I discussed the trouble I had forgiving difficult people in my two last posts “Struggling to Forgive” and “Struggling to Forgive, part two.” I explained my ongoing forgiveness for a person who is now dead. I needed to get past her faults and understand her hidden pain. Outwardly she lived a charmed life, but because of her cruelty and dishonesty, she never let others truly know her. God is showing me that many people are like that woman, and I must have compassion for them even when their lives seem so much easier than mine. God has also shown me that I first need to have compassion for myself by admitting to him how much those people hurt me.
Some people have many gifts and talents, and we might be amazed to learn they are mean to their family members. But gifted and blessed people can still give in to jealousy and a territorial sense of their own “kingdom.” They believe others are not entitled to the very happiness they either yearn for and cannot attain, or that they believe they have but don’t want to share. I have met so many people who speak of a family member who has genuine talents, but he or she does not seem to want others to have talents too. I have heard of jealous brothers and sisters, spiteful fathers and grandfathers, and many other unkind family relatives. Proverbs 27:3-4 warns us about the anger and jealousy of some people: “A stone is heavy and sand is weighty, but a fool’s wrath is heavier than both of them. Wrath is cruel and anger a torrent, but who is able to stand before jealousy?”
I suspect the cruelty of a family member (born relative or related via marriage) hurts the worst, because we believe in the sanctity of family bonds. When we respect family but other family members do not respect family, we may be shocked or even deny how much their cruelty hurts us. In my earlier posts, I spoke of myths about forgiveness, and our desire to minimize or even deny the pain of family wounds, because we don’t want to believe someone so close would hurt us so deeply. Yet familial betrayal goes back to the beginning of time. Look at Genesis 4 where the first man ever born (Cain) murdered his brother Abel, the second man born. Even when people read stories in the Bible where many family members have betrayed their relatives, we don’t want to admit this is true in our own family, at least I have felt this way.
Because of my denial, I realized I could not tell God how much those people hurt me and then receive his comfort. As a comforted person, I could have more easily looked at those cruel people and realized they had to be hurting too, even if they led an easy and charmed life (like the woman I described last week.) Sometimes I did know the people hurting me had suffered, and I could see problems in their lives. But when they also had many talents, I was baffled by their cruelty. I wondered why they did not rejoice in their many gifts. These people were loved and had amazing talents and good lives (many were at upper middle class status.) Why would they be so mean?
God is showing me the horror of jealousy. When people give in to their jealousy, they become blinded to what they already have. Instead of rejoicing in their gifts, health and loving family members and friends, they look at what their family member has that they lack. These talents might be athletic, musical, artistic, dance, beauty and physical form, intelligence, and other qualities. But by giving in to their jealousy, those jealous people did not work to develop the areas where they were not as strong as the family member they envied. They envied a quality they did not work at improving. And in many cases, due to their efforts to sabotage the person they envied, they did not work as hard at their own talents, at least this is what I have seen in some people who were cruel to me and to my friends. These people were irresponsible about their own gifts, and then they projected their self hatred onto those they envied.
We also know that jealousy caused Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery (Genesis chapter 37), and the religious leaders to lynch Jesus (Matt.27:18, “For Pilate knew that is was because of jealousy that the chief priests and elders had handed Jesus over to him.”)
These gifted but jealous and cruel people did not lead totally honest lives. I think of people who hurt me and some who hurt my close friends. These people did not start out as kind, honest people. They had a tendency to lie and take the easy way out earlier in their lives, even before they became adults. I have not seen people who led good and kind lives change and become jealous abusers. The roots of their behavior grew in their childhood. My friends and I have had to look back and admit these people were unkind long ago, and not just in our adult lives.
It hurts to admit how far back this bad behavior existed, but it also helps us identify this behavior. The Scripture says that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit (Matt.7:18.) Yes, good people sin, but they do not live an entire life of jealousy and cruelty towards others. But people who are cruel in their childhood often grow into adults who practice the same behavior. Part of why I have been so hurt by these people is my own blindness in admitting these people have a deep seated behavior that moves towards jealousy and cruelty. Because I so badly wanted a good relationship with these people, I kept coming back, forgiving them and hoping they would truly repent of their behavior. Perhaps they had a period of “good behavior,” (a day or a week) but they always went back to their mean ways. All of the people I speak of claim to be Christians. But I do not see the fruit of true repentance in their lives, and in Matt.7:15, Jesus calls these people “False Prophets.” I now pray for their salvation.
I am not judging these people by saying I pray for their salvation, because I do not know where they stand before God, and I love them and don’t them to go to Hell. I do not freely share my concern about their salvation, since these people claim to be a Christian. But in my own heart, between me and God, I tell him my concern. Some would still say I am judging these people, but I cannot stop my prayer for their salvation if they truly are like the people Jesus spoke of in Matt.7:21-23: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness!” If this confuses you, read the entire chapter of Matthew 7. Jesus describes people who claim to be Christians, do a few good works, but do not surrender their hearts to him, and actually practice many more bad works.
This may confuse some, as it did me when I was younger. I grew up in a home where I was taught that “Judge not, lest you be judged,” meant I was not to look at the fruit of a person’s life and understand when it was evil and thus the person was not saved. I was taught that I must accept that people were Christians when they said they believed the Bible says Jesus died for their sins. I was not taught about having a personal relationship with Jesus and the need to surrender a person’s whole heart and life to the Lord. Just believing in the head, I now know, does not make a person a Christian, as Jesus also says in Chapter 7 of Matthew.
