Program / Course 2: The Solitary Christian in Depth / Lesson 5.3
What you will learn
- Define accountability and distinguish real accountability from the appearance of it.
- Describe the qualities to look for in a person who will give honest counsel, and the warning signs of a harmful one.
- List several forms accountability can take for a person without a congregation.
- Set up a simple, workable arrangement and know how to review it.
The big idea
Accountability means that someone other than yourself knows how you are living and has the freedom to tell you the truth about it. Scripture treats this as ordinary Christian life: bearing burdens, confessing faults, restoring the fallen, listening to counsel. Without it, the safeguards of the earlier lessons are only good intentions. Real accountability needs a real person, regular contact, honest questions and permission to be disagreed with. It also needs protection against abuse, since the wrong kind of oversight can do harm.
Key terms
- Accountability
- The willingness to give an account of how you live to someone who has the standing and freedom to question it.
- Spiritual direction
- A regular conversation with a trained and experienced person who helps you notice and respond to God in your life. A director is not a boss and not a counselor.
- Confession
- Telling another person your sins. In Catholic and Orthodox practice it is made to a priest and includes absolution. Many Protestants practice mutual confession between believers or confession to a pastor.
- Spiritual abuse
- A pattern in which a person in religious authority uses that authority to control, shame or exploit another person.
- Mentor
- A more experienced person who offers guidance over time to a less experienced one.
- Boundaries
- Limits on what another person may demand of you, which keep accountability from becoming control.
Background
Previous lessons described the dangers of studying alone: pride, self-deception, isolation and withdrawal. Each has the same remedy in the end, which is another person. Proverbs says, “Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14), and “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend” (Proverbs 27:17). Ecclesiastes says that “Two are better than one” because, when one falls, the other can lift him up (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10).
The New Testament adds practices. “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed” (James 5:16). “Bear ye one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). Jesus gives a procedure for an offense between believers, beginning with a private word (Matthew 18:15). This lesson looks at how a person without a congregation can put such practices into effect, and how to avoid the damage that false accountability can do.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: What real accountability requires
Four things mark real accountability. First, a person who knows the facts, not a stranger who knows only what you choose to say. Second, regular contact, since an occasional conversation cannot see patterns. Third, honest questions, asked in the expectation of true answers. Fourth, permission to disagree, which means you have said aloud that you want to hear when you are wrong, and will not punish the person for saying so.
A lot that is called accountability lacks these. A group where all members agree is not accountability. A public statement of belief to a large audience is not accountability. A conversation in which you never admit anything difficult is not accountability.
Step 2: Whom to look for
The Bible and the tradition give hints about the qualities to seek. Paul’s list for those who oversee the church includes sobriety, gentleness, hospitality, self-control and a good reputation (1 Timothy 3:1-7). Benedict wants an abbot who adapts himself to each person and knows how to be both stern and tender. Cassian’s elders were praised for having long experience and for not pressing a person beyond his strength. A good counselor, then, is experienced in the faith, humble, discreet, patient, able to say hard things kindly and faithful in his own life.
It also helps if the counselor is someone you do not entirely agree with. A friend who always sees things as you do has little to add.
Step 3: Forms available without a congregation
A friend who is a mature Christian and who meets with you monthly is one form. A priest or pastor you contact by letter or phone, even from far away, is another. Spiritual direction is offered by many monasteries, retreat houses and trained lay people, often by appointment and sometimes online. A confessor, in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, serves for confession and counsel. A small group of two or three believers who commit to meet regularly can serve as well. A chaplain, a teacher or a professional counselor may help with particular matters. Some people also keep an annual meeting with a wise elder, which the desert writers would have recognized.
Where mental health or serious life difficulties are involved, a qualified professional is needed, not only a spiritual counselor. A good spiritual guide will say so.
Step 4: Warning signs of harmful oversight
Accountability can go wrong. Be cautious of someone who demands total obedience, discourages you from seeing family or friends, treats questions as rebellion, claims special access to God’s will for you, asks for money or control of your decisions, or punishes honest disagreement. Healthy counsel increases your freedom and your responsibility. Harmful control reduces both. Jesus warned of those who “bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders” (Matthew 23:4).
If you have been harmed by a religious leader, you are not obliged to return to them. Seek a different guide, and, if necessary, a professional counselor and the help of trusted friends.
Step 5: Set up and review the arrangement
Be concrete. Pick a person. Ask them directly. Say what you want: for instance, to meet or speak once a month and for them to ask three questions: How is your prayer? How are you treating the people who depend on you? What have you been avoiding? Agree on how long you will try the arrangement. After three months, review whether it is helping. If not, change it, without blame.
Write in your notebook one thing you have been told that you did not like. If you cannot name one after six months, the relationship may not be doing its work.
