Personal Traits of Unsafe People (1)

Good morning to everybody. Today we are going to jump right into some of the “meat” of the book as we begin to cover the topic, “Personal Traits of Unsafe People”. This is the first of two lessons taken out of chapter two of our study book.

Before I get into the actual lesson I want to talk for a couple of minutes on the subject of how we ought to view what we are going to go through together as we progress through the book. To paint a word picture, I am going to go into Greek mythology, to the trials, which are usually called the labors, of the character known as Hercules. (His actual name was Herakles in the Greek) Hercules was the son of Zeus, the most powerful of all the Greek gods.

The story really begins when Hera, a Greek goddess, made him lose his mind. In his insanity he killed his wife and children. When he awakened, he consulted with Apollo, another Greek god, and was assigned to serve a Greek king, Eurystheus, and to perform twelve labors as punishment. After completing his sentence, he became the greatest hero in Greek legend. This was because the Greek’s raised him up as the perfect example of virtuous struggle and suffering leading to a great reward, immortality, and the highest stature among the gods. Does any of this sound familiar?

Now I’ll come to the point. One of Hercules labors was the cleaning of the stables of King Augeas. The Augean stables were home to the largest herd of cattle in the world and the cow manure was very deep, as the legend says that they had never been cleaned. Hercules was to clean them in a single day! He was resigned to the prospect of working very hard and getting very dirty and smelly during this clean up. Then he was inspired by the gods to simply dig a big trench, divert a river, and let the flowing water do the work for him. He successfully completed his task!

Why am I telling you this story? (Open class for discussion) It is because of the allegorical nature of our study. This fifth task of Hercules symbolizes the task all of us have if we are to progress in our spiritual walk. We have to clean out our own stable, which is our heart, of all the dirt and waste that it has accumulated over our lifetime. If you’ve ever had to clean up manure, you know that doesn’t smell too bad, until you break the dry crust, then you get to the bad stuff. So it is with our character defects. It is not a job that can be done in a day, or quickly. If we attempt to do it with our own strength, we will fail. But God has a way. If we dig that trench toward the river, he will send His streams of living water to clean us out.

(By this I am referring to the Holy Spirit, which Jesus describes as “streams of living water” in Jn 7:38)

In this study, we are going to uncover some of our own personal manure. If we attempt to clean it up without the river, we will fail.

Does everybody get the point? Are there any comments or questions?

Now I’m ready to get into the material. Today we are looking at the first six “Personal Traits of Unsafe People”. First though, I am going to hand out a two-sided table, which we will use for today and the next three weeks. The first two of the four weeks covers the subject of “Personal Traits”, meaning qualities related to the internal character of an individual. The second two weeks covers the topic “Interpersonal Traits”, meaning the relational aspects of the character of an individual. Our chart is a front and back chart that lists all the traits we are going to cover, both from a safe and unsafe perspective, and provides an example of a biblical character demonstrating the respective trait.

Okay then, are we ready to jump in?

1. “Have It All Together”

I believe all of us have met somebody who seems to “have it all together”. You know whom I’m talking about. He or she is on top of current news, always dresses fashionably, never gets worried or flustered, they have experienced the same things as you, only more so, or know someone who has and always have a wise word to share. This kind of person leads me to respond, usually without speaking it, with a major twinge of doubt about the image they are trying to project. I feel a kind of compassionate sadness toward them.

I want us all to think about some of the people we know or have known who are like this. What sense do you have or did you have about them and your relationship with them? Think in terms of how you responded to them or felt about them. Does anybody have a story here?

· Low level of intimacy – It is hard to feel connected to someone who won’t share his or her hardships and weaknesses with you, especially when you share yours.
· Air of superiority – A sense that they believe you need them, but they don’t need you. Or alternatively, a sense that you need them, because you are weak and they are strong. You may even idolize them.
· Weakness – You feel weaker than you really are. Your self-confidence is low when you are relating to this person.
· Anger – Being around this person seems to lead you into an angry emotional state. You may get hostile and either jeopardize or lose the relationship.
· Competitiveness – A sense of competition develops, and you search for something to outdo them on. You may buy a $400 dress after they told about their latest $300 outfit. Essentially, the relationship becomes a sophisticated fight.
· Emulation – Some responses may involve “being like them” as they “have it all together”. This could be in the actual relationship or in other relationships.

From this short list we can see the damage that a “have it all together” person can do to our self-esteem and behavior. If you are one of these “have it all together” people, you are stuck. There is no way you can progress in emotional or spiritual growth, because you believe you really have all the answers! Let’s look at a core problem for the person with this “unsafe” trait. It is found in James 5:16(a):

Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. NASU

Let us be sure to understand this verse. The context here is in the healing of the soul, not the body, which is covered three verses earlier. The Greek word here for “healed” is better translated as “make whole”. It is part of God’s plan for our relationships that we talk to one another and confess to another person our weaknesses, follow this up with prayer and then receive what ever God has for us on the issue. Spiritual growth is hard to achieve without this as part of our everyday life. A “have it all together” person has simply put a formidable barrier in his or her own life to growth. They are truly unsafe, for themselves and others.

2. Religious

What do we mean if we say someone is religious, but not spiritual? (Discuss) Have you ever met people like this? What do you think about them?

I really worry sometimes about this in my own life, about knowing so much about God and about His word that I forget that God is someone who wants me to know Him and have an intimate relationship with Him.

In Jesus last week prior to His crucifixion he spoke about this type of person, almost the whole of chapter 23 of the Gospel of Matthew is about this kind of unsafe person. We are just going to look at one of the things he said, lets read Mt 23:27-28:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. NASU

Let me ask you this. Just how unsafe were the people He was talking to? (They killed Him, I call that unsafe) Can you think of any modern individuals or groups who are like this? Unsafeness can literally be a matter of life and death.

