St. John Studies

We all want to live a stress free life and granted, too many of us [certainly me included] make too big of a deal out of little things but do you see minimization as a problem in your life?

Do you hide from your sins through minimization, saying it is ok, or no problem and you do have problems that need to be addressed?

What is the connection between denial, projection and minimization?  Is there a common thread between these psychological defense mechanisms?

Be honest, why do we give in so easily to these defense mechanisms?

Why is honesty such hard work?

What is the payoff for honesty?

In the Bible in Jonah 3, read it.  What the Ninevites did in response to Jonah’s prophecy is a lesson.  What can we learn from their response?

Throughout AHA Pastor Idleman keeps referring to the Prodigal Son as an example of a Biblical character who has problems of his own making, problems that take him far from his father, problems that take him far from God.

A lot of the Prodigal’s problems have resulted in severe relational difficulties.  Take a few minutes and watch the embedded video of a “prodigal type” situation and think about work you need to do with your relationships.  Do you need to get to work?

Years ago, I heard of a church that did not want the whole truth.

The pastor was using words like sin, sinner, hell and punishment in his weekly sermons.

This was not sitting too well with the congregation.

They wanted words like grace, hope and acceptance in their sermons.

They were at an impasse.  The pastor said he was not going to change.  The church said they were not happy with his sermons.

You know what happened.  He moved on to another church, hopefully to a church that could accept his blunt message.

Pastor Idleman speaks of Jonah.  Jonah did not sugarcoat his sermons.  God sent Jonah to confront the people of Nineveh with their impending destruction.  Jonah did what God asked.  He said to the people “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

Guess what.  They believed.  They embraced his warning and they changed.  God responded with compassion and grace.

So often this is not the case.  Jeremiah was another prophet who had a message to a backsliding people, Judah.  The people of Judah are stubborn and they have rebellious hearts.  Jeremiah’s message is that the people must wash the evil from their hearts.

It won’t be easy.

Even if they try to scrub themselves with soda and soap, the stain will not be removed.  If Ethiopians can change their skin and leopards can change their spots maybe they can change their ways.  That is not going to happen.  Jeremiah says that the sin has been written with an iron pen and engraved with a diamond point.  It is not going away.

In short, their deceitful heart is sick.

What is their only hope?  God.  Only God can change the people.  Nothing they can do as humans will clean up their mess.

What will not help?  Responses like “I’m sure it won’t be that bad,  there is plenty of time to turn this around or I am sure things will get better” are not going to help.  Making a serious problem less of a problem is not the way to go [minimization].

“Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

Embrace the truth; don’t fire the preacher and say “it’s going to be ok.”

Embracing the truth is the way to experience God’s compassion and grace.

Pastor Idleman tells many tales of people who minimize their actions as a defense mechanism against the guilt of their sin but as a Sunday school teacher, I want to share some information from Pastor Warren Wiersbe that fits in well with Chapter 8 of AHA.  Pastor Wiersbe has a list of “Immortal Lies” from his book Being a Child of God.

He begins his list with a quote from Mark Twain who said “that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.”

“God doesn’t really mean what he says” is one of the oldest lies ever told [back to The Garden].  God’s rules are pretty evident in The Bible but somehow people want to find a way around them.  Have you ever argued with someone and they used the “that’s your interpretation” defense?  What that defense is, is just an excuse for them doing what they want to do.

“I can get away with it” is a lie based on contemporary society where people think they can lie, cheat, steal and even murder and not suffer consequences.  God does sometimes delay executing a just sentence to give people time to repent and people will use this delay to sin even more.  One can never know when God will lose patience and call for an accounting.  When that happens, we will not “get away with it.”

“I’ll only do it once” is the approach satan used with Jesus.  Satan told Jesus that he could have the world if He would fall down and worship satan.  It is based on the old Lays Potato Chip slogan, “can you just eat one?”  Can you really just eat one and stop?

