I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” (Gen
3:10)
There is a sense in
which we are born with certain personality traits. I have observed this in my four
grandchildren. Each one is uniquely individual from birth. Within days and
weeks you can see that each one has a distinctive way in which they relate to
the world around them. This is why individuals raised in the same household, by
the same parents can be so different from one another. This is true even with
identical twins. I know because Estela and I have identical twin girls. They
share the exact same physical DNA but they are totally different in
personality.
Though this truth is
obvious about each individual there is one thing that is constant in every
human being. From birth we all are undoubtedly totally self-absorbed. Infants are
concerned with one thing – getting their needs met by others. They are totally
and completely dependent on others to get their needs met. It does not matter
to them whether those others are tired, hungry, sick, or anything else as long
as they meet their needs. Infants have two basic needs – physical and
emotional. Babies want to be fed, changed when wet or dirty, warm, health, and
loved.
In the beginning
crying is the stimulus we use to get our physical needs met. Babies cry when
they are hungry, wet/soiled, cold, or sick in an attempt to persuade someone to
meet their physical needs. It is the only way they have to motivate others to
meet their physical needs. However, how their emotional need is met or, rather,
how they perceive their emotional need for love is met, will begin the process
of developing the personality they are born with. Every one of us develops traits
within our personality that are built on how we can manipulate or control our
environment so as to get our need for love met by others.
These traits have
one purpose – self-preservation. So, the
two things that drive us from birth are self-absorption and self-preservation.
The problem comes when we understand that one, the people we are attempting to
get our needs met by have been driven by the two things that drives us, and
two, our need for love becomes translated into how we feel lovable. The people
we need love from are faulty love givers and we always interpret love as
conditional. Our feeling of being lovable is reinforced in a trial and error of
behavior. Thus begins the self-absorbed journey of developing self-preserving
traits. These traits become our relational styles and dictate how we relate to
others. How we try to get our needs met by others.
As we grow in
childhood and the teenage years we are conditionally convinced that there are
things about us that are not lovable. This is reinforced with feedback from
behavior that incites disapproval. “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of
a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him.” (Pro
22:15) The concept of foolishness is in
the idea of being morally deficient. At birth we are totally self-centered,
selfish, self-absorbed, dependent on others to meet all our needs and discipline
(from family, faith, and society) is used to remove that foolishness far from
us and teach us to be selfless, self-sufficient, responsible to meet our own
needs. Abraham Maslow calls the desired stage self-actualization. Paul stated it this way, “When I was a child, I used to speak like a
child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away
with childish things.” (1 Co 13:11) A fool is someone who goes through life being totally self-absorbed,
selfish, narcissistic, and therefore useless to contribute constructively to
society. Discipline teaches us to be ashamed of certain behavior that is born
out of selfishness. Though this reinforcement is absolutely necessary in order
to live in relationships within society, we ultimately interpret the
disapproval as something being intricately wrong with us. That at our core
there is something about us that is unlovable.
What Adam expressed
in his first encounter with the Lord after sinfulness had entered the human
race identifies the problem we have in the emotional development process. We
have a basic need to be loved but as we grow up we see there are things about
us that are not lovable. Out of fear that we won’t be loved we start hiding
behind learned traits so that people won’t see our unlovability. We become ashamed,
not only of certain behavior but of who we are. Thus, we all, to some degree,
relate to others out of these shame based traits that we develop within our
personality. It may manifest itself in arrogance, debasement, or anything
in-between but at its root we are hiding in shame, fearful that someone may see
the true me, my nakedness, and not give me love. We hide behind relational
style barriers to protect us from the shame of being discovered unlovable.
The personality
traits we learn become the things we use to protect us from feeling rejected.
We may feel rejection in different ways, thus, causing us to behave in
different ways. Some of us may become more overtly people pleasers losing
ourselves in trying to be everything that we think others want us to be in
order to be accepted by them. Others of us may try to soften the sense of
rejection by doing the very things that we think will deserve rejection. We act
out what we project others will do if they truly knew our unlovability. Sometimes
it is expressed in anger or other destructive ways. It may cause us to become
co-dependent, domineering, or passive-aggressive. Regardless of how it is
manifested there are shame-based, shame-driven motivation behind it. We’ve learned
how to stimulate those around us in order to get what we think we need from
them. We’ve developed the traits through which we try to manipulate or control
the desired results.
