A few years ago, in one of my first conversations with a new friend, I found out that he was still single despite being several years older than me. And so, thinking myself magnanimous (which was sort-of true) and also all-knowing (which was definitely not true), I decided to use our first real conversation to help him get to the bottom of what I thought was the salient question: what was wrong with him that made him still single?
Yeah. It was rough.
The conversation went about the way you might expect. I came off as far more combative and insulting than I intended, he got his back up, and I consider it a minor miracle that we’re still friends.
I think most people could have told me that leading with unsolicited conviction with a brand-new friend was unwise. But what took me a lot longer to learn was that this approach can be destructive even between people who trust each other.
I’m certainly not saying that there’s never a place for unsolicited conviction. The Old Testament prophets convicted their leaders and the people of Israel quite often. Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it bluntly in Life Together: “Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin.”
And yet, it took me years to realize that this kind of rebuke can do immense damage, and that it was a tool that I ought to wield very sparingly.
Lately, I prefer offering unsolicited praise.
When I’m in conflict with someone, or if I’m just not seeing their full and God-given worth as deeply as I want to, I’ll ask God, “What do You want me to know about this person?” Almost always, the answer to that prayer enables me to see a better side of them than I saw previously.
I used this prayer when I was struggling to see the good in an atheist friend of mine, and after praying I suddenly saw how his criticism of the church, that I had taken so amiss, actually reflected a bone-deep love for his neighbor. If I saw the church that he saw, I realized, the most loving thing for me to do would be to warn people away from it.
I used this same prayer with a friend of mine who has frequently attacked me. As I prayed, I found myself suddenly remembering things this person said to me about their work, about their family, about the pain that they were in. I remembered remarkable acts of kindness I watched them enact towards others. I found my opinion of them changing: away from a thoughtless or dismissive person, and towards a person with a good heart and immense inner strength, who sometimes got overwhelmed by the brutality of their circumstances.
Very frequently, I will share the results of this prayer with the person in question.
This feels much safer than sharing unsolicited conviction because even if I’m wrong, the worst that will happen is that I’ll brighten someone’s day. I’ve even felt comfortable sharing the results of this prayer with my atheist friends. Back when I was atheist, a Christian telling me that, “I prayed about you, and God told me that you’re going to Hell / doing XYZ wrong with your life” would have been immensely hurtful. It would have neither helped me out of my fear and guilt and shame nor moved me closer to God. But a Christian telling me that, “I prayed about you, and what I heard from God is how deeply you care about loving your neighbor,” is the kind of thing that, whether or not it moved me towards being Christian, would have meaningfully improved my life or at least my day.
I think most of us are in more pain than we would like to admit to people around us. And, I think—again, whatever we may say on the surface—that we’re more achingly aware of our own faults than we are of our own virtues. Maybe what we need more of is not someone telling us what we’re doing wrong, but someone willing to reflect back to us the best parts of who we are.
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