When we are not getting along with others, the pressing temptation is always to believe that you are just as you have always been, and that they have somehow changed. This is often not true at all, but even if it were true, that does not put you in the right. Perhaps they have changed in that they have decided to stop putting up with your rudeness.
But “getting along” is not the oil of insincerity to make the social machinery run more smoothly. The Scriptures describe fellowship as a work of the Holy Spirit. This is a God-given thing, and a work wrought in us by His grace. Once this is said, the next mistake is to think this is just a form of spiritual oil, a divine, supernatural oil, to make the ecclesiastical machinery run more smoothly.
John Owen once said that a man should not think he makes any progress in godliness if he is not daily walking over the “bellies of his lusts.” The thing that thwarts all fleshly ambition, spiritual pride, and grasping competition is the cross of Jesus—His death on the cross is what puts to death every form of egoistic striving—and egoistic striving is what prevents us from loving one another. The Holy Spirit does not just come along and fill you with benevolent thoughts. He is a Person, not a shot of joy juice. And the Holy Spirit is the one who applies the death of Jesus to the areas of your life that need mortifying.
It turns out that in order for you get along with others, something has to die.
I dunno. I don’t think I put enough effort into my egoism for it to qualify as “striving.” I can expect the world to be all about me, and thereby fail to love my neighbor, without lifting a finger. So how ’bout we give egoistic laziness half credit?
That’s an interesting direction. Could it be that choosing evil is always and everywhere the laziest choice a human can make?
Not always. Lots of sins take effort.
In my case, any sin which would require me to get dressed and leave the house takes too much effort. In my younger days, inertia was a great boon to chastity.
@Jill Smith,
For the younger today, remaining chaste may be harder if they stay home and “hang out”.
Effort? Yes, you’re right. There is certainly an element of effort. Some people even give extra effort to do as much damage and offend as many righteous souls as possible. But when temptation strikes, it seems that the effort to do what is right is always the more strenuous effort. To go with our dark urges is easy and natural. To resist is to stand in the path of a speeding train.
Good point. For those who desire to be righteous, resisting temptation is often strenuous work. But it’s amazing the effort people will put into sin when they’re so inclined.
That’s how laziness works though, right? You wind up putting in a lot more effort sometimes to sustain your laziness, than the short-term effort of resisting or doing things right would have cost in the first place.
It is so easy to confuse a pleasant sense of universal benevolence with goodness.
“It turns out that in order for you get along with others, something has to die.”
Some people should NOT be gotten along with, like those who are downright abusive. And while I understand the concept of dying to self just fine, anytime another human being demands some part of you must die in order to be worthy of a relationship with them, run. You don’t need that manipulative kind of nonsense in your life. The Lord has assured me of that truth more times than I can count.
“anytime another human being demands some part of you must die in order to be worthy of a relationship with them, run”
Choice bit of wisdom. Wish I had read this before getting up 6x/night with a newborn. Manipulative? Check. Try to remember what happens when you tiptoe out of a room and they are still awake enough to hear it. Demanding? Absolutely. Abusive? What would you call getting spit on on a regular basis? No one but a doormat would tolerate a relationship that involved this kind of regular disrespect. Nonsense? Yesiree, 100%.
Oh how well I remember those carefree days. My infant daughter, like Satan, never slept. Or, if she did, a 90 minute sleep seemed to set her up just fine for another twelve hours. This went on for four long years until I realized that the people who invented the family bed and attachment parenting had probably never dealt with a sleepless child. In desperation I used to to drop her off at the nursery of the Pentecostal megachurch across the street and slink home for an hour and a half of guilty slumber. When I reflect that I was… Read more »
” My infant daughter, like Satan, never slept. ”
That’s not a very fair comparison Jill. Satan is a very accommodating guy. If you wanted to sleep, I’m sure he would do everything in his power to help, so long as you give him what he wants in return. Babies are not nearly so negotiable. Until my first was nearly 2, he wouldn’t nap anywhere other than on my shoulder.