To add to the
problem we live amongst people (parents, spouses, family, society, etc.) who
are faulty love givers. Even at our best, most self-actualized, we have a
tendency to give conditional love and motivate desired behavior through the
power of shame. After all, it is what we see ourselves as being. We use shame
in marriages, families, religion, schools, sports, business, etc. to motivate
others to a desired result. The traits we’ve spent a lifetime developing don’t
ever go away. We may discover them and purposely correct them to the best of
our ability but they are a part of us until ‘death do we part.’ They become our
default settings that are reset to default by certain relational triggers. Not
even faith in Jesus Christ can automatically erase these traits. In fact, many
times the Christian life is just another field where we plant, cultivate, and
harvest these traits. For example, like an alcoholic who beats his addiction to
alcohol only to become addicted to performance-based religion. The more our
parents, caregivers, teachers, etc., those who have the most influence on us as
we grow up, have related to us from a position of shame and conditional love
the more difficult it is for us to break the patterns in our own lives. If we
have something like religion that continues to reinforce the shame and
conditional love into our adult lives then these relational traits become even
more entrenched in us.
There is a scene in
the 1997 movie “Fools Rush In” that exemplifies how this can play out in a
relationship. The conversation is between one of the main characters, Isabel,
and her wise great-grandmother. The setting is the pregnant Isabel had lied to
her husband about losing the baby, pushed him away, and filed for divorce. Then
she ran away to Mexico where her Nanita (great-grandmother) lived. While in
Mexico she was feeling disheartened, bolted out of church in tears, and ran to
the great-grandmother’s house. Here is script of the scene as her Nanita
approaches her with an expression of compassion and inquisitiveness:
Isabel:
Nanita, it was the right thing to do.
Great
Grandmother: It is not your faith that has betrayed you. It is your fear.
Isabel:
I got lost...that's all. But now I make my own decisions.
Great
Grandmother: How selfish you are. To presume you know better than love.
Isabel: He never would have
left if he knew I was still pregnant. He wanted to go. I let him off the hook.
Great Grandmother: No. You let yourself
off the hook. You denied your heart and lied to the man you love. Why?
Isabel: Because I had to. If I didn't
leave him, he would have left me. And I really don't think I could've handled
that.
Great
Grandmother: You will never know love unless you surrender to it.
Isabel wanted to be
loved but her fear that her husband would first reject her led her to first
reject him so she wouldn’t feel the pain of being rejected. She feared that if
she stayed with him he would ultimately see here unlovability and leave her. As
she played out, in the theater of her mind, what she thought would happen she
called upon learned relational traits to protect her emotional psyche. She hid
behind a lie in fear.
The Lord through
Paul says, I “implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with
which you have been called… to a mature man, to the measure of the
stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer
to be children.” (Eph 4:1,
13-14) As a Christ follower, maybe one of the hardest things Christ ask of us
is to look into the proverbial mirror of our being and see ourselves as we
truly are. Not the way we want to be seen. Not the way we hope we are. Not the
way we think others see us. But to tear away the layers of self, like an onion,
until we find those things in our lives that drive us in shame to hid in fear
like children. The maturing process is to struggle through the pain, the tears,
the ugliness, the dysfunction, and allow Him to reveal to us the truth of our
childlikeness. The truth about how we continue to try to get our love need met
by others. A need Christ alone can truly meet. As long as we are trying to get
our love need met from others we will never fully grasp “His great love with
which He loved us.” (Eph 2:4)
“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with
humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal
interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Phil 2:3-4)
As long as we
continue to relate to others from the origin of our first birth we will never
be set free in our re-birth to be all that He created us to be. In our physical
birth we develop relationally from a basis of shame and fear. In our spiritual birth
we are to develop relationally from the basis of grace and acceptance. In our
physical birth we are motivated by selfishness to get from others. In our
spiritual birth we are motivated to serve and give to others. In our physical
birth we hide from others. In our spiritual birth we are to learn to be open to
others. In our physical birth we learn to relate out of emptiness. In our
spiritual birth we learn to relate from fullness. In our physical birth we are
self-absorbed, self-indulged, self-protecting, self-centered, and
self-preserving. In our new birth we are to become self-sufficient,
self-sustaining, self-reliant, self-governing, and self-sacrificing.
In our new birth we
learn to see ourselves absolutely forgiven being totally and completely
fulfilled in His love in spite of our unlovability. Christ gives us a healthy
perspective of self-respect teaching each of us self-discipline: “not to
think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have
sound judgment.” (Rom 12:3) When we learn to relate to others from our
spiritual birth we can accept people as they are because we aren’t trying to
get anything from them. Because we learn self-respect in Christ we can offer
respect to others. Respecting others is releasing them from conditional love,
acceptance, and forgiveness. It is relating to them from a position of grace
rather than from a position of shame.
How does respect
look in practice? It is easier to fake respect with others than it is to live
in the reality of respect with the ones we are closest to. In Ephesians 5:18
and following we find the description of marriage from the position of fullness
rather than emptiness, submission rather than superiority, new-birth love
(giving) rather than first-birth love (getting), and respect rather than shame.
