#9 (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by P. Scazzero) : Growing up emotionally to love well

**Working through Peter Scazzero's Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Please note that most thoughts and words belong to him and just written to reinforce my learning.**

Ch. 9: Grow Into An Emotionally Mature Adult

~Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov~ "Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams."

 

Loving well is the goal of the Christian life. It requires growing into emotional adulthood in Christ. It means learning to apply practically and effectively the truths we believe. For example:

• How can I be quick to hear and slow to speak?
• How can be angry and not sin?
• How can I watch my heart above all else (since that is the place from which life flows)?
• How can I speak the truth in love?
• How can I be a true peacemaker?
• How can I mourn?
• How can I not bear false witness against my neighbour?
• How can get rid of all bitterness, rage, and envy?

If we cannot walk out our beliefs, then how is the church any different from the world around us?

 

Jesus chose a most unlikely crew to be his 12 disciples with whom He lived night and day for 3 years. He modeled His teachings. He had them practice. He supervised. He imparted power.

Like His disciples, we need to grow from emotional infancy to emotional adulthood.

The following summarizes the stages of emotional growth:

 

EMOTIONAL INFANTS:

• Look for others to take care of them.
• Have great difficulty entering into the world of others.
• Are driven by need for instant gratification.
• Use others as objects to meet their needs.

EMOTIONAL CHILDREN:

• Are content and happy as long as they receive what they want.
• Unravel quickly from stress, disappointments, trials.
• Interpret disagreements as personal offenses.
• Are easily hurt.
• Complain, withdraw, manipulate, take revenge, become sarcastic when they don't get their way.
• Have great difficulty calmly discussing their needs and wants in a mature, loving way.

EMOTIONAL ADOLESCENTS:

• Tend to often be defensive.
• Are threatened and alarmed by criticism.
• Keep score of what they give so they can ask for something later in return.
• Deal with conflict poorly, often blaming, appeasing, going to a third party, pouting, or ignoring the issue entirely.
• Become preoccupied with themselves.
• Have great difficulty truly listening to another person's pain, disappointments, or needs.
• Are critical and judgemental.

EMOTIONAL ADULTS:

• Are able to ask for what they need, want, or prefer---clearly, directly, honestly.
• Recognize, manage, and take responsibility for their own thoughts and feelings.
• Can, when under stress, state their own beliefs and values without becoming adversarial.
• Respect others without having to change them.
• Give people room to make mistakes and not be perfect.
• Appreciate people for who they are--the good, bad, and ugly--not for what they give back.
• Accurately assess their own limits, strengths, and weaknessess and are able to freely discuss them with others.
• Are deeply in tune with their own emotional world and able to enter into the feelings, needs, and concerns of others without losing themselves.
• Have the capacity to resolve conflict maturely and negotiate solutions that consider the perspectives of others.

Loving well is the essence of true spirituality.

Your inner life with God is reflected in your outer life with people. Just as Jesus was prayerfully present with all He met, we are also called to be. Jesus left people feeling loved. Jean Vanier wrote, "Love is to reveal the beauty of another person to themselves."

How do you leave people feeling? Loved, beautiful? or Ugly and condemned? Look at the Pharisees, diligent, zealous and doing all required by the Law. But they never delighted in people.

Jesus refused to separate the practice of the presence of God from the practice of the presence of people.

He summarized the entire Bible for us:

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'

 

 Our Problem:

We can't help but experience life with me at the center of my universe. We want others to be what we want them to be. We also treat God like this.

To grow spiritually we must discover and accept the 'otherness' of others as unique and separate.

 

I--It  vs. I--Thou Relationships

The great Jewish theologian, Martin Buber, wrote a book called I and Thou in which he described a healthy and mature relationship between 2 human beings as an "I--Thou" relationship. In such a relationship I recognize that I am made in the image of God and so is everyone else. This makes them a "Thou" in relation to me. Because of this, everyone is deserving of respect---that is, I treat them with dignity and respect, not someone to dehumanize or objectify, someone having a unique and separate existence apart from me.

 

Sadly most of our relationships fall into the "I--It" category. We get frustrated when people don't fit into our plans. The way I see things is "right." And if you don't see it as I do, you are not seeing things the "right" way. You are wrong.

 

The central tenet of Buber's work was that the I-Thou relationship between persons intimately reflects the I-Thou relationship humans have with God. Genuine relationship with any Thou shows traces of the "eternal Thou."

 

Emotional Maturity and Conflict

How we resolve conflict reveals our emotional maturity.

At the heart of true peacemaking is acknowledgement, once again, that we are human beings made in the image of God. Likeness to our Creator puts us on paths that desire to live in the truth and not in pretense, even when that means a conflict may result.

One of the most misinterpreted verses in the Bible is Matthew 5:9, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."  Most people see this as being called to be pacifiers and appeasers who ensure that noone gets upset. We are to keep the peace, ignoring difficult issues and problems, making sure things remain stable and serene.

When out of fear, we avoid conflict and appease people, we are false peacemakers.

But the way of true peace will never come through pretending what is wrong is right!

True peacemakers love God, others, and themselves enough to disrupt false peace. Jesus models this for us.

 

Embracing Conflict--The Path to True Peace

Jesus taught that true peacemaking disrupts false peace even in families: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother...--a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'" (Matthew 10:34-36)

Why? You can't have true peace with lies and pretense.

They must be exposed to the light and replaced with truth.

