“I say this in love…”
You can injure a lot of people with that term.
“I say this in love” has caused a lot of damage over the years.
In marriage…
In church relationships…
In work situations…
In families…
It can be in person or online.
It’s often the start of some of the “best” gossip — or unfair judging. Certainly some very hurtful criticism begins this way.
I’ve been the recipient of this kind of “love” and sometimes it doesn’t seem very loving to me.
Sometimes people seem to think they can say anything — in any form — without considering the consequences — as long as they begin with that phrase.
I’ve seen people preface a mean-spirited zinger of a comment with a disclaimer of love, but it’s still a mean-spirited zinger. The way you begin a conversation doesn’t remove the need to be kind, even when offering correction or extending criticism.
We should do all things in love. That’s a command. As believers, we have to learn how to critique, criticize, complain and even rebuke people — in love.
But, let’s make sure we display love all the way through our conversations.
Not just with the first five words.
In a future post, I’ll to help us think through this issue more with some hopefully helpful tips.
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Links To Go (April 25, 2014) | Tim Archer's Kitchen of Half-Baked Thoughts
Robert Winkler Burke · 567 weeks ago
Heavy, Rock-Filled Backpacks in Perpetuity?
By Robert Winkler Burke
Book #8 of In That Day Teachings
6/2/11 www.inthatdayteachings.com
Jam the best marathon runner,
With a hundred-pound backpack,
And he’ll be less likely to win,
But get a heart attack!
Jam a congregation’s brains,
With question: How-many-of-you-know,
Never count hands, yet minds turn,
With suggestions, planted on-the-go!
Backpacks loaded with heavy rocks,
In perpetuity?
While wolves quote more scripture,
Yet, few have eyes to see!
Goosing emotions,
With a loud shout, then quiet pause!
Veiled hypnotism,
Needs no watch-fob chain because…
Because audience low-level hypnotism,
Can happen by leader walking hamster-pipe-style left-to-right,
High and low voice with pause, or walk front-to-back,
Or hands, face or body point: this-way, and that: FRIGHT!
It is absolutely frightful how easy it is,
For a linguistic-master to manipulate a crowd!
Can I get an amen, grin, smile or nod,?
I can’t hear you! Next time, bark even more loud!
Wherever there are performing seals,
It stinks like a mackerel!
Where each person obeys and kneels mind,
Limp goes spine and sacral!
What is the result of such séances?
Polymorphous shepherds need a BIGGER shenanigan,
To get ever smaller responses,
Hence: Church idiocy repeats itself again and again!
Until the In That Day,
Teachings are believed,
But shepherds’d rather,
Keep their fleeced-flock grieved!
Shepherds of lemming insanity and wily group-think,
Well, they just cannot possibly believe,
All this beautifully interwoven cogency comes from,
A Reno man, Satan must have conceived!
For wolf-shepherds have taken
The heretofore: invincible faith of the Christian,
And Western Enlightened souls,
And made them amorphous, gelded, duped heathen!
Alas, alack!
How I wish it weren’t so!
But it is,
I fear God saying, Woe: go!
Woe shall have its recompense,
On amalgamated emergent hypnotism,
Until sheep demand to have,
In That Day: Good minds and Christ-in-You risen!
Heavy, rock-filled backpacks in perpetuity?
God forbid!
Reason and Christ’s mind shall come back,
Not morbid!
No more morbid shenanigans,
Posing as church!
In That Day comes quickly now,
Christ-in-You, surge!
Yes, these poems,
Rip too hard into the wolves, perchance,
But which side,
Has the better moral difference?
Water! Water! Water!
On the pillory, the overburdened, humped-back emergent sheep cry!
Where is Esmeralda?
To shame wolves, feed sheep, and heal their spines, that they not die!
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