My friend just received a text message from a "church" aquantance of his, Harvey. The text expressed intense anger. It castigated my friend and his whole "church" group because no one had told Harvey that a particular person was in the hospital. Question: Why did Harvey expect someone to tell him ?
Many of our conflicts with God, in our view of ourselves, in our families, and in social groups like the church are based entirely on our own false expectations. We have been trained in our society to expect every thing to be done to make us comfortable. We expect other people to anticipate our desires and beliefs and be controlled by them.
As we were raising five children in our home disputes often arose. No matter how the dispute was resolved it seemed someone was crying out, "But that is not fair !" Each child came with his own self-centered standard of fairness. He expected a "fair" result. I very soon developed the response, "Do you want fair ? Fair is that we all go directly to Hell right now. Are you sure you want 'Fair' ?"
Questions: Why do we expect people who do not love and follow Jesus to act like loving Christians ? And why do we excuse our own failures to live by that same standard ?
It is time for each of us to repent from imposing guilt on others.
It is also time for us to repent from accepting the false guilt trips that others seek to impose on us.
His, thus Yours,
Stuart
