Lost your reputation? Rejoice!
(published:Divine Light, July 2004)
A man's name is one of the most valuable and precious things to him. Many men strive hard to maintain their reputations or to defend them and the loss of one's reputation definitely is a heart wrenching experience for any person to go through.
There are three ways in which one can lose his reputation
- Through his own fault
- Through no fault of his
- Through partial fault and part added on gossip.
It is a fallacy to claim that any one of the above cases is less painful than the other. For example in case 1, when loss of reputation is caused due to one's own fault, the person knows that the loss of reputation is justified, but it still hurts. In case 2, one might think that as there is no justification, the person maybe more hurt but in this case the person has the comfort of knowing that God and himself (if no one else) knows the truth. Among the three, the third is the most common. The person knows that part is justified and part isn't. He probably goes through a mixture of experiences faced by people in the first two cases.
Losing our reputations deservedly or not is a very humbling experience. This experience should cause us in essence to die to ourselves. Instead of trying to defend or salvage and rebuild our reputations, we should realize and acknowledge how worthless we really are and cling to the one-and-only Name above all Names 'JESUS'.
The Word of God contains many psalms, like 54 - 59 all showing us how the psalmists suffered under persecution. But there is another thing these psalms have in common. When under persecution, they all cried out to the Lord. Psalm 18:3 says, "Call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praise, so hall I be saved from my enemy". Empty your heart and soul out to the Lord and undoubtedly you will be blessed by it. Jesus tells us in Mt 11:28 "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." We should truly cast all our burdens unto Jesus, the ones we deserve and the one's we do not, and He will give us rest.
We are all sinners and many of our sins are unnoticed by men. So even if persecuted for things we have not done, we should accept the persecution as a penance for the sins we have committed. If we look at it in this manner then the suffering, which we receive, can be accepted with praise and thanks. We should keep in mind the words of St. Peter that throughout our suffering; we must resist the devil; that is waiting for us to make wrong decisions in our suffering. In these situations, and indeed all situations, we should never repay evil with evil. Instead we have to try loving those who persecute us. This can be done only through the grace of God that we will receive when we pray for the concerned person/people, perhaps using Jesus' own beautiful prayer 'Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do".
St. Peter also tells us that we must "Be steadfast in our faith for you know that brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of sufferings" and what is even more marvelous is that "After you have suffered for a while, the God of all grace who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ will Himself Restore, Support, Strengthen and Establish you" (1 Pet5: 9-10)
This experience should make us stronger in the Lord. It should create in us a deep and real desire to completely stop the evil habit of listening to or spreading gossip. It should also strengthen our faith knowing that the God who knows our every secret though and who knows our heart has died for our sons. And though our sins maybe as red as scarlet, they are as white as snow (Is 1:18). This is done through the precious blood of Jesus, which cleanses us when we honestly repent.
So therefore in the words of St. Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 " Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; (even and especially in these types of circumstances) for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."
