Kind Warnings

So by now, you’re probably wondering about the third word. Several weeks ago I wrote about three words that flashed through my mind one night, when I was nearly asleep. I wrenched myself awake to find a notebook in the dark. I didn’t understand what God might be saying, but jotted the words down anyway.

The words were BEMOAN, REDRESS, and RECRIMINATE. Thirty-six hours later, my bemoaning surfaced, and I cried my eyes out. Two days after that fitful episode, God redressed the issue through a dream. And that led to the significance of the third word.

Recriminate means to accuse somebody in return, a countercharge or retaliation.

One dictionary said “endless accusation.”

Bemoaning becomes recrimination if we fail to redress root issues. In other words, unresolved pain becomes a festering wound that triggers perpetual conflict—the rip-and-tear kind. Sounds like hell, right?

Years ago, I came across this quote on quarreling:

“As Christians we must of course repent of all the anger, malice, and self-will which allowed the discussion to become, on our side, a quarrel at all. But there is also the question on a far lower level: “granted the quarrel…did you fight fair?” Or did we…falsify the whole issue? Did we pretend to be angry about one thing when we knew… that our anger had a different and much less presentable cause? Did we pretend to be “hurt” in our sensitive and tender feelings (fine natures like ours are so vulnerable) when envy, ungratified vanity, or thwarted self-will was our real trouble?

“Such tactics often succeed. The other parties give in. They give in not because they don’t know what is really wrong with us, but because they have long known it only too well. That sleeping dog can be roused, that skeleton brought out of its cupboard, only at the cost of imperiling their whole relationship with us. It needs surgery, which they know we will never face. And so we win, by cheating. But the unfairness is very deeply felt. How we should deal with it in others, I am not sure. But we should be merciless to (these tactics)…in ourselves.”

–C.S. Lewis, Reflections on The Psalms

He went on to say that dishonesty in conflict is “the most powerful engine of domestic tyranny, sometimes a lifelong tyranny.”

I can’t begin to explain how Lewis’s words affected me. They came as stark revelation. I understood what he meant. Still, over the years I succumbed to passive-aggressive behaviors at times when things got heated.

We live in a world of increasing recrimination. You hear the slinging back and forth on news channels over politics. You find it in divorce courts. It’s on radio talk shows and vicious comment exchanges on the Internet. It’s in the marketplace, and at school board meetings. It’s even on the playgrounds. We can turn off the TV, the radio, and the computer, but it doesn’t really eliminate the problem.

Recrimination is the ugliness of human nature splattered over all the good God intended for us.

God brought up these three words to remind me how I want to live. I value “clean” relationships. No backlog of unresolved hurts. No game playing in conflict, but honesty and resolution. And most of all, God reminded me to both apologize and forgive.

“Forgiveness breaks the cycle. It does not settle all questions of blame and justice and fairness: to the contrary, often it evades those questions. But it does allow relationships to start over. In that way, said Solzhenitsyn, we differ from all animals. It is not our capacity to think that makes us different, but our capacity to repent and to forgive. Only humans can perform that most unnatural act, and by doing so, only they can develop relationships that transcend the relentless law of nature.”          –Philip Yancey

Take a moment and search your heart for any discontent. Write it out as a letter to God. Let Him redress it. Maybe He’ll give you a single word that will unlock something for you. Perhaps God will reply in a song on the radio, send a dream or a Scripture. He might ask you to forgive someone. Or apologize. Or speak truth in the right spirit to the person who’s hurting you. Watch for it. Remain attentive. And most of all avoid the pit of recrimination.

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