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Encourage One Another


Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. (I Thessalonians 5:11)

           It’s been a little while since I visited this theme, I think, and it seems to me that we probably all need it in some form or another. We’re supposed to encourage one another, and to build up each other. Let’s get practical. How do we do this? This is one of the places I think we err. Right now, our nation is divided between (supposedly) the haves and the have nots, the privileged and the oppressed, the White and the non-white, the Progressive and the Conservative, and  lives over jobbers and those I describe as the Living Dead (those whose lives have been stolen from them “for their own protection and the good of society.”) I could easily add more divisions, but these seem to be the most noticeable at the moment. 
         Now, according to Gary Chapman, within each of those groups, there are people who communicate love in one of five different languages: words of affirmation, physical touch, acts of service, gifts, and quality time. According to various psychologists, there are also anywhere from 4 to 27 different personality types (maybe more!) who view things from their own perspectives. This means that what I, as an ISTJ/Cd/1w2(?) who seems to love with acts of service need a whole different kind of encouragement and building up than, say, an ENFP/I/7w8 who loves with a hug.[1]
        The problem is, not all people of any given skin tone group, not all people of any socio-economic group, not all people of any political-philosophical group, not all people of any of the groups that are feeling divided right now fit any one personality type or love language. That means that our answer for them – our means of encouraging, building up, reconciling, loving, or in any other way relating to them – cannot be based on their membership in those groups. If I relate to a Black person as a Black person[2], I am being racist, and I’m part of the problem. It’s only when I relate to a Black person as a person that I have put aside racism.
          I am not going to propose that we all become experts on personality types and love languages, but those who are interested in pursuing the topic can check out the websites listed in the footnote.[3] The point is not the scientific application of those theories; it is the rejection of collectivism based on racial and political stereotypes. The point is that if we are going to encourage one another, to build one another up, or to heal divisions, we must deal with individuals and individual needs, not systems. If our focus is on the individuals, the systems may be addressed. If our focus is on the system, most of the individuals will be sacrificed. 
         If we are going to encourage or build up one another, we have to do it in terms that the other can understand and to which the other can respond. That means doing two things: getting to know the other person as the other person is and not as our prejudices wish to make them and translating our encouragement into a form that they understand. That’s a lot harder than looking at the color of someone’s skin or the color of their politics. 
         There are those who say “they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” What that says to me is that the people who say it don’t care about me. They don’t care about what is important to me. They only care about imposing their way of caring on me. It does nothing to encourage me. It does nothing but condemn me. 
         I need a lot of work in this area. I’m as stuck in my approach as anyone else is. It is a matter in which we each need to pray for wisdom, asking God to reveal how to win the battle with ourselves in order to encourage and build up the other in a way that is meaningful to them. But I’ll suggest to you that the elements of blessing listed below might be a good place to start:

·         meaningful touch
·         a spoken message of love and acceptance
·         attaching “high value” to the person being blessed
·         picturing a special future for that person
·         an active commitment to fulfill the blessing.[4]
         I’d love to see a study that examines these, the five love languages, and the five stages Kubler and Ross describe for grief. I think those would prove far more useful in our encouraging one another than our skin tones or membership in identity groups (especially as designated by someone else.)
[1] Note – I do not claim to understand Enneagrams or any other personality typing system as well as I would like, so my combinations of them may not be accurate.
[2] It is not my intent to offend with my choice of terminology. As nearly as I can tell, there is no truly approved terminology to be used – what is acceptable to one is not to another. If someone wants to let me know what the correct term (if such a thing exists) is for the next thirty seconds, I’ll gladly change it.

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