What a good dad! My ex wouldn’t pick her up after the first time she spat up down his suit jacket (and I had gently suggested that jostling a baby who’s just had 8 ounces of soymilk isn’t a good idea)! But he was better than my female surgeon’s husband, I suppose. She told me she had once left the baby with her husband (another surgeon) while she went to an all-day training seminar. When she came home, it was evident that the baby hadn’t been changed all day. Confronting her husband, he replied, “It said up to 22 lbs.… Read more »
I wonder if the suggestion to drop her off at the nursery of a Pentecostal church came from my good angel or my bad one. I did stuff money into a collection box from time to time to assuage my conscience!
Ironically, that is what I think they were too. Carefree. They are all a little older now and sometimes I wish I were back there with simple baby problems: either a diaper or food. Now, sometimes, who knows how to proceed wisely. But I could have illustrated the exact same point by rambling about how no employer exists who does not demand that the “rarely on-time” part of me dies in order to have a paying relationship with them. This is a cherished self attribute. I don’t feel at ease if I just rush places willy-nilly. I am like a… Read more »
“But I could have illustrated the exact same point by rambling about how no employer exists who does not demand that the “rarely on-time” part of me dies in order to have a paying relationship with them. ” Or, forsaking hypothetical examples altogether, how MeMe herself is demanding that the part of people that demands parts of her die, die. Personally, in order to have a personal relationship with MeMe, I demand that the part of her that demands that the part of other people that demand that parts of her have to die, have to die, dies. Ok, I… Read more »
Justin, I am grateful that I don’t have to diagram the sentence that begins with “Personally.” Even this fanatical grammar lover would be out of her depth!
“What did you do to verify that the message was from him?” I read the bible, spoke to Him in prayer, talked to dozens of pastors and advisors, and spent many years working with victims of abuse. The Lord has taught me a few things over the years and one of those things is that it is exceedingly unhealthy to allow people to make demands upon you like a newborn might. While one may well die to self for the Lord, dying to self due to the demands of other people is actually idolatry, people worship, something that often begins… Read more »
I always wondered, Adelata, how mothers managed with more than one small child. I had spent many years preening myself on my efficiency in the workplace, my skill in juggling deadlines and putting out fires. And then, with one tiny scrap of humanity to take care of, I struggled with ever mounting chaos! But you’re right, both about motherhood and the workplace. Anyone who goes into it thinking there will be me-time, or parts of the self to be cherished and guarded, is going to experience quite unnecessary misery. I only wish that I had put all those months of… Read more »
“I always wondered, Adelata, how mothers managed with more than one small child. ”
You find out that some of the things you thought were important to manage, aren’t so important. And that even some of the stuff that really is important, you can survive for a while without.
Some people should NOT be gotten along with Agreed. Consider though, that in Wilson’s original post, “getting along” equals fellowship, fellowship is a work wrought in us by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and that work involves mortifying the areas of our lives that need mortifying. Given that context, has MeMe provided a standard by which we may correctly identify the people who “should NOT be gotten along with”? like those who are downright abusive One might grant that some forms of abuse are de facto signs of the absence of the Spirit’s work in a person, but does… Read more »
Rob, you ask good questions. But when abuse is defined entirely as a person’s subjective experience and personal feelings, your questions are unanswerable. In the absence of any objective standard, permission to exclude an abuser is identical to permission to exclude people I dislike. Which, being fallen creatures, we all do from time to time. But generally with an intuition that it might be sinful!
