The Christian Grace of Deference
I have written before about the clarifying effects of crisis. If the tone of our social media conversations is any indication, the stress of the pandemic is revealing something ugly about our Christian community.
We need to repent.
And we need to learn the Christian grace of deference.
“Deference” is yielding courteously to another person. We practice deference when we let someone go ahead of us through the door or let someone into a long line of traffic. When we defer, we are courteously yielding our rights in the interests of serving someone else.
I have told this story in these pages before, but it bears repeating because it tells how I learned about deference before I ever heard the word or understood the biblical underpinnings of this essential Christian grace.
Here’s how I first learned about what it means to defer to a brother:
I minored in music in college. At the same time I was learning a little bit about music theory, I was also discovering jazz music. My growing understanding of music theory made jazz even more fascinating because I could understand something of the creativity and originality in the way jazz music is constructed, how jazz musicians and composers bent and reformatted the rules on music composition and performance.
I began to buy jazz albums and play them on my record player in my dorm room (yes, this was the 1970s).
Then something happened to curtail my forays into the world of jazz: my roommate talked to me about the effects of jazz on his conscience.
My roommate had come to faith as a senior in high school. But before that, he was a party animal.
When he heard my jazz, he told me, it awakened old appetites in him that he was trying to forget. This was odd, because jazz had no such effect on me. The same music that impressed me as creative and original was leading him to a dark place he didn’t want to go.
What were my options here? After all, I was listening to music I had purchased, playing it on my record-player (it was the 70s). And there was nothing inherently wrong with jazz music, at least in a chapter-and-verse sense of the word. I surely had a right to listen to my music.
It’s telling that there were six first-person pronouns in that last paragraph. But this wasn’t about my rights. I had to weigh the value of my liberty against my love for my brother in Christ, and that wasn’t really a tough call.
In the end, I knew I had to do what Paul urges in his letter to the believers in Rome: “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up” (Romans 15:1-2).
I didn’t know what the word “deference” means then. But I did defer to my roommate. Even though there was clearly nothing immoral about jazz, I stopped listening to it.
Frankly, because my roommate was a dear friend, it wasn’t hard for me to forego my rights. Sure, if he had come on strong with a sanctimonious diatribe about the evils of jazz music, I’m sure my flesh would have been aroused and it would have been more difficult for me to do the right thing.
But regardless of how pleasant or how difficult the task, limiting my freedom for the sake of my love for my brother was the right thing to do.
Paul urged the believers in Rome (Romans 14) and Corinth (1 Corinthians 8-9) to practice deference with regards to the divisive issue of whether to eat meat that had been used in pagan temples. For some believers, that meat had been contaminated by its use in pagan ceremonies; others took a more pragmatic approach and regarded the meat as just that, meat that is to be eaten and enjoyed.
Paul urged them to give one another room on such non-essential matters. It was not necessary that they agree about the morality of eating the meat; what they did need to agree on was that their love for their brothers and sisters was more important than their views on that non-essential matter.
Of course we don’t argue about dietary laws. We’re 21st century North American Christians, and we’re well beyond that sort of argument.
No, our debates are much more significant; we argue about the wearing of facemasks.
This is both alarming and amusing.
It’s amusing that the wearing or not wearing of face-masks would be the subject of such a heated debate. If there ever was a non-essential matter that called for us to courteously yield to one another, this is it.
Yes, it’s a nuisance to wear a facemask, and yes, we do look a little silly when we’re wearing them.
So if we had a sense of humor about all this, we would have plenty to laugh at.
It’s alarming because it shouldn’t be so difficult for us to defer (yield courteously) to one another in such a minor matter.
But we seem to be having some problem with that. Especially with the “courteously” part.
It’s not surprising that we disagree. In a high-stakes matter like a deadly pandemic, especially one in which even the experts are figuring it out as we go, it’s not surprising that there would be a variety of opinions about how best to handle the risks.
It’s the tone of our debate that is so alarming. Scroll through our social media posts on this, and you’ll find us attributing the worst possible motives to the words and actions of our brothers and sisters in Christ. You’ll find Christians speculating on dark conspiracies about government over-reach and people in high places secretly benefiting from the plague.
In short, you’ll find Christ-followers unwilling to yield courteously to one another in a non-essential matter.
When we talk like this, do we sound like people who have been forgiven? Do we sound like people who are reveling in the glorious grace of God?
Don’t we sound more like petulant children who must have their way?
It’s ugly.
It’s embarrassing, even.
Even if you don’t believe that the pandemic is real, think about wearing a facemask as a gracious way to tell your spiritual siblings that you love them and you want them to feel safe.
And if your brother or sister isn’t wearing a facemask, don’t assume the worst about their motives. Give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the best of them.
The question before us is whether we love our liberty more than we love our spiritual siblings.
That’s not complicated.
Let’s get this right.
Let’s be more like our Master, who gave up his privileges for our sake.
Let’s use this controversy as an opportunity to practice the Christian grace of deference.
Persevere.
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor
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