Husbands and wives as individuals are to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Out of
fullness they are to develop a relationship that is alike in mutual submission,
mutual love, and mutual respect. So, how is respect expressed in our most
intimate relationship – marriage?
Husband and wife
learn to be two unique individuals. As distinct individuals they learn to
respect each other and their individuality. They learn to celebrate their independences.
Nowhere in scripture does it say that in marriage they become one. What it says
is they become one flesh (Gen 2:24). It describes the intimate physical act of
marriage and procreation. In a respectful marriage there are two individuals
who are equal in their uniqueness. One’s personality is not greater than the
other. One’s opinions are not less important. One’s wants are not more
important. Marriage is the unity of two equal individuals. It is not the
uniformity of a lesser into a greater and does not demand conformity.
Rather than being narcissistic
people who are takers respectful people are givers. Instead of trying to get
love from the other they learn to give love to each other. Respect substitutes
trying to get its needs met by the other with giving out of the overflow of the
love it has in Christ. Self-centered spouses are scorekeepers in a marriage. They are controlling, cynical, faultfinders, critically
competitive, more concerned with who is right and wrong, sees the relationship
in terms of winners and losers. Self-sufficient spouses are the opposite of
scorekeepers. They are more constructively critical of themselves than of their
spouse, more interested in the long-term health and heart of the relationship
than who’s at fault in the immediate problem, and they are more focused on
empowering their spouse than being the power-player in the relationship.
Rather than being
jealous toward the other respectful spouses learn to be trusting of each other.
Jealousy is birthed out of want. Trust is birthed out of satisfaction. Jealousy
is the desire to get something. Trust is giving what is due. Unless otherwise
proven untrustworthy, respect assumes trustworthiness. Jealousy is constantly
suspicious, the root of victim mentality and unforgiving. Jealousy comes from a
place of inferiority and weakness. Trust is extending a belief in a spouse’s
integrity, truthfulness, and faithfulness. There cannot be trust without
forgiveness. And because one spouse can trust that there will be forgiveness
they are set free to honest disclosure. Respectful trust can only come from a
place of personal strength and, personal strength comes from a humble
satisfaction of one’s personhood. “But by the grace of God I am what I am”
(1 Cor 15:10)
Rather than trying
to rule over the other respectful spouses learn to release each other from
personal expectations. The reason we try to control our spouse’s behavior is
because we somehow think that what they do or do not do reflects on us. Instead
of trying to manipulate through conditional love, acceptance, and forgiveness
respect does not assume reflection of another’s actions. Respect places
responsibility for one’s own actions on the one who is doing the action.
Respect allows failure without condemnation yet still upholds personal
consequences. What one spouse does says absolutely nothing about the other
spouse. Respect doesn’t try to blame one’s action on their spouse. A respectful
spouse doesn’t say, “I am the way I am or I do what I do because you are this
way or you do that.” Respectful spouses own their own behavior.
Rather than trying
to ‘fix’ the other, respect accepts the other without expectations of change.
Respect doesn’t try to change the other but instead honors each other’s differences.
Respect allows those differences without demanding the other to participate in
those differences. We each have different likes and dislikes. We like to do
different things. Involvement in those different things is extended with an
invitation without expectation to accept the invitation. Respect allows individual involvements
separate from the other, if so desired. Respect does not see these differences
and diversities as something that needs to be ‘fixed’. Respect may make
suggestions when asked but it is not demanding.
Rather than being
selfish, respect learns to be serving. Selfishness comes from a mindset that
says, “How may I get you to do what I want you to do?” It spends it time
manipulating. Respectful spouses come from a mindset that says, “How may I
serve you?” They spend their time learning how to magnify their spouse. A
selfish spouse tries to figure out what they can DO to exploit their spouse to
get them to DO what they want them to DO. Respect tries to figure out how it
can best BE what their spouse needs them to BE. Selfishness is all about
performance. Respect is all about grace.
I have yet to do
pre-martial counseling, perform weddings, or do marital counseling with people
who do not have a love for one another. Yet, even among believers in Christ,
that love alone is not enough to have a loving and lasting marriage. Most of
the time, the things addressed in this article would explain why marriages
fail. Some marriages fail and the result is a legal divorce while others fail
and the result is an emotional divorce. Either way, in God’s assessment, the
mark or goal of marriage has been missed. In these marriages where people hide
in fear and shame from one another God has empowered them to redeem their
relationship and live in a loving, lasting, and truly happy marriage. If you
can learn to live in the reality of respect with your spouse you are on your
way to being a relational healthy person.
