Most of us have grown up in a culture that has moved increasingly in the direction of the disposable. The reason? We are in love with pain-free lives. Don’t fix it or mend it, just buy a new one. We seem to approach relationships in much the same manner.
A pain-free life has become the new god of our society—a god to be pursued at any cost, a god for whom anything else can be sacrificed. That, by the way, is why so many people have turned away from the God of the Bible––because the God of the Bible obviously allows us to experience pain. And many people have decided that a God who allows a great deal of pain, especially in interpersonal relationships, is a God that they have not the slightest interest in knowing.
Indeed, when a pain-free life becomes the ultimate goal––becomes the god of a society––then the strategy to pursue such becomes very simple. When anything or anyone comes in the way of pain-free living, or where anyone or anything makes my life uncomfortable, then I must get away from them or get rid of them.
Do you relate to how this mindset develops? The ultimate goal––the ultimate god––is a pain-free life. A conflict free life... with no rules or at least very few and only those that mesh with "my” definition of what a rule should be. So anything that causes pain [aggravation] then causes me to move, to separate myself from the source of pain, discomfort, aggravation.
Over a period of years, as this has multiplied throughout our society, a culture develops in which more and more people feel rootless. We move to new homes, new jobs, new friends, new places, and new churches always seeking to find that certain something that will ensure a happy aggravation free life.
Every time we feel unhappy, the answer is to move on again and again. So relationships increasingly become a means to an end, something to be enjoyed as long as they are comfortable. We end up with more and more people in a community who simply feel used and abused.
God’s Word plunges us into a world that is completely and utterly different from the one we live in now and the one we’ve crafted in our minds as our ideal pain–free place. The Bible presents a world where relationships are not disposable. This is something that we, as Christian people, desperately need to discover if we are going to live counter-culturally in a society that is breaking apart.
God allows the pain of difficult relationships to bloom and produce consequences. You might want to take some time and read 1 Samuel 8:4–22. In fact, read the entire book of First Samuel... the story of King Saul and David. It’s a telling story of the varied consequences of pain experienced in the midst of what the Israelites thought was a plan administered by the hand of God. It's a personal story, of the pain and extreme aggravation between Saul and the future King David.
Israel’s first King Saul, turned out to be a disaster. The Israelites later realized that they had made a foolish choice when they began to experience the pain of living with their own foolishness. God was not absent or distant from their pain. First Samuel 15:35 says... “The Lord was grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel.”
The Lord was “grieved.” This doesn’t mean that God had made a mistake. God knew precisely what he was doing when he allowed Saul to be the king in response to the people’s clamoring for a King. The story reminds us that God feels the pain of his people... in that alone we should find a measure of comfort when dealing with difficult relationships.
It’s important for us to remember, God is not some cosmic scientist conducting experiments on us. “Oh, I wonder what’ll happen if I make him king? Oh, dear, that didn’t work out! Let’s try something else.” That’s not the God of the Bible. He knows precisely what he is doing at all times.
There is no pain in your life that God is not aware of and there is no pain in your life that God has not also felt. He entered into the pain that came to his people as a result of him allowing Saul to be king, which was the consequence of their insistent and foolish choice.
Consider the place you are right now in your life and the people you’re interacting with on a regular basis. How are things going for you? Every single one of us has a person or persons in our lives that we just don’t get along with. Sometimes we know why and sometimes we are just baffled by the tension that exists in some of our relationships. Should you discard those relationships because they’re too hard to deal with? How about ignoring the person as if they don’t exist? Will such avoidance tactics work?
God does not want us tossing one another aside like disposable objects because we don’t always get along, or think the same way, or have the same personality type, or see things in the same way.
It’s not terribly difficult for any of us to identify the challenging relationships that trouble our lives. We all have them. But here’s our solution to challenging relationships... God will help us use difficult people we deal with everyday of our lives to advance the reflected image of the life of Jesus within us and through us. For that is His ultimate purpose, rather than a pain-free life—He seeks to grow within committed Christians, the qualities of a Christ-like lifestyle.
Once we begin to see that our lives are ordered by the loving hand of God working out his ultimate purpose in us and through us, then we will have an entirely different attitude toward the difficult people in our lives.
Next time... we’ll dig a bit deeper into God’s Word about the essential attitudes, which are the pillars of our relationships with all people... especially our Christian brothers and sisters.
