Christian Life

Transparency Instead of Accountability

I found this post over at Refine Us to be helpful regarding accountability.

What I have discovered is accountability is useless.

Accountability is only as valuable as the transparency you and I offer in the context of that accountability.

We have a unique ability as humans to fool each other. It is easy for me to fake you out. It is easy for you to lie to my face. It is easy to pretend like your marriage is better than it really is. It is easy to offer just enough accountability to make yourself look spiritual. At the same time that partial accountability can be so dangerous because you are not only fooling me, you are fooling yourself.

The truth is you and I can meet every Wednesday and I can lie to you. The truth is that you can have several circles of accountability and unless you are 100% transparent in at least one of those circles, implosion is on the horizon.

I am not saying you should be 100% transparent with everyone, but I am saying you should be 100% transparent with someone. I have two people in my life that if I am asked a question I give 100% of the truth; I withhold nothing. I know if I am struggling or need to confess something, or am in a dark place, I can share that with these two people.

One of the biggest mistakes I made in my life, my marriage and my ministry is I substituted accountability for transparency. Accountability without transparency is useless. It is easier in the short term to offer accountability and it seems more spiritual?but you experience more of the grace and mercy and love of Christ when you offer transparency.

In fact, when you are willing to offer transparency, you will find you don’t need to be held accountable.

I have had several attempts at accountability fail for the very reasons mentioned here. If you are not willing to be completely open and honest about everything to your accountability partner then you will not find true accountability. Instead, you will have created the illusion of accountability in order to ease your conscience. That may be a more dangerous and unhelpful position than having no accountability at all.

(HT: Zach Nielsen)

What Do You Think?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.