Some people are too polite.

I have fair skin, and I am bald. When I was young, the experts were urging people to seek exposure to the sun and get a tan. I got sunburned.

The result is that from to time little, scaly pre-cancerous patches appear on my skin. If left, they could turn into skin cancer. The solution is that, every once in a while, I spread a prescription cream on the patches every day for several weeks. The cream burns off the pre-cancerous cells, leaving ugly red blotches, which gradually fade once I have stopped applying the cream.

The thing is that, during the time I was applying this treatment a couple of months ago, no one in my church or care group mentioned that I had ugly red patches on my skin. Maybe they thought I would be embarrassed if they drew attention to them. Or maybe they knew I am old and assumed that old people are naturally ugly.

When I pointed out the patches to one of my grandsons, He said, “Oh, yeah. What are they?”

I said, “Measles.”

He knows me. He said, “I don’t believe you.”

I said, “Leprosy.”

He said, “I don’t believe you.”

I said, “Cancer.”

He said, “I don’t believe you.”

But this time what I had said was partially true.

There is a hilarious John Candy movie in which he goes to a meeting with a school principal who has a prominent mole on her face. He does everything to avoid mentioning the mole, but he can’t take his eyes off it, and everything he says comes out wrong, containing oblique references to the mole.

Years ago, many years ago, I was a leader in a college and career group. In the group was a young woman who was seriously overweight, probably due to a genetic or metabolic problem. A non-Christian student said to another member of the group, “If you Christians really loved that girl, you would talk to her about her weight.” So, it was decided that someone in the group should talk to her. Somehow it was also decided that that someone should be me. With fear and trembling one evening, I broached the subject with her. She was not offended, perhaps because she sensed my fear and trembling. The result was that she opened up about the subject to other young women in the group and was able to gain encouragement and support.

Sometimes we are too polite. We need to be careful not to accuse people of having dust in their eyes when we have a log in our own (Matthew 7:3). But church and care groups should be safe places where we can say to someone, “You seem to be struggling today. How can I help?” How can we carry one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2) when we don’t know what they are?