Thread by @KaitlinCurtice

I grew up on the "accountability" model-- every sin needs to be told to an accountability partner, and especially if you're a guy.

While the model is for people to learn to be self-disciplined, they often become shaming.

But I wonder today, what kind of accountability can we have for one another?
I'm part of a @BAbridgebuilder group in my city, where we talk safely and openly about racism and white supremacy.

What if we had accountability groups to talk about colonial missionary work in which we exploit others? (@whereiscoreynow)

WHAT IF we had accountability partners who asked, "Hey, have you been recycling your plastic? Let's do this together."

We label a lot of things "sin" and that's why we needed those accountability groups growing up. We needed people to check us, but they were checking us on only certain things.

I don't think I need someone to ask me if I've read my Bible every single morning, so much as ask me if I am honoring the people around me in the way Jesus would, if I am struggling for the sake of justice in a broken and tired world.

Maybe we can hold each other accountable to whether we are perpetrating systems of injustice.

Maybe we can hold each other accountable to whether we are practicing #slaveholder religion (@wilsonhartgrove).

Maybe accountability looks like whispering to a friend, "I see joy in you, you know. It's hard, but you are a deep well and I'm proud of you."

Maybe accountability is giving permission for people to leave abusive relationships.

Maybe accountability is helping each other set healthy boundaries.

Maybe accountability is actually learning alongside other people that sex is beautiful.

What if someone asks, "As you learn to love your own people and culture well, are you remembering to love other cultures and peoples well?"

There, the gospel comes to transform our hearts, and breaks down our institutional sins.

I grew up hearing in an Evangelical world, "So, who have you helped save this week?"
The pressure spun through my head on a consistent basis.

What if, instead, we asked, "How do you make this world beautiful for others just because you exist in it today?"

Maybe accountability shouldn't be so much a checking in, a shaming exercise, but a kind reminder, a we're-in-this-together space, because Love is already in our midst.

And let's expand this further.

Can the earth hold us accountable?

Absolutely.

Can the plants and trees, flowers and bees, the sky, remind us of our place?

Can we sit in the middle of the woods, on the edge of the ocean, and listen for a lesson there, for the waves and the leaves to ask, "How do you care for the least of these?"

It's not that we need to check off boxes of confession.

It's that we remember that we are small, that humility is the best kind of posture, that we are forever learners who fail and try again within the wide bounds of grace.

This is leaning into diversity. This is getting outside the bubble of our own social circles and also the bubble of thinking that humanity has everything figured out and doesn't need the world.

What if accountability is actually the steady work of listening without speaking?
Of listening to voices of color, of listening to the marginalized and oppressed?
Maybe accountability is that constant posture, so that we don't feel the need to defend ourselves, but to sit still?

For someone like me, who grew up in the church and was forever loyal to it (and @rachelheldevans you too, girl!) it's a re-wiring of ourselves, stepping out of those shame-traps, because at the end of the day, they are not Jesus to us.