“Everybody’s doing it” is the bandwagon fallacy.   It is reasoning through justification.  Since the whole world is involved in this sin, it must be right.  First of all, can one prove that everyone is doing the sin?  Secondly, just because a large number of people are sinning, does that make it right?  I don’t think so.

“I can make up for it somewhow” is the idea that sin only hurts the one who is commiting it.  No matter how much you argue this, you can never know what you are doing to your family, friends and neighbors through your sinning.  Pastor Wiersbe tells a tale of his youth.  He was walking downtown in his community one night with his parents and they passed by a tavern.  Two men were arguing on the street.  One was saying “don’t go in there.  Think of your family.  Think about what you are going to do to them!”  The other man did not listen.  He went in, saying “I’ll make it up to them somehow.”  Pastor Wiersbe says that “the idea that the consequences of deliberate sin can be wiped out by gifts and the memory forgotten was born in hell.”  We never sin alone; what we do always involves others.

Lastly, “nobody will know about it” is the lie of character.  Everyone knows we have a reputation.  That is based on public behavior, what everyone sees us do in our public lives.  Character is what you do “behind closed doors” and minimizers have the attitude that if I don’t get caught, I have not sinned.  Well God knows about it and you know you have sinned.  Pastor Wiersbe says today’s added commandment is “thou shalt not get caught.”  In other words, until a person is caught, no sin has been committed.

In Chapter 8, Pastor Idleman focuses on minimization as a way to deal with sin, but what he is really saying is that people who minimize don’t pay enough attention to the erosion of their character.  Erosion is most often a slow process of removing soil and rock from one location to another by the steady movement of water over the surface of the earth.  It is hard to see because we can’t stand over the surface and watch for long periods of time.  However, what happens when we leave a location and return days later to the eroded location?  The ground has changed. The consequences have caused change.

The imortal lies have taken their toll.

Paul tells us in the Bible, “the wages of sin is death.”

I wonder if that is true?

The way a minimizer thinks, I guess it’s not.  Literally, if you sin, Paul means you are in the process of dying.  However the mimimizer believes just a little sinning is not going to hurt.  It does not bother God if I am having just a little fun.  He will forgive me for having a little fun.

That’s the way major problems usually start.  They begin with little problems, little steps that lead to making serious bad decisions.

The minimizer thinks that death is too serious a punishment for a “little sin” so they are quick to excuse it, quick to make light of it, quick to say “no big deal.”

Is death occuring?

It is.  Tiny increments of death are beginning to happen as the minimizer slips toward more serious sins, exusing himself or herself all along the way.

Pastor Idleman recounts a woman in his church “In tears…because of an affair, she lost everything: her marriage, family, and relationship with her kids.  With tears running down her cheeks, she shook her head and said, ‘It just started with some harmless flirting at work’”.

“The wages of sin is death.”

In today’s world, we see people who are able to excuse “little sins” throughout society.  Christians are confronted by people of this world who believe that anything goes.  Having a little fun is ok, no big deal.  There is an assumption that people can have a little fun and just stop but sometimes the human brain does not work in such a disciplined manner.  If you enjoy a little, you want a little more, and then a little more.  Soon, the disciplined thought is gone and what was perceived as a small thing has become an accepted thing, a new part of your lifestyle and you don’t even see it as a problem.

I am old enough to see several changes in our contemporary society.

I watch tv from time to time and I hear some dialogue on primetime network tv that shocks me.  Language that used to be taboo is now being used.

I am not alone.  Some of you have noticed this too.

What has happened?  People have excused the taboo language to the point where it has become “normal” on tv.

I know I am risking being perceived as an old “fuddy duddy” but minimization works just like social acceptance of bad language on tv.  A word gets said and we chuckle and don’t make a big deal of it.   It gets said again and again and pretty soon it becomes common vocabulary.

The wages of sin is death?