As I said in last week’s post, my denial of the pain these people caused, and my blind desire to believe these people have truly repented have (together) caused me to go back over and over and get hurt by them again. This is likely the main reason why these people have been harder to forgive. When strangers are rude to me, I can more easily forgive them, because I have no relationship with them. But angry, close friends and family can hurt me and tempt me to become angry with them. Scripture warns us about people who give in to their anger and then hurt us. Proverbs 22:24-25 warns us “Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul.” I did not believe this Proverb, and thus I kept going back and getting hurt by these angry people. They not only hurt me, but I am sure they stirred up my unrighteous, fleshly anger. Proverbs 29:9 warns us we cannot truly make peace with people who scorn God’s wisdom: “If a wise man contends with a foolish man, whether the fool rages or laughs, there is no peace.”
We have to contrast a person given to anger with one who only had a bad day and briefly acted out of anger. Proverbs compares these people: Proverbs 11:23, “The desire of the righteous is only good, but the expectation of the wicked is wrath.” People give us an idea of who they truly are, based upon how they act when we confront them after they hurt us. Proverbs 9:8 helps us see the difference: “Do not correct a scoffer, lest he hate you; Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you.” I just did not believe all of this was true. I tried so hard to love these difficult people and also have a close relationship with them. Again, Proverbs 17:1 warns, “Better is a dry morsel with quietness, than a house full of feasting with strife.” But what was I supposed to do? I had to modify what Proverbs 22:10 says: “Cast out the scoffer, and contention will leave; Yes, strife and reproach will cease.” I could not literally cast out these people, but I could distance myself from them.
But distancing myself from some mean people is hard for me. In my first post about forgiveness, I explained the guilt I felt while pulling away from people who have consistently hurt me. The lies about forgiving really haunted me. And when these were people I was related to, I felt like I was betraying them by pulling my heart back from them. Yet I could not find a single person in the Bible who was supposed to bear her heart to an angry, jealous person. Scripture tells us to love our enemies, not open our hearts to them. It hurts to admit people we are related to act as our enemies, but some do this. We are to do acts of kindness for them. But we are not to get close to them.
How do we know? We use the best example, Jesus. The Pharisees were his enemies. Did he keep them close to his heart? No, they were not those he chose to be his 12 disciples. Jesus did choose Judas, but even he did not get to be extra close to Jesus. He reserved this place for Peter, James and John. And at times Jesus was secretive. Judas did not know the location of the house where Jesus would have his last supper. The disciples who did go to prepare the place had to follow an unusual clue, to follow a man carrying a pitcher of water. This enabled Jesus to keep Judas out of that decision. And some of Jesus’ deepest teaching to his disciples occurred only after Judas had left. Jesus was kind to Judas, but Jesus did not trust him. We are also different from Jesus, because he had to go to the cross to save us.
That salvation has already been purchased, and we don’t need to pay that price anymore. We do not need to allow any betrayer (like Judas) to get close to us. Even Jesus limited his exposure, and again, Jesus had to go to the cross, but we do not bear other people’s sins. That is God’s job, not ours. Jesus’ enemies never got close to his heart. Only after Judas was gone, did Jesus expose his most earnest heart, both at the Garden of Gesthemane, and also after he rose again.
It may be hard for others to come to the same understanding I have come to, but there truly are people who will not repent, even people we are related to. It may feel wrong, but we cannot let them get close to us. Our repeated attempts to show them love, may have been rejected or worse yet, used against us.
In this post, I cannot tell you how to handle your difficult people. You can ask me for ideas if you wish. Ask God and close friends (kind ones.) God will show you how much you can reach out to them and how much you should pull back. With two particular people in my life, I ask one or two close friends, as well as God. God is showing me how much to reach out to these people and how much to pull back. These two people have been so hard to forgive, because I kept coming back with my sincere heart open to them, and they kept stabbing me. It hurts to speak these words, but I have to say them, “I cannot trust these people to not hurt me. If I get close they will always hurt me. I can never trust them.” This is true, even as I keep forgiving them for what they continue to do. If they ever repented and turned to the Lord, I would watch them closely to see if their repentance was sincere or just another trick. But I never need to trust them right now, nor quickly trust them if they ever do claim to have repented. Proverbs 4:23 warns, “Guard your heart for everything you do flows out of it.”
I have followed the many myths about forgiveness and let some very harsh people get too close to my heart as a result. Then I denied how much they hurt me in an attempt to forgive. But I lacked mercy for them when I refused to let God give me his mercy. And as I kept letting these people get too close to my heart, I truly struggled to forgive them. I realize I am not judging them when I simply admit to the cruel fruit of their lives. There really are people, even those we are related to, who are cruel and may never repent.
This may have been a painful post for some to read if they are struggling to forgive someone. Yet we must be kind to ourselves and face the hard truth that there are some people God does not want us to get close to, because their only intention is to hurt us. I pray we have given you a stronger sense of your right to protect your precious heart even while you forgive these cruel people. To love our enemies does not mean we offer them our hearts. We do acts of service only if God calls us to do so, and even then, with safe limits as the Holy Spirit guides us. Thanks for joining us in this week’s post. I pray we have blessed you.