If someone has consistent character, their personhood will also be consistent and faith will not especially be required. Their words and actions will match. Yes, they will have different sides to them, as we all do, but there will be a cohesiveness rooted in their belief system, a foundation they continually behave from. Their actions will determine how you esteem them.
However, I feel like when you have faith in someone based on their family role, church title, or other high esteem label, you are basing your faith on a title instead of on the credibility of that person’s behavior. A family bond must mean This Positive Loving Thing. A church leader must mean This Higher Level of Holiness. A highly esteemed person must mean “Everyone” Has Vetted This Person as Awesome. The person’s role or title evokes a response of trust from you without you being inclined to really consider this individual human being’s behavior. Their behavior is automatically assigned positive connotations because of their title and their behavior gets rolled up into these positive connotations whether it truly fits or not.
I feel like it can be dangerous to assume who God favors based on a role or title instead of by truly discerning the person’s behavior. I feel like our culture conditions us to associate a role or title with expected behavior instead of looking at the specific individual’s behavior. I personally have looked up to certain roles and titles, fully convinced that someone with that role or title will always behave in a certain way, watched that individual behave nearly completely oppositely, but then wrote it all off as exception after exception after exception since I was convinced someone with that role or title would “never” behave like that.
As a result, I dismissed a lot of behavior that should have been what defined that person’s character. I was loyal, I gave far too many chances, I utterly ignored the very valid gut feelings I repeatedly had, I pushed questions from the front of my thoughts into tiny compartments of doubt that had a multitude of thoughts spilling out that I refused to listen to, and I followed God to places that were clearly not where He was directing me to.
Manipulative and deceitful people generally do not work alone. They need the adulation of others to fuel them. They depend on others to do all the menial work they cannot be bothered with. They need sounding boards. They need crutches. They need emotional dysfunction to make them feel powerful at being able to cause disruption to another person’s life. They need to feel the high of accumulating social currency from their words being believed over their actions. They need to use and abuse others. If people learned to believe that person’s behavior over their role or title, that deception would more quickly end and greater authenticity would prevail.
You are important. Who you choose to associate with is meaningful. Your discernment is valuable. Respect someone’s role or title, but not at the expense of recognizing the truth of their actions. When you have faith in someone without considering their actions, you see a great deal of “good” where there is authentically little enduring good to be found, you open yourself up to a great deal of pain to you individually, and you empower the deceptive and destructive behavior of that person towards others. It can become the most impactful regret of your life.
Listen to actions. Including yours. You’ve got this!
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
