A reminder from Shakespeare

William Shakespeare admonished us to, "Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none." These are more than just good words of advice. Take them apart and you might just see a few principles you'd like to live by. Love all - isn't this what Jesus said when he reminded us to, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’"? (Matthew 22:37-39)

Trust a few - scripture reminds us not to trust a fool, but always to trust God. Remember: "A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. A tree is identified by its fruit. Figs are never gathered from thornbushes, and grapes are not picked from bramble bushes. A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart." (Luke 6:43-45)

Do wrong to none - this is probably one of the most controversial things Shakespeare could have challenged us with, right? We 'get' how we are to love one another, and even how we are to trust those who reveal themselves as trustworthy but getting to the place that we actually 'do wrong to no one' is hard, especially when we have been wronged. Doesn't scripture remind us, "Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, “I will take revenge; I will pay them back,” says the Lord." (Romans 12:19)

Shakespeare may have found three of the hardest things for us to accomplish in life - being a kind and loving person to all we encounter, be wise in our placement of trust, and not returning a wrong with another wrong. If he could challenge us with these 'life actions', how much more do you think God will challenge us? Just askin!

Did you mean to do that?

There are always going to be times when we feel like we have been 'harmed' in relationship - it is part of we humans trying to live and interact together. We won't always get our own way, nor will we be continuously satisfied with what we see in others. Part of human nature is to fail on occasion - we cannot avoid that harsh fact. It is how we respond to these failures in others that really matters - not the failure so much, but our response of heart and emotion toward the failure, and more importantly - toward the person who has failed!

Don’t seek vengeance. Don’t bear a grudge; but love your neighbor as yourself, for I am Jehovah. (Leviticus 19:18 TLB)

When we hold grudges, or 'nurse them' as some people refer to it, we are really creating a 'debt account' in which the other individual begins to 'owe us' for each offense. We are then adding 'interest' to the 'debt' owed each time we rehearse (nurse) the grudge. 'Unpaid debt' soon becomes something that causes more 'ill will' between individuals. Have you ever seen one of those advertisements for a 'payday loan'? You bring them something of value - such as the title of your car - they loan you a sum of money. What you don't see is the 'fine print' - at the interest rate they will charge that simple $1,000 loan will take you ten years to repay - long outlasting your car!

Debt accrues interest - there is no avoiding that - even when they propose to you an 'interest free' loan on some appliance or vehicle. What we don't realize is that they have 'marked up' the item to include what they would have exacted from you in interest over the term of the note! You and I can be cleverly disguising the 'debt' another owes us, nursing that grudge until the interest demanded becomes so much it is almost impossible to ever achieve 'pay-back' of the debt. We rehearse the debt and add a little to the account each time we do - essentially adding 'interest' to the debt! What comes next is that we send the individual to 'collections' on the debt!

We move from just 'adding interest' to the account into the territory of demanding very forcefully the debt be repaid. They are incapable of repaying what they 'owe' in any real satisfactory way, so the next thing we know, we are actually devising ways to bring further 'harm' or 'embarrassment' into their lives. It is like when the sign goes up on the front lawn announcing to the world the home you worked so hard to buy is now going into foreclosure and you will soon be living on the street! This movement from nursing the grudge into seeking to retaliate and bring further harm to the individual is entering into the territory known as vengeance. If you have ever heard the warning that vengeance belongs to God and God alone, you know you are treading into dangerous territory on that one!

Grudges should never have a chance to take hold. Debts should not be 'added to the account'. In fact, we shouldn't even be doing the book-keeping! A grudge begins with us 'crying out' - complaining against or about someone. Cry out long enough and you will begin to sense they 'owe' you for all the time and energy you are investing into this slight. Soon, without even noticing, you are beginning to keep record of the wrongs - and in time, you will be adding interest to those books! It is best to let 'real' wrongs go by working them out as soon as possible. It is an even more shameful thing to imagine wrong has been done when someone has been unintentional in their 'wrong-doing'! Remember this - intentional or not, the debt isn't really 'owed' to us - we just think we have a right to demand it. Just sayin!

That pesky Golden Rule

This is what our Scriptures come to teach: in everything, in every circumstance, do to others as you would have them do to you. (Matthew 7:12 VOICE)

Most of us recognize just how truly hard this command actually can be in "real life". It is as though we want to say back to Jesus, "Yeah, but you don't know that other person as well as I do!"  We want them to hurt as bad as we are hurting, or at least a fraction of it! We don't want them getting off "free" of any accountability for their wrong actions. We don't want them to be "pain free". We think there has to be SOME consequence for their bad behavior! The thing Jesus was trying to get across to us is that we wouldn't want God to have that attitude with us - so we shouldn't have that attitude with others.

If you came up in church, you probably remember hearing this passage referred to as the "golden rule" somewhere along the line. I even have a ruler I got somewhere with this passage printed on it! Living it out in our daily walk is a whole lot different than seeing it on a ruler or plaque on the wall! We have to put "feet" to those words and turn them into very practical and personal actions and this is where it gets very, very hard. The "simple rule" becomes much more difficult when "that jerk" who just got on your last nerve is sitting across from you at the diner! Now it gets "real" and the moment defines us.

I have had to ask for more "rewrites" of how I am defined than I honestly care to admit to, but in the interest of being totally transparent here - it has been a lot! My "defining moments" just didn't go as well as I might have wanted them to, but thank goodness I don't have to "live with" that definition forever! God can rewrite how it is I am defined as much as he can do it for you. Someone once quipped that as long as everyone could just live by that one "golden rule", we'd probably be all right as a society of people - as long as the right person was the one starting the chain of actions in the first place! In nursing, they often say we are supposed to take care of our patients as we would our own mother. If you don't like your mother, that could be a problem!

The principle is quite simple - the actions we reveal are not to be dependent upon the actions (or inaction) of another. We are responsible for us - not the other guy. We model the behavior - then we count on God to do the rest. It may mean we don't see the "consequences" of their wrong actions, but that is okay because we can trust God to do what needs to be done - he hasn't failed us yet and he isn't about to! Another way to look at this is that we don't know what has already happened in that individual's life, nor do we know what is right around the corner, or even a little further down the road. We know about now - the opportunity we have while we are together at this very moment. Our actions are all we can have control over - so when we respond as we'd have liked to be treated rather than getting all uppity or wigged-out about something, we are setting God up to do whatever he needs to do in that person's life. If we think about it that way, we might just be more inclined to return good for evil, love for hatred, and forgiveness for lame stuff people do! Just sayin!