| Accountability
This thort is about the whole concept of Accountability...
the ability someone else has to hold your life in account I guess...
And I will use this passage I just found in
Ezekiel which is quite extreme to illustrate the concept of accountability,
which I think is sorely lacking in many of our friendships and church
leaderships and other relationships today:
"At the end of seven days the word of the
Lord came to me: "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for
the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning
from me. When I say to a wicked man, 'You will surely die,' and
you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways
in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin,
and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn
the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from
his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved
yourself. Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness
and does evil, and I put a stumbling-block before him, he will die.
Since you did not warn him, he will die for his sin. The righteous
things he did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable
for his blood. But if you do warn the rightoeus man not to sin and
he does not sin, he will surely live because he took warning, and
you will have saved yourself." [Ezekiel 3:16-21]
One of the key themes in a healthy, growing
friendship has to be accountability, which is something we all need.
Your friends must know that if you do something wrong or are involved
in something you shouldn't be involved in, or are putting yourself
in a place where you are likely to be tempted to do wrong, that
they HAVE THE RIGHT to approach you and challenge you about it.
Because I think that's basically what Accountability
is - being Responsible in a sense for someone else.
Now I'm not talking about giving your friends
the right to tie you mercilessly to a chair, shine a bright light
in your face and insert needles under your fingernails in an aggressive
interrogationary kind of way. But I am talking about having people
who can make sure that you are not putting yourself in temptation's
way when you could be avoiding it. I'm speaking of friends who can
say, "Hold on a minute. I really think your attitude to your
parents has been quite shocking lately." Or "I'm a bit
concerned about those guys you've been hanging out with, because
they are putting quite a bit of pressure on you to get drunk."
Or 'I really don't think you should be doing that business deal
because it means you're going to be compromising your standards
of truth and integrity." Or anything like those...
Friends who care enough to risk you getting
a bit annoyed with them because they are questioning (always in
a loving way) your behaviour or attitude or lifestyle. Friends who
will do their best to keep you walking in the ways of God and will
do something if they see you starting to stray.
Proverbs 27:6 "Wounds from a friend can
be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses." as opposed to
2 Timothy 4:3 which says "For the time will come when men will
not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires,
they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what
their itching ears want to hear."
A real friend is one who it is safe to be accountable
to. One that you can trust to get involved when the need is there.
And a true friend is also one who will be accountable to you. One
who will allow you to intervene in their life and show concern when
things start to get questionable.
"Submit to one another out of reverence
for Christ." [Ephesians 5:21]
By virtue of the fact that you made a decision
to become a Christian you have in a sense immediately made yourself
accountable to everyone in the world.
By saying you're a Christian, non-Christians
will be looking at you, waiting for an opportunity to point fingers
when you mess up. And other Christians should also have the right
to "...correct, rebuke and encourage..." [2 Timothy 4:2]
when they sense you stepping out of line.
Sadly, in practice this accountability does
not really exist unless someone actually places it into someone
else's hands and gives them the right to say something. Otherwise
if you go to just anyone and say "Look, I think you were out
of line there," generally their response will probably be one
of defensiveness or aggression such as "What gives you the
right to tell me how to live my life?"
So it is extremely important to be able to have
accountability. The ideal person to be accountable to is a spiritual
mentor or a more mature Christian that you can trust will speak
to you in honesty and Love. But it is also an important ingredient
of any good and real friendship you might be involved in.
You often see it in the leadership of a group
where there is one person in charge who is not accountable to anyone
else. As long as that person and God are going strong in their relationship
then it's usually not a problem, but the minute something goes wrong
in their relationship with God there is nothing else holding them
accountable and so they (and often the group/committee/church with
them) can fall quite badly and often a lot of damage can be done.
I guess Accountability is kind of like the safety
net for a trapeze artist - you can still fall, but the net stops
you from hitting the ground - it increases your safety and makes
it less likely that you will damage yourself in the long run.
So I want to really challenge you on this point.
Who are you accountable to? Is there at least one specific person
(or preferably a number of people or group) who KNOW that they have
the right to approach you and caution you in an area of your life
if it starts to slip or even to warn you about potential slippage.
And is there a person(s) who you know WILL actually go through with
that and risk some embarrassment or hurt because they care enough
about you? And if not, then what are you going to do about it this
week? Who can you organise to speak to and offer accountability
for your life and actions to?
Please don't put this one off or think 'Ja I'll
get round to it one day' - make it a priority and then act upon
it.
As for me, part of my accountability group is
each one of you. Whether I know you personally or not, whether we're
really close or not at all, I give you the right to hold me accountable
to matching up what I say with how I live my life. I appreciate
constructive criticism (especially when it comes to what I write
in these thorts) and give you the right to challenge me on anything
I say or do in the light of God's Word and what it means to be a
Christian.
p.s. In the light of the Friendship-themed double-week
thorts I will finish off with this short section from my yet-to-be-published
book 'All' summing up a picture of what friendship can be all about...
EVERYONE LOVES A GOOD FRIEND
A good friend is like a slinky. If you give
it a start and it has space to move it will just keep going and
going. You just need to give it a chance and give it the opportunity
to function and it will go on forever. You don't have to take it
down every single step or show it how to work or have a set of rules
or anything. You just need to get it started. A slinky likes to
slink.
It's the same with a good friend. Proverbs 17:17
says it perfectly that "A friend loves at all times..."
A good friend loves just that - being a friend. There's no "because".
There's no "I do this for you and you do this for me."
As long as you don't cut off every opportunity for it to move (like
putting a slinky at the bottom of the steps) the friendship will
happen.
But when God is in the centre of a friendship
there is even greater potential. You may even find your slinky,
that should have had no potential to move at all, is suddenly even
climbing up the stairs, coz with God "All things are possible"
[Philippians 4:13] and God can make any friendship work against
all expectations.
When a slinky is doing its thing, like down
a long flight of stairs, and it is really going well, it is a beautiful
sight to watch. The movement is so fluid that the toy could practically
be liquid. There is a certain rhythm and continuity that is almost
musical, and I'm talking 55 piece orchestra, not some little guy
on the pavement with a mouth organ and pet monkey.
Likewise and even more so, when a friendship
is doing its thing, and I mean really doing its thing in an "All
for one and you're the one" kind of way, it is one of the most
beautiful things in the world. People are uplifted, loads seem lighter,
things get done, and life is just that little bit easier.
Having friends is great, but it really
is important to remember that "To have a friend, you have to
be a Friend." Don't settle for mediocrity when it comes to
friendship. If you think of yourself and your needs, you would want
to have the best possible friend in the world. Now go and be that
friend. Be a Jesus friend.
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