Let me throw a cliché that Pastor Idleman uses in Chapter 7.  He says we have all heard “familiarity breeds contempt” but adds a new spin that “familiarity breeds indifference.”

He also says, “The journey to the pigpen almost always starts when we minimize our sin.”

How many times have you heard that phrase or how many times have you used it?

Minimization—the acknowledgement of the reality of a situation and even owning responsibility for it but denying its seriousness.  This is the topic for the week. Maybe you have done a favor for someone or maybe someone has done something for you and the phrase “no problem” is used.

But what if it is a problem?

A REAL PROBLEM.

Why do we do this?  Maybe we want to express the idea that it was not that much effort and the other person does not owe us anything in return.  Maybe we want to be “cool” about the effort we just expended; we don’t want to show how much work it was.  Maybe we just want to not make a big deal…

But what if it is a BIG DEAL?

By labeling it “no problem” does that really change reality?

Does the label change a serious problem into a less serious problem? What if what has happened is a sin?

You’re a student and another student has asked you to cheat and you do it.  No problem. What if a man is “coming on to you” and you decide to reciprocate and this goes too far to the point that you commit adultery?  No problem. What if your friends encourage you to take drugs and you try them and really like them and suddenly you think they are ok?  No problem.

The list of sins can go on and on.

Really, does saying it is no problem really diminish the fact that you are right in the middle of a problem, a serious problem? I don’t think so. We live in a high stress world today and some folks may say that we just need to be calm and worry less.  I am all for less anxiety but if we have less anxiety by living in a dream world, what are we doing?  We are living in a dream world and we are not facing up to our problems.

Like hiding from the real me when I need to face up to the real me [Chapter 5].

Like denying that I have a problem when I need to admit that I have a problem [Chapter 6].

Like projecting my problems off on to others when it is my problem, not theirs [Chapter 7].

As in these earlier chapters, Pastor Idleman is trying to get us to realize that we need brutal honesty, not another defense mechanism. We are not going to grow if we hide from the real world.  We are going to have arrested development.  We are going to be in a “stuck state.”  We are going to find ourselves going nowhere fast.

This week we will be looking at “no problem” as another way of running from our problems.

Pastor Idleman uses many ways of explaining projection in Chapter 7 but I wanted to comment on an idea that grabbed me the most.

The story he used seemed so ironic but it is so true.  It summarizes what he says in Chapter 5 about not recognizing our true nature.  It reflects back on denial from Chapter 6 and it is a wonderful way to end Chapter 7 on projection as we begin to move on to Chapter 8.

“Every day you take your lunch to work, and every day it’s the same thing—chicken salad sandwiches.  You continually complain to your coworkers that it’s always chicken salad sandwiches in your lunch.  You are sick and tired of chicken salad sandwiches.  You even tell a coworker you’d rather die than eat one more chicken salad sandwich.  Finally someone says, ‘Why don’t you ask your wife to make you something else?’  You reply, Oh, actually I make lunch myself.” [page 120]

Yes folks, we make lunch ourselves.

I don’t know how many times in my life that I avoid recognizing my true nature, my real identity.  I don’t know how many times I try to deny that what I am doing is wrong.  I don’t know how many times I try to shove my problems off on someone else.

I make my lunch myself.

A personal revelation:  I don’t know why God has put it on my heart to blog.  I am never even sure that the blog is doing anything for anyone but reading this book and putting my thoughts down on the page has been very good for me.  It seems like Pastor Idleman has been ministering to me.  Maybe I should say God is using Pastor Idleman’s book to minister to me.

Don’t kid yourself.

I may sound like I “have my act together,” but I am just like everyone else; I am struggling to do better in my Christian walk.

I need to be honest with God.  I need to confess my sins.  I need to deal with my weaknesses.

I am getting tired of the chicken salad sandwiches, aren’t you?

