’t “bearing with one another” simply a version of forgiveness in advance? A blank ‘indulgence’, as it were? Isn’t this what grace is? Didn’t God forgive me before I even sinned by setting that grace in place way back when? Isn’t this the very essence of a truly graceful person, too? This forgiveness in advance?
Condemnation – the requirement that we ‘pay’ for our sins – is the weapon I am convinced we fear the most, because to truly pay for sin is to repair the damage, but the damage sin does is death – separation from the life of unity – and nobody can bring the dead of fractured life back. (The only way we can pay for the sin of fracture is to submit to that fracture, which is, of course, death. That ‘pays’ for it, all right, but, then, we are non-existent! God has pleaded with us over and over to NOT DO THIS! Pay for our own sins, that is. I think He has begged us in every way He knows how to let Him pay, instead. But, I digress.) We all know this instinctively. I think this is the real reason we are afraid to face the music, because we know that none of us can put Humpty Dumpty back together again (without letting it do us in, of course). We all realize that only love can fix the problem (because the problem was created by the lack of love), but only God can put love back where it was rejected; therefore, we need His forgiveness (which returns us to that love) before we can even start to address our part of the problem, much less anybody else’s. Forgiveness, therefore, is our biggest need.
I think forgiveness is the ultimate cease-fire, where everybody on all sides can come out of their fox holes. God can quit hiding from us because, with forgiveness (yes, God needs us to let Him off the hook of our accusations of Him!), we are finally ready and able to hear His side of the story (which is, of course, that forgiveness); we can quit hiding from ourselves (because we are off the hook, too); and others can quit hiding from us (because we threw down the weapon of condemnation first).
So where does that leave us? Well, where does that leave us with God – when He forgives us, that is? Forgiveness makes it safe again, because the condemnation is gone, but forgiveness is only possible because of grace. I think this is why grace – not works – is what restores life back into fractured places. Grace is what provides justification, in fact, which is simply the restoration of life (unity) again. But justification is neither the ending point (God-does-it-all greasy grace crowd) nor the end-all-be-all (wecantakeitfromhere# works crowd): justification just restarts the engine of life, which is, of course, that unity.
“Bearing” with each other is what I think forgiveness provides the platform for. Disallowing condemnation in the here and now (which is what forgiveness is) gives us all the chances we all need grace to return us to. It is a little like repenting for another (“please turn toward us and turn us toward ourselves, and each other, too”). It is the essence of a graceful person to clear another’s runway for those thrown-away chances. This is God’s grace working in us; through us; sometimes (oh, so many times) even in spite of us (it’s so hard to guarantee safety for another when you don’t really feel safe around them!).
I think it takes a lot of grace to practice providing safety (“bearing”) for a person you don’t, yourself, feel safe around! In the flesh, of course, both true grace (oh, there are so many manipulative counterfeits!) as well as true forgiveness (which is unconditional, which the flesh cannot afford, of course) are impossible. In the flesh, I think you have to pick up either the sadist stick of manipulation or the narcissistic carrot of self-sacrifice (which is forbidden, of course), and, because of this, in the process of attempting to do the work of being ‘safe’ around another, we can find ourselves in a bind of either playing a role of domination over another or co-depending another’s sin. (Yes, we are really dangerous to each other!)
Because of this, I think the world attempts to practice love and forgiveness at it’s peril, and this is what I think makes us so hesitant to get anywhere near the burdens of others. (Who among us has not been burned in the past with this one?) In the flesh, I think it is simply impossible for Humpty Dumpty to sit back up on the wall of unity, and it is likewise impossible for us to put him there. “Bearing one another’s burdens”? I think that cannot happen unless and until we have Someone bearing ours. In the places I have still not submitted my sins and flaws (that are there because of the past sins of myself as well as of others that I have not forgiven yet) to God’s forgiveness, I am still vulnerable in the present to the sins of others, too. I need God’s grace to cover me (well, my sins, that is!) while I dash out of my fox hole to cover for another. May I remember that today. Safety first (which is forgiveness, of course). Grace. And let it begin with me.
We are ordinary human beings.
Yeshua was extraordinary.
If we are to follow His example, we need
to follow exactly how He tells us to.
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls.” Matt 11:29
He’s already paid the full price to free us
from all we lug around. Totally!
The deal for us is to simply receive it. Totally!
And what’s the deal with our yoke? Paul calls it
a yoke of slavery. You and I know it oh so well . . .
So . . . Our yoke? Or His?
Slavery? Or liberty?
We have to put our faith where our yoke is.