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The two careers I seriously considered in high school were journalist and pastor. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that I’d eventually bring them together with a journalistic philosophy within pastoral ministry. It was in a course on The Life and Work of the Pastor at Baylor‘s Truett Seminary that I first encountered the idea that a pastor’s responsibility is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” but lo and behold it’s an oft-quoted phrase in the journalism world. It dates back to the muckraking investigative reporting of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
What I love is the phrase’s non-dualistic perspective. It captures an irresolvable tension of the human experience. It speaks to the necessity of upholding the integrity of two distinct virtues that are often in conflict. Through situational discernment, it is our responsibility to express love to those who are being hurt and truth to those who are inflicting hurt. We don’t often talk about character formation in either the sacred or secular spheres of the contemporary Western world, but it requires character to consistently do both. Such a person is truly healthy and wise.
When thinking about this journalistic axiom, the biblical story that comes to mind is John 8. The judgmental teachers of the law and Pharisees cite Scripture as prescribing stoning for a woman caught in adultery. Pretty cut and dry, right? To the comfortable Pharisees Jesus says, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” They leave. To the afflicted woman Jesus says, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replies, “No one, sir.” He then declares, “Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.”
I still remember the sad commentary my seminary professor immediately added to that phrase, though. He said something like, “Unfortunately, most pastors you’ll encountered do neither very well. They end up in a muddled middle ground because their congregations don’t really allow them to do either. They’re trying to keep their jobs to feed their families and pay their student loans, so their ministry life is about soothing financial givers with vocal support and ignoring financial takers until they quietly go away.” What an indictment of American Christian culture.
The original beatniks pretty well exuded a lifestyle of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. While 1950s mainstream society looked with derision and scorn upon the broken and downtrodden for making a mess their lives, the Beat Generation responded with robust empathy and a spirit of compassion. Meanwhile, conservative society called for deference to cultural norms and respect for the powers that be, but the beats relished any opportunity for countercultural dissent and punching up. It echoes Jesus vs. the Pharisees, no?