Toward the end of Chapter 7, Pastor Idleman returns to the Prodigal Son story and addresses the idea of blaming God for our problems.  He uses the car he dented on the very windy day as an “act of God” example.  He uses the Moore Oklahoma tornado as an “act of God” example and he also says the Prodigal Son could have used “it is God’s fault” as an excuse for all his sins.

Why do we sometimes blame God for the horrible things that happen to us?

I have to admit, I have struggled with this over the years because I have seen this happen in really tough times.  I have seen people lose their faith in really tough times as they ponder God’s role in those tough times.

It all boils down to this point: did God cause the pain and suffering that you are experiencing?

It is natural for believers and unbelievers to ask why when things happen.  However when we ask why, it points out that we have problems in two areas of life.

1.bad things should not happen to us.

Nope, bad things do happen.  The old expression that it “rains on the just and unjust” comes to mind.  Good people suffer right along with bad people.  Believers suffer right along with unbelievers.  Just because you have a belief in Jesus Christ does not mean that you will be protected from tough times.  They come for all of us.

2.people lose faith in the sovereignty of God.

When bad things happen, the usual human reaction is a feeling of loss of control.  We just can’t figure out what is going on in the tragedy.  We wonder why God allowed this because we know he has total control over everything.  I believe as finite human beings we are really searching for reasons and that is a worthless exercise.  Our culture is obsessed with determining causes for effects.  When the airplane crashes, we obsess with why.  When a measles outbreak occurs, we want to know why, who is spreading it, and where the outbreak originated.  When a terrorist commits a murderous act, we want to know why and how.

God knows.

We don’t

We can’t accept that.  Our finite minds cannot figure everything out.

This is a tough pill to swallow for us.  We want to know it all.

This is where faith comes into the picture.   We have to believe that God is in charge and we cannot understand His ways.  We have to have faith in our Lord and Savior.

This takes me back to the title of this blog entry.  How can we blame God if we cannot understand Him?

We can’t…..but we do it anyway.

Pastor Idleman spends a part of Chapter 7 discussing his marriage.  His marriage, like all marriages, is not just one happy day after another.  Problems occur in every marriage.

Projection occurs in every marriage.

Spouses always want to blame the other spouse for the problem when in reality it is something they have done together.

Relationship experts often refer to this as the “dance of marriage”, as couples live together on a daily basis and they interact in patterns that can make them forget how closely they are intertwined with their partner.

In fact, in most marriages, couples develop habits of interacting and sometimes the habits are bad ones.  For example a husband could say his wife is too demanding.  The wife complains that he withdraws from the relationship too much.  This pattern may start with the man who says “I withdraw because you are so demanding.”  The wife says “I demand so much because you withdraw.”  After this pattern begins, it is impossible to say which accusation is accurate; a sort of what comes first, the chicken or egg argument.

In reality, one person makes their contribution and the other makes their contribution and together, they create a problem.

To solve this situation, the couple has to assume joint responsibility but how often does that happen?

Seldom.

Finger pointing is the rule of the day as one spouse swears that the other is “the problem.”  “I have no blame in this situation.”

Instead of projecting the problem onto the other spouse, the couple needs to say “let’s stop this, recognize this for what it is, and we need to try to do things better.”

Pastor Idleman recounts a marriage exercise he did with his wife on page 121.  He sat down with her and they drew a circle on a piece of paper.  Inside of the circle they listed all the problems they have in their marriage.  After completing this, they were to take the circle like a pie and carve out the pieces of the problems they were responsible for individually.

They could not do it.

They realized that the problems were problems they created together.

For one moment, projection ended in the Idleman marriage.

Questions from Chapter 7:

Who or what do you tend to blame when you find yourself in “the pigpen”?

Why is it so difficult for us to accept fault—with no ifs, ands or buts?

Is there someone you need to admit fault to right now?  Write out what you need to say to them, and watch for projection and subtle ways you try to excuse yourself.  Then go to them and read what you’ve written.

I have always been fascinated by how people see their world.  What got me started with this is the study of how people communicate one to one, sometimes referred to as interpersonal communication.

