Bearing One Another's Burdens

I'm just going to be honest. I love Galatians 6:2 a lot less now that I've studied it. Does that sound irreverent? Let me clarify, it used to give me the warm fuzzies, and now it makes my brain hurt. I had pictured helping the needy, weeping for victims of injustice, and helping the down-and-out to whom life has been unfair. I absolutely know that God calls us to do those things, but I started chasing what this particular verse means, and I was challenged in some new ways.

Feel free to crack open your Bible and unpack this passage with me! :) 

Galatians 6:2 says, "Bear one another's burdens, and in doing so, fulfill the law of Christ." Conveniently located just twelve verses earlier, in Galatians 5:14, it says - "For the whole law of can be summed up in one command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"  So, it seems pretty safe to say that the whole essence of what Jesus calls us to do is love and look out for one another just as we do ourselves, and that can be done by carrying burdens for each other. Awesome. Sign me up for once a week! 

However, I'm a big believer in context, so let's look at the verse just before, Galatians 6:1. "Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself." I checked around to see what some great teachers have to say, and it seemed to confirm what I kind of hoped wouldn't be confirmed. In Galatians 6:2, it seems that "burdens" can almost be interchanged with the concept of "faults", which kind of stinks because "Bear one another's faults" feels far less motivating. Faults are messy, ugly and hurtful. Forgiving can be hard enough, but to actually get in the mess...

Maybe I could rewrite this text like this. "If you see your brother or sister in Jesus stuck in sin, don't just shake your head and feel sad, don't just pray for them, and don't go tell everyone how "burdened" you feel for them. If you are living a life consistent with how God says to live, you have the moral authority to come alongside them with a humble and gentle spirit and tell them that what they're doing is sin. They're choosing to live in chains that Jesus died to free us from. If you are struggling with the same thing they are, you may need to take a pass. Taking that burden and temptation would just be unwise."  

Back to my appreciation of context, let's look at verse five. "For each one will bear his own load." Wait, what? Didn't God just say to bear each other's burdens? No wonder people say the Bible contradicts itself! *insert lots more studying* 

Verse five is important. Like, really important. This passage doesn't give a manual for what it exactly looks like to be a burden-bearer. We get some guidelines and something a whole lot better - the Holy Spirit. He's called our Helper, and He really will help us with the practical parts of burden-bearing here. We are ultimately going to answer to God for our own stuff, and they are going to answer to Him for their own stuff. We're not their Holy Spirit. We can't force them to change. We can't be their always-and-forever crutch. We can't make them live right or love Jesus. This is helpful for me because I used to be a textbook enabler. I swear I had a sign on my back that said something like, 
"Make chronic bad choices? Plop your burdens down on me. I will go out of my way to buffer for you so you don't feel the consequences quite so badly. You'll be freed up to go mess up your life some more! I'm so nice!" 
Here's the cold, hard fact. Sin hurts. Isaiah 5:18 says, "What sorrow for those who drag their sins behind them with ropes made of lies, who drag wickedness behind them like a cart." Now THAT'S a burden. When someone is stubbornly choosing lies over truth and consistently refusing to stop dragging that sin behind them, that's their burden. I think we need to be really sensitive to the Holy Spirit about when to bear a burden and when to love someone enough to let sin hurt like it's supposed to. Pain is motivating, it gets our attention and makes us want to change whatever we need to make it better. 

I'm not really on a soapbox here. I've been on every side of this thing. I've had my burdens borne, been teachable and changed. I've stubbornly held on to sin and felt the pain. I've been an enabler, and I think there have been times I have done burden bearing the right way, too. Let's be grace-filled, Spirit-led burden bearers "that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith!"

Just a disclaimer, this has been my personal study. I'm flawed and certainly not a scholar, so the only parts that are absolute truth are the verses! I hope you'll dig in yourself. I would love to hear what God's teaching you!