- Who knows the facts of how I live, not just what I choose to say?
- Have I ever asked someone, in so many words, to tell me when I am wrong?
- When did someone last tell me something I did not want to hear, and how did I respond?
- What kind of person would I trust with this role, and why?
- Am I avoiding accountability because I fear control or because I fear correction?
- What would a safe first step look like?
Examples
The monthly call
A woman asks an older friend from her old church to call her on the first Saturday of each month. They begin with a psalm. The friend asks the same three questions each time. After two months, the friend tells her gently that she has been dodging a family matter. It stings and helps. (A constructed example.)
False accountability
A man joins an online group that requires members to post daily reports of their spiritual progress. Posts are praised or shamed in public. He begins to write what will be approved. The group measures performance, not truth. (A constructed example.)
Harmful oversight
A leader tells a young believer that her doubts show rebellion and that she must not speak with her family about her faith. She is told to give a share of her wages. These are marks of control, not of care, and a wise friend would urge her to seek outside help. (A constructed example.)
Different perspectives
Catholic
Catholics have the sacrament of penance, with a confessor, and the long tradition of spiritual direction. Priests, religious and trained lay directors offer direction. The Church teaches that the confessor is bound by absolute secrecy, the seal of confession.
Orthodox
Orthodox Christians have a spiritual father, often a priest or monk, to whom they confess and from whom they ask counsel. Orthodox writers also warn that a person should test a would-be elder carefully and not follow someone with a false humility or hunger for power.
Protestant
Protestants stress mutual confession and correction among believers (James 5:16, Matthew 18), the pastor’s care for souls and, in many circles, accountability partners or small groups. Some Protestant writers have become concerned that unstructured accountability groups can drift into either gossip or pressure.
Scholarly and secular observers
Researchers on behavior change find that people keep commitments better when they report to someone they respect and when the support is encouraging and not punishing. Researchers on high-control groups have described warning signs, such as isolation from outsiders and punishment of dissent, that overlap with those in Step 4.
Why it matters
Everything in the earlier lessons leans on this one. A person who studies alone and has no one who can say that he is wrong has nothing to catch an error until it is large. Real accountability costs something: time, pride and risk. Done well, it is also among the greatest helps in the Christian life, and those who have it rarely want to give it up.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Accountability means telling someone every detail of my life.
Correction: It means giving an honest account on matters that count, to someone with reason to ask. Discretion and privacy remain.
Misunderstanding: A pastor or priest is automatically a safe counselor.
Correction: Most are, but some are not, and office does not guarantee wisdom. Use the same cautions as for any counselor.
Misunderstanding: Accountability is for people who have done wrong.
Correction: It is for everyone. The tradition prescribes it especially for those who are advanced, since they are the least likely to see their faults.
Misunderstanding: I can be my own accountability.
Correction: Self-examination is useful, but the earlier lessons show why it is not enough. Another person sees what you cannot.
Knowledge check
What four marks identify real accountability?
A person who knows the facts, regular contact, honest questions, and permission to disagree. Without these, an arrangement may look like accountability but fail to do the work.
Name two forms of accountability available to someone with no congregation.
Examples: a mature friend meeting monthly, a priest or pastor by phone or letter, spiritual direction at a retreat house, a confessor, a small group of two or three believers. Any two are correct.
What are three warning signs of harmful oversight?
Examples: demanding total obedience, cutting you off from family and friends, treating questions as rebellion, claiming special knowledge of God’s will for you, asking for money, punishing disagreement. Any three are correct.
When should you seek more than spiritual counsel?
When mental health or serious life difficulties are involved, since a qualified professional is needed. A good spiritual guide will recommend that and will not claim to replace it.
Think it through
- What do you fear most about letting someone question you?
- Who in your life is wise enough to be asked, and why have you not asked?
- What would you do if the person you asked told you something that you strongly resisted?
- Have you ever been harmed by oversight, and how has that shaped your caution?
Independent assignment
Make the ask
In your own notebook, write 300 to 450 words. Name the person or form of accountability you will pursue. Write out what you will ask for, how often, which three questions you want asked and how long you will try the arrangement before reviewing it. Then make the request. If you cannot do it this week, write down what is stopping you and what small step would remove that obstacle.
Further study
- Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of St. Benedict Read chapter 2 on the abbot, and chapter 4, the tools of good works.
- John Cassian, The Conferences Read Conference 2 for the importance of opening one’s thoughts to an elder.
- John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood On the weight of pastoral care.
- John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions Look for Wesley’s teaching on mutual confession and small groups.
- James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another.
- Proverbs 27:17 Iron sharpeneth iron.
- Galatians 6:1 Restore such an one in the spirit of meekness.
- Ecclesiastes 4:9 Two are better than one.