The aspect of interpersonal communication that was most fascinating to me was how people understand themselves and others.  In my study, I found that this is a very inexact activity, with humans trying to find reasons for human behavior by basically guessing about what was going on with themselves and others.

Social psychologists are rarely ever happy to say that “human beings guess” as a reason for behavior, so over the years, many research hours and dollars have been spent to see patterns in human guessing.  Patterns are the clues they have found for human behavior

One of the most common patterns they found is, we try to provide very positive reasons for what we do.  Social psychologists say that we employ something called “self-serving bias.”

Let me give you some examples so you can see the pattern.

Let’s say someone in the office messes up a job.  We will say they are poor listeners.  If we mess up the job, the boss is very poor at giving directions.

When a friend loses his cool and lashes out in anger, it is because he is moody and overly sensitive.  When we lose our cool, it because of all the stress that we have in our lives.

When she got her speeding ticket, we say that she is a reckless driver.  When we get a speeding ticket, we deny that we were going too fast and we were the victim of an overzealous policeman who had to make his ticket quota.

When he uses profanity, it is because of a flaw in his character.  When we use profanity, it is because the situation called for it.

Now let’s get real.  Is all this “spin” the truth?

No.

We are very charitable with ourselves aren’t we?  That’s why social psychologists call this self-serving BIAS.  We are biased toward ourselves.

In chapter 7, Pastor Idleman has been discussing projection as another way to dodge responsibility for sin.  Now I guess I have provided another excuse.  When the time comes for us to blame others for our faults, we can say “I have employed self-serving bias.”  That will buy us some time as others will wonder what that means.

Another skill we can employ in the art of placing blame…….

Pastor Idleman’s use of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a perfect example of projection.

You have all heard the old expression of “The Buck Stops Here.”  The phrase was publicized by Harry S. Truman, one of my favorite presidents of all time.  Truman was a man from Missouri, an intelligent and plain-spoken man who was thrust into the presidency by the death of Franklin Roosevelt.  He had some tough decisions to make, the most famous one was the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, which hastened the end of World War II with Japan.  It also killed 225,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Many of them were non-combatants–women and children.

Roosevelt was not to blame. He had died.  Truman could have blamed his advisors but he didn’t.  Maybe he could have blamed his wife Bess, but that did not happen.  Truman weighed the pros and cons of dropping this new weapon and he did it and he took all the blame.

It changed the world.

America became a “superpower.”  Atomic weaponry was introduced to the world, the USSR especially.  The specter of atomic annihilation still lingers in the world as we consider what Iran can do with a bomb as well as terrorists.

I remember studying Truman in college and hearing my Modern American History professor say “After deciding to drop the bomb, Truman went to his private quarters and took a long nap.”   I was never sure that this was documented but Truman was asked about his decision to drop the bomb later in his life, “I knew what I was doing when I stopped the war … I have no regrets and, under the same circumstances, I would do it again.”

Back to the Garden of Eden.

Pastor Idleman writes of an imaginary dialogue between God and Adam.  Adam says “Yes, God.  I confess. I broke your command.  I have sinned and not obeyed your word.  Here and now I take responsibility for my rebellion.  I don’t deserve it but I humbly ask You for Your grace and mercy.” You know that did not happen.  There was a lot of passing the buck in the Garden.  Adam said that woman that you put here God, she made me do it.  [projection to Eve and God]  Eve said that serpent your created God, he made me do it.  [projection to the serpent and God] .

Ok, ok, the devil made them do it !

How many times have you heard that what man got from the Garden of Eden and this episode with Adam and Eve is the idea of original sin, that stain that we still struggle with to this day.

Think about it.  Maybe man also got a perfect example of projection, dodging responsibility, excuse making that lingers today.

When it is your time to take responsibility for your acts, which catch phrase rattles in your brain?

“The Devil Made Me Do It !”  or “The Buck Stops Here.”