The wrongest possible way to be “in the right”!

Before I start, I would once again like to thank anyone who might be praying for me. The rate at which understanding is coming to me is incredible, and feels so far out of the ordinary that I can’t help hoping that there is someone out there praying for me!  What I am going to discuss in this post is a very obvious failing of mine, so it is entirely plausible that someone might have noticed and decided to pray for me.  If that is the case, I thank you so so much!  Please please be who I think you are, and please please be single!
[I guess I could always just contact him and ask, but I am still waiting for a strong and compelling enough sign that the time is right to do just that…I do hope that it is a matter of “when”, not “if”.]

As I have said above, this post concerns one of my biggest failings which frankly is probably glaringly obvious to anyone who has ever read this blog at length.
It is simply this: I genuinely do not go around trying to pick arguments with people. But the way things tend to work out, because of certain things about me, people tend to get intimidated by me very easily especially in a church context.  For instance I am extremely confident in my understanding of the Bible. Perhaps someone can explain what it might be about me that makes people tend to assume the opposite?!  This then means that I go out of my way to prove a point… which then tends to mean that their insecurities flare up and they can then do silly things, like pick a petting fight with me or invent false character failings for me or whatever else it might be. And then, and this is the negative trait on my part – that then tends to provoke a huge ego response from me.

Saving grace?
The big saving grace in all this, is that at least recently, I have avoided expressing that big ego response directly to the people concerned. However, it all gets expressed right here, on this blog, where I have not held back in saying it exactly like it is. And frankly, that often does not even touch what is truly going on in my mind.

So to summarise, in the actual situation between the person concerned I will have been “in the right”. To be perfectly candid and sincere, I have worked a lot, like a HECK of a lot, on my own insecurities, so if there is any weirdness in my interaction with someone else it will tend to come from the other person. Where my own character has consistently failed has been in my response to the insecurity failings of those other people.

Well just yesterday, I was reflecting on one of these situations. And oh my goodness, sincerely, rarely has there been a situation in which I have been more “in the right”. This one situation annoyed me so much that I have already ranted about it endlessly on this blog, but perhaps not revealing that all these different rants were about this one situation.
So to be candid, yes I was “in the right”, and this person was clearly provoked by big insecurities (and I can easily tell you exactly what those insecurities were, it was all so transparent).
But then I was listening to my own thoughts regarding it yesterday. And I kept having to apologise to God. Dear Lord, this is sheer arrogance on my part. “Who did she think she was?!”  “Why on earth would I, I who am…”  And finally, after all these years, I caught myself.

You know, I have been aware of this issue for years.  That is, I have a propensity to despise people so easily when I find myself less than impressed by their behaviour.  However, it was only yesterday that I allowed myself to acknowledge the extent of arrogance in my own response to it.
I have spoken a lot about humility on this blog. You know, I genuinely give as much as I can in pursuit of Christ – that is my lifelong commitment. I also aspire to excel in various endeavours, and to be honest both of these things can try my meagre  reserves of humility. And yet, this is the one issue that most demolishes my humility; when people behave like this.

So you know what? Yesterday I finally humbled my heart before God, and asked for His forgiveness regarding this. God wants me and everyone else who claims the name of Christ to walk in humility.  God does not want us to be “arrogant for Jesus”, that is not the way it works.
So henceforth, once again it is a boundaries thing. Frankly, that person about whom I have ranted at length, should not have been in that level of proximity to me in the first place. When she did what she did, if I had had greater emotional maturity and understanding, I would have humbly, but kindly, relegated her to the level of “freebie friendship” at best – and kept her there.  Actually, if you read below you will see that in this particular situation even that level of friendship was not appropriate for this particular individual.  You know what?  Over the majority of the length of time I interacted with her, she was not an ogre by any means. She was genuinely kind and gracious, and generous. But then right at the end, she repeated failed to respect my boundaries. This is something for which I have absolutely zero tolerance, whether it is coming from a man or woman, no matter how genuinely kind or gracious they might have been previously. Sorry, not sorry! In less severe cases, putting someone at the level of “freebie friendship” does not mean that I am “better” than them, it just means that it is not appropriate for us to be close friends.

Beyond that particular individual, this has been a big issue on this blog. Because what will happen is that I will go to someone’s church, they will treat me badly, and then that will provoke that same arrogant response within me, which I will express on this blog.  Now what I have to learn, and what I have to practise is graciously walking away and continuing to think positively and kindly about people and churches, even if it is not appropriate to be in close contact with them.

You know that regarding this whole issue there are two kinds of people:
Reciprocal friendships, where this is someone I want to be in close friendship with because we share close values, and freebie friendships, where this is not someone who shares the necessary values for me to be in close friendship with them.

If one of my reciprocal friends acted badly, or in a way that negatively surprised me, because I already know and trust who they are, I think that I would be able to handle it better, without coming to this blog to rant about them. The problem though is when it is someone who does not have that established character that I am looking for in a close friendship. And what makes it worse is that these people genuinely do fail to have excellent character!  So when I sit here and tell you how bad they are I am not lying, or even exaggerating.  They sincerely are that bad. And yet, it is not of Christ for me to sit here and dissect them and explode in rage at how they have failed to acknowledge me and my excellence.  The thing to do to be truly excellent is to walk away as graciously as I can, and keep humbly loving them from a level of freebie friendship, while not allowing them to get close enough to repeat previous poor behaviour. If the person in question has failed to respect my boundaries, as in this case with this woman, then at present I don’t think it is prudent to keep them even at the lower level of “freebie friendship” because I just can’t trust them. I just cannot trust whatever machinations they might be cooking up in their mind. (But I know them enough to be confident that they definitely are constantly cooking up some scheme or the other, designed expressly to hurt me or annoy me or provoke me.) But all the same, I need to show kindness and respect to someone, I need to cultivate that in my mind towards them, even if I cannot prudently keep them at any level of friendship in my life. The same goes for churches, and pastors, and church members.

You know, this should have been obvious to me from a very long time ago. As I say I can only thank whoever might be praying for me.  By the grace of God, this will be the new way for me moving forward, and I hope you will all see the difference on this blog!