Two words hang over Christians until their death bed: “finish well.” Whenever I hear this phrase, I picture Yoda, in all his wisdom. (“Luke, remember this, finish well.”)
I think I know what those two words mean when they’re spoken from the pulpit or when they are the title of seven-week Bible study. They mean running the race, fighting the good fight, keeping the faith. Which, in turn, means it’s not about how you start but how you finish.
Recently though, when people started saying the phrase in reference to a specific situation, it made me tilt my head to one side and say, “Hmmm, is that really finishing well?”
I’ve just gone through a rather unsavoury end to my employment with a Christian institution. It’s an institution with a long and proud history of being honourable and respected.
There is a season for everything, and perhaps this organization’s cycle of life has gone full circle. The current leadership has been untruthful to staff and clients. These individuals have been unethical, immoral, and certainly un-Christlike in their actions and attitudes. The board has been like an absentee parent, and concerns raised have been dismissed.
The wounding from this experience has been deep and wide. Many of the staff left in tears, enraged and broken. I have rarely seen such disregard and disrespect in the workplace, let alone a Christian one.
Because I have a heightened sense of justice, I started speaking up. I couldn’t simply accept what was happening and go gently into the good night. I wrote letters, I spoke out against the situation and against specific individuals, I called meetings, and I called a spade a spade. Many of my colleagues, as they were being pushed out of their careers and livelihoods, just smiled and told me that they wanted to finish well.
Finish well? So does that mean I’m not?
I think Christians are getting better at speaking up against injustices as a whole. We sign petitions, we write letters to the government, we boycott, and we’ve even been known to picket. We stand up when we see injustice: people treated poorly, inequities, violations, abuse.
So why is it that when something goes wrong in our own community we are pressured to stay silent? To simply pray?
We are encouraged to not be disturbers, to not rock the boat, to leave it to God to dole out punishment.
But I can’t do it. And furthermore, I don’t think it’s healthy. Not only is it naive to turn a blind eye to offences in our own communities, it’s not right to make the person who has brought these wrongs to light feel like a traitor.
For me, finishing well isn’t burying my head in the sand, allowing injustices to slide by unnoticed and unpunished because they happened within our own tribe. Finishing well is speaking truth, bringing light to the dark places, and holding people to account.
Pursuing truth starts at home, in our own spaces and churches and organizations; if we don’t seek justice within our own communities, then we have no right to do it in the world.
Photo (Flickr CC) by Tim Norris.
