Preaching to myself

What can be said to confront - even help - people who say one thing but clearly mean another, over and over again? Not only that, add to the mix that they are accustomed to manipulation being their weapon of choice in those battlefields for control and power they attempt to dub as “friendships.”

This has spurred me on to thinking lately about the possible degrees of sociopathic thinking and behavior that maybe everyone goes through on a daily basis just because it‘s human nature: without considering the ramifications, we do whatever we feel like doing in order to get what we want from people, as long as it’s under the guise of “acceptable behavior,” don’t we? If we have strong enough idealistic convictions about some matter, we can get extremely “creative” (cruel and unusual, in fact) in our methods aimed toward obtaining a desired outcome. How often we abuse each other, my dear fellow human beings!

What a challenge, then, is grace; true, unfaltering, unselfish and loving grace, that is.

We all know how it feels to come to “the end” of ourselves, when somebody exhausts what feels like our full store of patience and endurance, exasperating us in our generally-shallow attempts to be understanding and kind - only as far as makes us feel accomplished and better than another, though, exerting what we feel to be the right amount of necessary common courtesy allotted to every person. We eventually reach a “persevering threshold,” beyond which we ultimately only want to yell, “ENOUGH!” and be done with the whole “debacle-of-a sham-of-a deception-of-a human connection” with the “perpetrators” around us. What about the perpetrator within? Don’t know about you but, at the same time, to justify the righteous indignation I feel, I usually overlook my own insertion of cruel, manipulative power plays over the years because I’ve been successful in them and have had no reason yet to regret the control I’ve gained over people and situations. A “socially-acceptable abuser” doesn’t normally present opposition to himself/herself and will scoff at whatever calm, strong and peaceful presence makes him/her second-guess himself/herself and feel insecure and vulnerable.

Well, what is “normal” for mankind isn’t a confine under which we must suffer without hope for freedom from its frightened clutches. We don’t have to settle for and be abused by what comes naturally to humans: the desire to judge and punish. That’s mercy: liberation from our own penchant for dealing out damnation to ourselves and to others. Grace, the ability to tolerate and forgive, is what wouldn’t come naturally to us if left to our own devices.

“There will always be some--as those who glared at the woman taken in adultery--who will urge us to be stern, rigid, and cold-hearted. Yes, there are always a few who prefer stoning to forgiving, who will vote for judgment rather than tolerance. But my hope is that we might join the swelling ranks of those who decide that Christlike grace (with all its risks) is so much more effective, we opt for it every time.”1

- K. E.

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1 Swindoll, Charles R. The Grace Awakening. Word Publishing, London. 1990. p 12