 

Jesus speaks about the characteristics we need to display to engage in true peacemaking in the Beattitudes: poverty of spirit; meekness; purity of heart; mercy...etc... (Matthew 5:3-11) He also let us know that persecution will follow for those of us who follow Him on this.

One of the greatest tensions in our lives today is unresolved conflicts. We prefer to ignore difficult issues hoping they will go away. They don't.

God's kingdom cannot be built on lies.

Only truth will do.

 

Learning the Skills to Be True Peacemakers

We underestimate the depth of our bad habits and what is needed to sustain long-term, Christ-like change in our relationships.

Here are a few tools and exercises we use to practice mature behaviours:

Speaking and Listening

Speaking and listening is the essence of having an I-Thou relationship with another person.

Use the following structure as a spiritual practice of meeting God through your time with another person.

Ask God to help you be prayerfully present.

Ask Him to help you receive this person as if they were Jesus.

How might Jesus want to come to you through this person?

Ask God to clear the noise from your mind so you can be still enough to enter the speaker's world.

 

As The Speaker

• Talk about your own thoughts, your own feelings (speak in the "I".
• Be brief. Use short sentences or phrases.
• Correct the other person if you believe he or she has missed something.
• Continue speaking until you feel you've been understood.
• When you don't have anything else to say, say, "That's all for now."

As The Listener

• Put your own agenda on hold. Be quiet and still as you would before God.
• Allow the other person to speak until he or she completes a thought.
• Reflect accurately the other person's words back to him or her. You have 2 options: paraphrase in a way the other person agrees is accurate or use his or her own words.
• When it appears the speaker is done, ask, "Is there more?"

Validate their thoughts with "That makes sense...I can see that because..."

 

The Bill Of Rights

Respect is not a feeling. It is how we treat another person. Regardless of how we might feel about another human being, they are made in God's image and of infinite value and worth. The following Bill of Rights (Pat Innis, The Third Option: Ministry to Hurting Marriages, Topic #1, "Respect,"1-17) with examples from Peter's life:

 

Respect means I give myself and others the right to:

• Space and privacy (e.g. knocking on doors before entering, not opening another's mail, respecting each other's needs for quiet and space);
• Be different (e.g allowing preferences for food, movies, volume of music, and how we spend our time);
• Disagree (e.g. making room for each person to think and see life differently);
• Be heard (e.g. listening to each other's desires, opinions, thoughts, feelings, etc.);
• Be taken seriously (e.g. listening and being present to one another);
• Be given the benefit of the doubt (e.g. checking out assumptions rather than judging one another when misunderstandings arise);
• Be told the truth (e.g. counting on the truth when asking each other for information--from "Did you study for the test that you failed?" to "Why were you late coming home?");
• Be consulted (e.g. checking and asking when decisions will affect others);
• Be imperfect and make mistakes (e.g. leaving "room" for breaking things, forgetting things, letting each other down unintentionally, failing tests when we have studied, etc.);
• Courteous and honorable treatment (e.g. using words that don't hurt, asking before using, consulting when appropriate, treating each other as I-Thou's); and
• Be respected (e.g. taking one another's feelings into account)

 

Checking Out Assumptions

The 9th commandment reads: "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour". (Exodus 20:16).

Everytime I make an assumption about someone who has hurt or disappointed me without confirming it, I believe a lie about this person in my head. This assumption is a misrepresentation of reality. Because I have not checked it out with the other person, it is very possible I am believing something untrue. It is also likely I will pass that false assumption around to others.

The Bible has much to say about not taking on the role of judge to others (Matthew 7;1-5).

Here are some steps in using this tool:

• Reflect on something you suspect the other person thinks or feels but hasn't told you.
• Ask: "Do I have your permission to check out an assumption I am making?" (If he or she grants it, then  you can proceed.)
• Say: "I think you think..." or "I assume you are thinking..." When you are finished, ask them: "Is this correct?"
• Give the other person an opportunity to respond.

Expectations

Unclear and unmet expectations create havoc in our lives.

For example:

• Of course you're coming to the family event. We're important to you, aren't we?
• I'm the only one caring for my aging parents. My siblings expect me to do everything.

We expect others to know what we want before we say it.

The problem is that most expectations are:

• unconscious--we have expectations we're not aware of until someone disappoints us;
• unrealistic--we may have illusions about others e.g. a pastor or friend being available at all times to meet our needs.
• unspoken--we may not tell someone what we expect yet be angry when our expectations are not met;
• un-agreed upon--we may have had our own thoughts but never agreed with the other person's.

For expectations to be established, they must be:

• conscious
• realistic
• spoken
• agreed upon

Allergies and Triggers

An emotional allergy is an intense reaction to something in the present that reminds us, consciously or not, of an event from our history. We end up treating the person with whom we are in a relationship now as if they were someone from our past.

e.g. Theresa sees her husband watching TV instead of parenting the children with her and she gets very angry. She attacks and belittles him because he unconsciously reminds her of her father who left home when she was 7 years old, leaving her and her mom to fend for themselves.

Step back and look for abnormal reactions in different situations and begin to respond as an emotional adult.

 

Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. I am aware, Lord, of how often I treat people as Its, as objects, instead of looking at them with the eyes and heart of Christ. Lord, I have unhealthy ways of relating that are deeply imbedded in me. Please change me. Make me a vessel to spread mature, steady, reliable love so that people with whom I come in contact sense Your tenderness and kindness. Deliver me from false peacemaking that is driven by fear. Lord Jesus, help me love well like You. Grow me, I pray, into an emotionally mature adult through the Holy Spirit's power.

In Jesus' Name, Amen.