Skip to main content

Should a Christian Sue a Christian---A Response to HB

Hal--

I'm finally fully operational on my Mac, and I've uncovered my old email and password I use for my posting abilities on this site. And as I logged in I was hit with your post: Should a Christian Sue a Christian?

Your biblical analysis is spot on, of course. And I don't really see how anyone could argue with what you've written. I'd just like to add a couple points to complement your post.

The question you presented had to do with a lease agreement. If the offending party to the lease is a churchgoing Christian who refuses both to pay the lease and to leave the premises. In that circumstance, I suppose you would go to question (3) in your post, and perhaps conclude that person is certainly exhibiting no signs of being a believer, since his actions force the premises owner to pay, for instance, a $600.00 per month mortgage to let the erstwhile renter squat indefinitely. In that circumstance, if the premises owner were ultimately unable to pay, the bank would foreclose and ultimately forcibly remove the squatter, who now is in a worse position than he was in before.

I'm a litigator by trade, and most of the cases I handle are in the context of personal injury defense. Insurance companies hire me to represent their insureds in cases filed by injured parties. With the prevalence of insurance, believers don't really have the opportunity to work out their conflict. If I'm in a car wreck with a member of my church, and we both agree it's his fault and he should be responsible for my damages, we can't force the insurance company to pay what we both think would be a reasonable sum. (There are good reasons for this, of course.) In that circumstance, I think we're outside of what Paul was contemplating, since both sides to the conflict are in basic agreement, they're just trying to get a third-party corporation to pay what the offending party would owe.

But getting back to the examples you were dealing with: One issue that comes to mind immediately is a lament of the loss of the parish church. Until quite recently in history your neighborhood would all attend the same church. You would be in commerce with your neighbors, you'd worship with your neighbors, and you would see them often during the week. There would be real relationships there. Now, church members see their fellow church members on Sundays only, as a rule. And their pastor has little authority over them since they can bolt for the next church, which will likely have a "no questions asked" policy regarding why you left your last church. (And if they do ask questions, they'll only ask you, and won't get both sides of the story.)

A few years ago my wife and I went through a course on biblical peacemaking; it was created by a lawyer named Ken Sande, who is, incidentally, a Calvinist, after he wrote a book called "The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict." His goal was to equip Christians with the principles of biblical peacemaking, with a view toward restoration of relationships. I still remember the "four g's of biblical peacemaking": Glorify God; Get the log out of your own eye; Gently restore; Go and be reconciled. In that course, we were encouraged to let slide any offense against us that we could let go. If some offense was too great to let slide, we were encouraged to speak with the other person gently, in person, always keeping in mind that the goal is to bring glory to God. We were taught that getting the log out of your own eye is critical in these conversations, but so is pointing out the offense. I've utilized these principles in my personal life and they're well worth considering.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

To Atlas: Shrug

Is anyone else who regularly reads this blog troubled by the flippant use of the term “bailout” by our government and media? Perhaps your hackles are raised because of the proposal itself, and the language is of no concern. But politicians and auto-executives carefully chose “bailout” to describe what is being asked of the taxpayer. I don’t mean to pick nits here, but let’s examine this word and see whether it’s applicable. According to the good people at dictionary.com, bailout has the following meanings: – noun 1. the act of parachuting from an aircraft, esp. to escape a crash, fire, etc. 2. an instance of coming to the rescue, esp. financially 3. an alternative, additional choice, or the like, such as, “If the highway is jammed, you have two side roads as bailouts.” – adjective 4. of, pertaining to, or consisting of means for relieving an emergency situation. What strikes me is that the above-listed definitions imply an act of finality. The guy who escapes a plane crash en...

The Modern Way

Rhetoric is a powerful tool. Yea, possibly the strongest, most influential weapon man has in his arsenal. Aristotle defined rhetoric as “The faculty of using all the available means of persuasion in a given message.” Others have offered their definitions as well, ranging from, “The art of communicating effectively,”…”The art of enchanting the soul,”…”Communicative deception,”…and so on. For purposes of this essay, we shall regard rhetoric as being the habitual dilemma of man(sic), in which verbal communication strives for the one goal of persuasion. Let us apply our objective epistemologies and critical wit to the field of rhetoric, more specifically, the rhetoric used by the modern evangelical churches, which I will collectively refer to as “The Modern Way,” out of sheer respect for Martin Luther, and his battles against this sense of “New Thinking,” in Erfurt. The Modern Way uses rhetoric to establish a new look on the Gospel that is neither biblical, nor historical. The s...

Why Must Jesus Be God?

Two years ago as I was relating to my sister some exchanges between myself and a Jehovah's Witness friend of mine, she asked this simple question. As I stammered through a feeble and less than lucid argument, I came to realize that I didn't have a good answer. I could explain away the hows relating to the deity of Christ but not the whys . It forced me to consider, "am I really that prepared to witness to the average cult following neighbor/work associate/friend or the intelligent agnostic friend explaining why I believe what I do--why Jesus must be God?" So I began searching for an answer. Scores of volumes have spoken to the mystery of God-man over time. From the blood thirsty cries of Jesus' Jewish contemporaries who accused him of blasphemy to Arius and his modern day followers (known as Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons) who claim that he was some lesser shade of deity and many others, the debate over Jesus' true identity continues today. Certa...