Rewards: we all come to expect to receive them in this life, but so often we are rewarded for our good efforts with heartache and pain. We do our best, and the more we try, it can seem the worse our results are. It defies our rationale, and despondency is our temptation. We think, “What’s the use?! The harder I try the worse it gets.”
Advocates at heart see conflict and they want to help. Very often, however, it works out that the advocate, acting as a peacemaker, trying to reconcile the injustice in conflict, is the one who is burned in the process of trying to broker peace between warring individuals. This does not mean that their efforts are null and void. God sees all, and of course God commends the efforts of the advocate, for the advocate sees the injustice in conflict and endeavours to bring truth to bear.
But there are few if no rewards this side of death.
If we have ever tried to help anyone embattled in conflict, especially the weaker party, we have risked loss on a number of fronts, including reputational, physical, mental, emotional, even to our livelihood. It is amazing the level of spiritual attack that comes against the advocate as they do divine bidding; as they speak and act for the purposes of God.
There is a great deal of spiritual warfare involved in sticking our head above the parapet wall. The enemy sees our exposure, and he’s quick to fire poisonous darts. If anyone can be threatened for exposure, those darts of criticism and condemnation will come with an unexpected ferocity at the least anticipated moment.
If you have been in a role of trying to broker peace, of becoming the negotiator, particularly where there are great powers and positions and property involved, you may certainly have felt vulnerable to exposure. None of us is ever perfectly protected, just as none of us are perfectly pure. We all get some things wrong. And it is this, the least noticeable chink in our armour, that the enemy exploits.
If we have tried to do what is best, and something completely unexpected happened, then people turned against us, especially when we were trying to help, we know it’s the cauldron of advocacy that we’ve been in. The weaker party have been silenced, and it’s no longer they that are being attacked, it’s us! For standing up for them.
This is where our attitude needs to be that of a peacemaker in response. Peacemaking and advocacy are so closely aligned. Those who sow in peace, James says in 3:18, reap a harvest of righteousness, but they may not see it this side of eternity.
We must expect that we will be shafted. Even so we must prepare our minds for that eventuality, just as we must prepare our hearts for that pain if or when it should occur. But in all eventualities, we will never truly be prepared (none of us ever are) for the hellfire of the betrayal coming to us for doing the right thing, albeit at times in misguided, perhaps naïve, ways.
It never feels nice. It always feels brutally unjust. The advocate stands in the gap for others, but they should never expect others to stand in the gap for them; welcome to the world of a type of advocacy. It is what it is. Advocacy is a much costly calling.
Paying the price of advocacy is part of the territory. We do it for the glory of God, which makes absolutely no sense to people in the world, because there is no reward, but for the reward we look for in heaven, which is absolutely spiritual, and can never rightly be material.
Why on earth, then, would anyone sacrifice themselves for another to the ends of fighting the injustice that the other is overwhelmed by? It’s a good question! All I can say, is for some, it’s all they can do. Truth and justice compel them to act in a certain way in the world, and they sort of know beforehand that they will suffer much in bearing this mantle.
Paying the price of advocacy is doing the work of God and losing friends, even having family at times abandon us. In being scapegoated we can feel as if we have done the wrong thing. We know we haven’t. We have reflected long and hard. We’ve been through cycles of guilt and shame, as anybody with empathy does when they’ve been rejected by those they care for.
Advocacy as a craft is littered with conflict, but to whom such a calling belongs they cannot say no. God’s will is far too compelling.
Advocates, I believe, are the genuine peacemakers. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said, “for they will be called children of God.” Why will they be called children of God? Simply for the fact that they love transcends selfishness, pride, greed and fear, and that truth matters most. It may be an extraordinary person who is willing to bear the cost of truth. That person is an advocate. It’s a tragic irony that it costs the advocate/peacemaker some if not many of their friendships.
Photo by Joël de Vriend on Unsplash
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