I sat with my friend Bill and unleashed a torrent of frustration. I was deep in the throes of a life decision and struggling desperately to discern the leading of God. Yet no answer seemed forthcoming, and I was obsessing over my next step.
Bill listened patiently as I shared my angst. After contemplating what he heard, he said this: “It sounds like you’re choosing between being right and being present.”
Huh?
I did not know how to process such a statement. In my mind the choice was always between right and wrong. Obedience and sin. Good and evil.
Being present had nothing to do with it.
Still, I sensed he was on to something. Like countless other times, I was consumed with making the correct choice to the point of no longer paying attention to relationships and reality. I had retreated into my head to work the problem, which in itself became a problem. My desire for good went bad.
Beyond binary piety
It turns out not every decision is binary. There is an evangelical impulse to make it so, particularly for those of us who came to Christ as children. When you’re young, faith is constantly explained for you in terms of right and wrong behavior. Christians do certain things and don’t do other things.
And that’s good: We are called to adhere to the Bible’s teaching on sin, and children need it communicated in the simplest terms. But when we carry that mindset with us into adulthood—framing all choices in strictly obeying/disobeying God categories—we fall prey to a false, rigid moralism. We create artificial distinctions that preserve a form of godliness but lack its power (2 Tim. 3:5).
Such faith has little room for genuine grace or complex relationships. We become intolerant of those whose view of right doesn’t align with ours. And in our dogged efforts to do our best for God, we leave a trail of untold damage.
Jesus called the Pharisees to account for this. Fastidious about the letter of the law, they missed the point of the rules being kept. They judged themselves and others harshly using inadequate, misapplied criteria.
And they weren’t alone. Church history is pockmarked with righteous thinking gone awry. Each of us can develop myopia around the issues we identify as nonnegotiable, while trampling over other vital Christian values. As Blaise Pascal put it, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
Correctness vs. connectedness
After my conversation with Bill, it became painfully clear how frequently I operated this way. In parenting, I measured my discipline style against an imaginary list of “shoulds” without considering the needs of my actual kids. If my wife and I disagreed, I picked apart the accuracy of her words and questioned her motives to “get to the truth,” all while missing her heart. And as a pastor, my desire to respond perfectly during a crisis took me out of truly being with people in their pain.
Connectedness is routinely sacrificed for the sake of correctness.
The apostle Peter embodied this struggle the night Judas led an angry mob into Gethsemane to seize Jesus. In a burst of fierce indignation, Peter drew his sword and lopped off the ear of Malchus, the high priest’s servant.
What could be more praiseworthy than battling the enemies of Jesus? Yet, in his good intentions, Peter ceased being present to what Christ was doing and ended up committing his own atrocity. That earned him a rebuke (“Put your sword away!”) from the very Lord he wanted to help.
Inside-out struggle
The ear-cutting incident didn’t happen in a vacuum. Since first meeting Jesus, Peter had wrestled with Christ’s mission and his own relationship to it.
We can trace the inner conflict back to the shores of Galilee when Christ called him and gifted him with the miraculous catch of fish. Peter felt the tension of having such holy power alongside his own sense of shame. He said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8).
Later, as Jesus spoke of the Cross, Peter pulled Jesus aside to lecture him on why that couldn’t happen. Imagine trying to convince Christ his mission was wrong (and being called Satan for doing it)!
At the Last Supper, Peter hated the sight of his teacher stooping to wash his feet. When Jesus explained its necessity, Peter flipped and asked Christ to wash his hands and head as well, as if to prove he was the most onboard disciple of all.
And just before Gethsemane, Peter pledged his undying loyalty to Jesus, only to be told that would prove to be untrue that very night.
In short, there were indicators of the storm brewing prior to the garden. All of Peter’s previous misgivings showed up uninvited and in the least helpful way. The fight inside became the fight outside.
Peter’s experience bore several markers that can help us recognize when our zeal for righteousness may have unseen, potentially harmful roots.
Reactive
When he drew that sword, Peter wasn’t operating from a well thought out plan. He just started hacking in a knee-jerk reaction to the stress of the moment.
When the feelings welling up inside me are bigger than circumstances warrant, it may mean I’ve been subconsciously pulled out of the moment by old pain. The question “What age do I feel right now?” can help me identify what I’m experiencing.
In his book Growing Yourself Back Up, John Lee says, “Regression is the reaction we have when something happening in the present triggers a memory in our bodies about something that happened in the past. An easy formula to remember is: Mature adults respond, regressed people react.”
Jesus said, “Before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). Christ is the Always Present One. It logically follows that if I myself am not present, I’m missing him.
Jesus does not live and move in whatever nonreality I invent. My imagined categories of people, my made-up conversations, my self-drawn battle lines—the longer I stay in those unreal places, the less aware I am of what the Lord is doing here and now.
