Nobody Has To Approve Of What I Keep

There are two people in your family who have a settled opinion about your house.

They have never said it to your face in those words. They do not need to. It comes out sideways, in a look between them, in a sentence that starts with a laugh, in the way one of them says the word garage.

And you know exactly what the opinion is, and you have been arguing with it for about six years.

Not out loud. In your head, usually while you are standing in the garage on your own, constructing a case that you are never going to present to anybody.

That is the thing I want to name today. The private trial.

There is a courtroom running in your head with two relatives on the bench and you appearing daily for the defense, and it has been in session for six years, and nobody in your family has any idea it exists.

And the case has never once been decided, because a trial with no judge present cannot reach a verdict. It just runs.

So let me do something about the jurisdiction, because that is where this actually gets settled, and scripture is unusually blunt about it.

To his own master he stands

There is a sentence in Romans aimed at people who had strong opinions about how other believers lived.

Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. (Romans 14:4, King James Version)

That is a jurisdiction question. Not a plea for tolerance and not a request for kindness. A question about who has standing.

Paul's answer is that a servant answers to his own master. Nobody else is on the bench. The people with opinions are not being asked to be nicer about their opinions, they are being told their court is not a court.

You are standing before one master, and the family bench has never once had jurisdiction over your garage. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a man building a case in an empty garage, and Romans 14:4 settles who has standing rather than who is right.

Now notice what this does to your six years.

It does not decide the case in your favor. It dissolves it. There was never a court, so there was never a case, so the defense you have been preparing every week has been prepared for a hearing that was never going to be convened.

You have been preparing a defense for a court that has never once existed, and the preparing has never once been a fault in you. The written word answers the question of standing and leaves the opinions alone entirely, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man who has argued in his head for six years.

What the private trial costs

Here is what a running trial does to a man, and it is worth being specific about.

It makes the garage a place with a trial always running in it. A man cannot go out there for a screwdriver without the room saying something to him, and it has been saying it for years.

And it has quietly changed your relationship with two people you love. You are warm with them and you are also braced, every time, in a way they have never been told about and could not correct if they wanted to.

You have been braced against people you love, and that bracing has never once been something they asked for. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a man who is warm and guarded at the same table, and Romans 14:4 removes the bench rather than convicting the people on it.

And notice what a dissolved court gives back that a won case never would.

If you won the case, you would be a man vindicated against his relatives, which is a cold thing to be at a family meal. If the court is dissolved, they are simply your relatives with an opinion, which is what they always were, and you can enjoy them.

You are able to have them back as family rather than as a bench, and they have never once been anything else in fact. The written word takes the whole question out of human hands, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a man who would rather have his cousins than a verdict.

One sentence, said plainly

So here is the work, and notice it is not a conversation with anybody in your family.

Pick up one thing you kept. Say out loud why you kept it. No argument in it, no case, no imagined listener on the other side.

You are giving a plain reason with no defense attached, and a plain reason has never once needed an opponent to be true. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man in a garage speaking without arguing, and Romans 14:4 puts a servant before one master and nobody else.

Here is the test of whether you have done it right.

If the sentence has any of the word actually in it, or any sense of proving something, that is the defense speaking and not you. Try again until the sentence is simply a reason. It will feel oddly flat, and the flatness is the sound of a court that is not sitting.

You are aiming at a flat sentence rather than a good one, and flat has never once meant weak in this house. The written word asks who art thou that judgest another man's servant, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a man saying something plainly for the first time in six years.