Brother, Where Art Thou?

By Audrey Stallsmith

When I was entering a service station a couple months ago to purchase a gallon of milk, I heard a man parked just around the corner cursing his girlfriend or wife. As he called her all sorts of profane names, my own temper ignited.

But I knew that confronting a verbally abusive person might escalate matters to physical violence. And I already was losing enough teeth to aging to risk more! So, still seething, I continued on to the back of the building to get my milk.

Once I’d done so, I had to wait until a man and woman—who I assumed to be the ones I’d heard—finished their purchase. As they went out, I heard the female clerk mutter in an aside to someone else, “I wouldn’t put up with that.” It occurred to me that the abused woman might put up with that because all the rest of us politely ignored what was happening, as if it was perfectly acceptable.

When I returned to my car, my older brother—who had just pulled in to the station—spoke to me from his truck parked at the pumps. Looking back on the situation afterward, I told myself that, if my sibling had showed up just a bit earlier, I might actually have had the nerve to say something to the abusive guy. Namely because my brother is bigger and stronger than the offender was and thus wouldn’t have had difficulty in defending me, if necessary.

But I realized that I really couldn’t excuse myself on the basis of my supposedly weak womanhood, because I have confronted people anyway a few times in the past, when my conscience demanded that I do so. In truth, that actually was due to cowardice more than courage because my conscience could be as abusive as the guy in the service station, though its language was a bit more refined!

So, at times, it actually was easier to do whatever it required of me rather than have to deal with its tongue-lashing later. No, I suspect what really held me back in this particular situation was bafflement over what was the right thing to do.

If I had spoken to the man, after all, it would have been in anger—which just would have been the same currency he dealt in, since I was highly inclined to slug him with my milk jug about then! And, though worried about the woman, I didn’t care at all about what happened to her abuser, when I really should have been concerned about both of their souls.  

So it’s doubtful I would have been of much help when I still didn’t have an answer to that perennially popular question “What would Jesus do?” Dallas Willard addresses these issues in his book Renovation of the Heart. In it, he asserts that a main problem of the church these days is that it concentrates too much on getting people saved and not enough on making them disciples, i.e. imitators of Christ.

The latter often is called sanctification and, as I have mentioned before, some denominations think that happens in a single experience while others believe it is a gradual process. I lean toward the latter opinion, since, as Willard points out, the Biblical promised land—often used as a metaphor for spiritual progress—“had to be conquered by careful, persistent, and intelligent human action, over a long period of time.” Though, granted, the crossing of the Jordan might be seen as a one-time extreme commitment to that task.

I probably have made some progress along the way, since my conscience hasn’t been as nasty as it used to be, once I realized that it would be unchristian for me to talk to anybody else as harshly as I often talk to myself. But, if I was baffled about how Christ would have responded to the situation, I obviously didn’t know Him well enough. Or was I just pretending I didn’t?

After all, my introvert’s inclination to not get involved in other people’s problems unless I really must probably can be blamed on sloth more than on cowardice. All that extra angst is just too much work when most of us have difficulties enough of our own.

So it often turns out to be what we don’t have rather than what we do have which is creating the problems. As in not enough love for other people, exacerbated by too much concern for our own comfort. Before we convince ourselves that all that caring is just too much bother, we should remember that evil will move in wherever there is room for it. Therefore, whenever we squelch Christian love, we are leaving too much space for self-centeredness to occupy.

So what should I have done? I still don’t have a clue. But I should have remembered that, though my older brother may not always be there to lend support, my other “firstborn among many brethern” is. So I could just have asked Him!