3. Defensive

I didn’t do it! Have you ever said that? Have you ever said that when you weren’t even accused of doing “it”? If you have, you were being defensive. The problem with being this way is that it becomes a habit; it is like “shooting first and asking questions later”.

The defensive person almost always ends up turning the situation around and blaming somebody else, meaning anybody but himself or herself, for whatever has fallen in the crack. Extremely defensive people do not accept being confronted over anything.

I want to look at a piece of Scripture where a confrontation takes place, and the person involved acts in a safe way. Let’s open up to 2 Sam 12:1-15:

Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him and said,
There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor.
The rich man had a great many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb which he bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and his children. It would eat of his bread and drink of his cup and lie in his bosom, and was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take from his own flock or his own herd, to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him; rather he took the poor man's ewe lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. Then David's anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, "As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die. He must make restitution for the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and had no compassion." Nathan then said to David, "You are the man! Thus says the Lord God of Israel, 'It is I who anointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul. I also gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these! Why have you despised the word of the Lord by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight. Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun. Then David said to Nathan, " I have sinned against the Lord." And Nathan said to David, "The Lord also has taken away your sin; you shall not die. "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die." So Nathan went to his house. NASU

What is this story all about? What was David’s response to being confronted? Would you have done this?

I think it is important that we connect the understanding that David is called “A man after God’s own heart” with his willingness to be confronted and being able to admit his own sin.

Defensive people, who can’t accept appropriate confrontation, are going to find it difficult to connect with God at a heart to heart level.

4. Self-Righteous

We all have a somewhat misguided need to feel “right” with everything, the world, our friends and family and for some of us, God. This is actually designed into us by God when He made the first human. He created us in His own image to relate to Him on an intimate basis. We were made to be “right” with Him. During the fall, our intimacy with our maker was shattered, and all of mankind has been searching for “rightness” ever since. It is this “hole in the soul” that drives the self-righteous person to act out of their emotions by seeking to be “right” through their own efforts. It is one of the worst examples of self-centeredness that there is, because everything is about them.

The root sin here is pride. It is the arrogant belief that you are better than everybody else. Let’s look at what Jesus said on this issue. This Scripture, Lk 18:10-14, is also found on page 32 of the book.

Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. "The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: 'God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 'I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.' "But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!' "I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted." NASU

The difference is clear, and I think needs no explanation.

One of the big problems with the self-righteous person is that they use shame and guilt on others. They attempt to cause others to feel “bad” about themselves in order to confirm their moral superiority. They simply cannot see that all people are equally in need of “rightness” with God, this makes them dangerous to all of us. For the record, the core issue that a self-righteous person is dealing with is “personal insecurity”.

Can anybody think some examples of public figures that come across as self-righteous?

5. Only Apologize

I want to present this to you in a different way than the book does. Let us take a look at Mk 4:3-8 and Mk 4:14-20:

Listen to this! Behold, the sower went out to sow; as he was sowing, some seed fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on the rocky ground where it did not have much soil; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of soil. And after the sun had risen, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. Other seeds fell into the good soil, and as they grew up and increased, they yielded a crop and produced thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold." And He was saying, " He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

The sower sows the word. These are the ones who are beside the road where the word is sown; and when they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them. In a similar way these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. And those are the ones on whom seed was sown on the good soil; and they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold." NASU

When we are confronted by a situation or person about something we have done, we can respond in any one of the four ways laid out in the parable.

1. We blow it off, maybe not even trying to be sorry, let alone apologizing.
2. We enthusiastically apologize, and because we are not “rooted”, when some other issue comes up we forget about the situation and our desire to improve or change our behavior. (Ask what “rooted” means)
3. We enthusiastically apologize, intending to make changes in our behavior. Then life overtakes us so that other desires become a higher priority than personal change. Change is “crowded out”.
4. We enthusiastically apologize, and make a concerted effort to change. We persevere in this personal work making at least some of the necessary changes in our actions. Our relationships improve as the offended parties see we really are changing as a result of the exposure of our behaviors.

The underlying motivation here is love. The level of sincerity we show in our apology and follow up actions shows the people around us how much we love God, through obedience, love ourselves through working on the issue, and love others through active listening to their concerns. (Discussion)

6. Avoid Working On Problems

People who avoid working on their own stuff do this for a very specific reason. They are in what is called “denial”.

What is denial? Webster’s says it is, “A refusal to acknowledge the truth”.

Wikipedia says, “Denial is a defense mechanism in which a person is faced with a fact that is too painful to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.”

There seems to be three major aspects to denial, and they are:

1. Denying the reality of the fact. This is normally what most people think of as “denial”.
2. Admit the fact, but deny the seriousness of it, we call that minimization.
3. Admit the fact and the seriousness, but deny responsibility, that is called transference or sometimes blaming others.

It is denial that is the biggest road block to getting better, it is denial that stops healing from even beginning, it is denial that puts a hand in God’s face saying “No”.

People in denial are not safe because the denial allows them to hurt themselves, and deny it. It also allows them to hurt others and rationalize it as not a “big deal”. It can also allow them to hurt others and blame them for the hurt!

You have all heard of the “Twelve Steps”. The admittance of personal denial is where they begin. I would like to read them from the Parkway Celebrate Recovery brochure, just so we can all be informed on this structured pathway to healing. (Look for a volunteer)

If you are dealing with denial, the Holy Spirit is talking to you about it! Listen to Him, he wants you get through something so you can get closer to the Lord. Celebrate Recovery can help with almost anything you are trying to get through, if you think this is relevant to you, if you are a man talk to me, or if you are a woman talk to my wife. You can call us, talk to us right here this morning, or e-mail us.

I’m going to stop there for today. Next week we will look at the other six personal traits of unsafe people.