Compulsive
That night in the garden, Peter felt this strong impulse to do something—anything—to safeguard Jesus. Although Jesus himself remained self-controlled and took no action to avoid arrest, Peter could not resist the urge to confront the threat.
Panic in the face of dread can feel like clarity. Compulsions would have us believe that if we do not act immediately, disaster will surely follow. We become convinced the fate of the future hinges on our response.
Peter Enns puts it this way: “We are not actually trusting God at that moment. We are trusting ourselves and disguising it as trust in God.”
An inflated sense of responsibility is not the same as genuine obedience. When the weight of addressing evil feels as though it rests entirely on our shoulders and we must act immediately, we overestimate our importance. Elijah was sure he was the only remaining faithful person in Israel, when in fact the Lord knew of 7,000 others.
Indiscriminate
Peter’s act had no clear target. Malchus was not the primary enemy, nor was his ear. He simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Righteous anger is regularly expressed in indiscriminate ways. It shows up in generalized language about whomever we consider the other. We refer broadly to “liberals” or “Republicans” or even simply “the church.” We vilify entire groups based on hurt we’ve experienced at the hands of one or two individuals.
Our complaints may be entirely valid. But we will find a greater balm for the pain by naming it and bringing it to Jesus rather than using it as a bludgeon.
Destructive
Peter could have taken a courageous stand without causing harm to anyone. He could have chosen dialogue or some form of passive resistance to live his convictions.
Perhaps it is fitting that it was an ear that got destroyed, because when our unrighteous righteousness takes us out of the present, it often impairs someone’s ability to hear the gospel. Acts of holiness that lack love can deafen the world to Christ’s message of redemption.
Disembodied
In his fury, Peter detached from reality and no longer saw faces. Malchus lost his standing as a human; he became nothing more than a convenient object for the apostle’s aggression.
When Jesus claimed to be the Truth (John 14:6), he incarnated the concept of truth for all eternity. Every time we push truth back into the realm of the abstract, we risk dehumanizing the conversation. We stop seeing one another as image bearers of God.
In his desperate grasp for control, Peter temporarily lost sight of his Savior. He chose being right over being present.
Thankfully, Christ has great compassion on his regressed children. Everything he did that night reflects how he still graciously redeems in the face of our most misguided endeavors.
Jesus prays.
Prior to his arrest, Jesus prayed intensely and at length—far longer than Peter or the others could keep at it. Jesus spent a substantial portion of that prayer beseeching his Father on behalf of his disciples (see John 17).
When our own capacity to pray has run out, Jesus, the perfect pray-er, prays for us. As R. C. Sproul said, “We persevere because we are preserved by our High Priest’s intercession.”
Jesus shields.
Jesus stepped forward to offer himself freely to the mob in the garden so his disciples could leave unharmed. He said, “If you are looking for me, then let these men go” (John 18:8).
Like every moment, this was a gospel moment for Christ. The grand salvation strategy plays out over and over when he steps in to take our punishment and says to our enemy, “Let these others go.”
Jesus interrupts.
Peter might have continued to chop away if Jesus hadn’t stepped in and said, “Put your sword away!” (John 18:11). He interrupted the mayhem before it became worse.
If I were Peter, I would have resented the intervention. One more point of feeling misunderstood. Jesus makes no pretense of niceness to spare our feelings. Yet what initially frustrates us can be a gift, saving us from ourselves. We need his interruption in the midst of our regression.
Jesus fulfills.
Christ did not view the crisis as a crisis. He willingly went with his captors, asking Peter, “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?””
Rather than give way to the fear and defensiveness that so quickly get us in trouble, Jesus remained wholly focused on the greater picture of what he had come to do.
Jesus restores.
In his book Strength to Love, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “And so Christ’s words from the cross are written in sharp-etched terms across some of the most inexpressible tragedies of history: ‘They know not what they do.’”
Our terrible sins and the inexpressible tragedies they cause do not eclipse the truth of Christ, who atones for all of it.
It is Luke, the doctor, who tells us, almost as an aside, that Jesus healed Malchus’ ear. Christ rose above the atrocity and worked his final recorded miracle before going to the cross.
It was a spectacular, understated wonder, restoring a bit of cartilage. The deaf shall hear. One last proof of the presence of the kingdom.
Perhaps no less amazing, yet sadly necessary, is that in the midst of the chaos, Christ has the capacity and the willingness to undo the serious damage inflicted by reckless followers wielding swords.
That’s the story’s true miracle. It doesn’t excuse our mistakes or minimize the gravity of their impact. It would be better to be better. Still, it is both humbling and hopeful. Despite the wake of woe we leave behind, the Lord in his mercy continually finds a way to wring glory from the mess and renew the world’s capacity for the gospel.
May every Malchus find it so.
Jeff Peabody is a writer and lead pastor of New Day Church in northeast Tacoma, Washington.
