loving tough.

Charity and accountability. Yum.

Charity is a good word, isn’t it? Safe. Right. Like just talking about it is some sort of insurance against the trials of life. I feel like the minute I throw in accountability, the very second that I suggest we temper charitable impulses with consideration of personal responsibility, my life is going to fall down around me. I’m going to need all the charity I can get. And I’ll suddenly feel an irresistible urge to vote Republican.

That is, I don’t know how to (or even if I’m supposed to) balance charity and accountability. One of the many conundrums of life.

I live in fear that the second I speak against someone who needs my help, I will myself need a boatload of help. Just because. Because who am I to judge whether or not someone’s plea is valid, and deserving? How can I say that given their circumstances, I wouldn’t be in the same leaky boat?

Having said that, I don’t in general have problems judging people. So why now? Why this? Why is it so hard to love tough? Or rather, why is it so confusing to know when to love tough, and how to love tough?

Say that you have a friend who needs your help, but it seems obvious that some of the need for help is necessitated by poor choices. How do you be Christ? Do you go all out to help the person with whatever they say they need, trusting that tough love is God’s job? Or do you have “the talk?” The “accountability talk.”

And if you decide to have the talk, how can you be sure that you’re seeing the situation as it really is? And how do you decide that the person can really be held accountable for his/her poor choices? Sometimes, we don’t know what we don’t know. We need the help.

Granted, these issues are not specific to the Christian faith. All people who consider themselves under the hold of some type of morality have to deal with this. Many of our political choices are tied up in this debate. Many more of our personal choices are. But the Christian community seems to be more of a minefield. There's expectation. We all share an extreme example of sacrifice to live by. You form odd relationships with people that become advanced beyond a normal friendship by virtue of a shared, intense bond. The rules of engagement are different within the Christian community.

As I attempt to step further in, I find myself forced into these questions as an issue of practicality with fellow Christians. And the more I talk about them, the more I hear myself saying phrases I never wanted to say. Phrases like, “speaking in love,” and “accountability in our walk.” While I could hip up the terminology (maybe, “bein’ real in Christ, fo shizzle,” or “keepin’ real in Christ, fo shizzle,” or anything that ends in “…real in Christ, fo shizzle”), the concern remains the same.

I want to be loving. Sometimes, showing love is more than offering reassurances, and a place to sleep. Sometimes, it’s offering hard reality. And some other times, it might not be my place to decide between the two. What’s a Christian to do?