The analogy to newborns in this thread only works if one is surrounded by newborns. The truth however,is that most people are not newborns and people get themselves into a whole lot of trouble, into some exceedingly abusive situations because of Christian teachings that do not take abuse into account, that do not understand power imbalances, that refuse to take sides because they insist on believing all things are equal. It’s a theme that runs throughout Pastor Wilson’s writings and it explains some of the hostility towards him. This post kind of hits all points at once and sums up… Read more »
“Intentional or not, an abuse victim has just received the message that they need to die to self, that they are too prideful, that God does not want them happy, that it is their fault they cannot get along with others, and that the Holy Spirit is not “joy juice.”” Is it your contention that for every article, Pastor Wilson needs to include a list of disclaimers of every potential way someone could wildly misinterpret him? I’m not really sure what you’re asking of him unless all you’re really saying is “hypothetically someone, somewhere could misunderstand and incorrectly apply this… Read more »
“Just curious what it is you would like to see. What should Douglas Wilson be saying here? ” I should like him to begin to understand how his words might be received, what messages he is sending, who he is actually preaching too. It’s a bit different to be speaking to one of the arrogant, pampered over privileged members of Western society versus some guy who has been unemployed for two years and is beaten down by the world, or a woman who is being exploited and victimized at work. The fact that his words never seem to display any… Read more »
“I should like him to begin to understand how his words might be received, what messages he is sending, who he is actually preaching too. ” You found his words inadequate, not merely his understanding. You wish this article said something different to account for these people you’re describing. Could you not use this rationale to complain about anything he says? It’s not possible in the space of a blog post to account for every type of person who might read it and how they might misinterpret it. My question is, how do you require him to speak in each… Read more »
“No, where I would find objection is with the idea that you seem to think pride is a sin that only falls on groups of people for which you don’t feel compassion.” My objection is when the alleged sin of pride is thrust upon those who are marginalized already. For example, as if the only thing wrong with the poor is that they are so entitled and prideful. Victims of domestic violence just need to submit more. Black folks should simply feel more grateful their ancestors were slaves in such a great country. It’s almost always the arrogant and prideful… Read more »
I’d have to spend a lot of time on Left-leaning sites (no thanks) to find two paragraphs with more straw men* and identity politics than what you just wrote.
* Or straw women, straw transgender, straw animal, etc. I’m sure I’ll get my own sensitivity lecture for this comment.
I find it odd that. in a society which apparently worships individualism, we seem unable to view one another as real people rather than as a collection of group identities.
This is an easy one. He needs to issue a standard disclaimer, which I will happily write for him. “Trigger warning: This post is going to discuss standards of decent conduct and warn Christians against the sin of obsessive involvement with self. If you have ever been abused, or even if you merely suspect you have been abused, either yesterday or so long ago that the event is shrouded in the annals of time, you are excused from even attempting to conform to the aforementioned standards of decent conduct. In fact, you should leave this board now and go to… Read more »
Now here I was trying SO HARD to play this slow and gentle and you come along and piledrive her through a table. lol. Even so, take your upvote. That was hysterical.
No, it was not hysterical. It was unkind, passive aggressive, and a deliberate attempt to sabotage what I was saying so as to score hit points and make oneself feel morally superior.
My point still stands, it’s valid,and Pastor Wilson will either take what I am offering him into consideration or he won’t.
“No, it was not hysterical. ” What authority do you possess that gives you dominion over the subjective concept of humor? ” It was unkind, passive aggressive, and a deliberate attempt to sabotage what I was saying so as to score hit points and make oneself feel morally superior.” I could apply this to more than half of everything I’ve ever seen you post. Your point, as I was trying to get to, is an absurdly impossible standard. It isn’t possible to account for every potential reader of a web page, or every potential way they might incorrectly read his… Read more »
“Your point, as I was trying to get to, is an absurdly impossible standard. It isn’t possible to account for every potential reader of a web page, or every potential way they might incorrectly read his words” Consider the fact that I know dozens of pastors, I read an astounding number of blogs, but until reading Pastor Wilson I have never encountered one with such a blind spot, who does not seem to realize how his words will be received by victims, by the downtrodden, by those who are hurting. It is not an absurdly impossible standard at all. If… Read more »
Not being allowed to address MeMe directly, I will say that I believe in admitting wrongdoing. I have read the charges and tried myself in my mental court of law, acting both for the prosecution and the defense. My numerous personalities have deliberated, and the verdict is in. Yes, it was unkind. Not, perhaps, as unkind as some remarks I have read in recent days, but I’m not offering provocation as a defense. On the other hand, the object of my satire was an attitude and an argument; it was not a personal attack on the individual. Passive-aggressive? I would… Read more »
Yep. In fact, in this day and age, I see very few of the “woman who is being exploited and victimized at work” examples. But I’ve seen plenty of women take down men with faux harassment or racism charges…because you know, those claiming victim status can’t be guilty of anything.
I and my closest friends are in our mid-sixties, and we were recently talking about our experiences with sexual harassment in the early days of our careers. In some cases, it was criminal and appalling, but for most of us it was simply very unpleasant. If you were a virtuous woman, you truly had no recourse except to leave. Personnel departments (as human resources was called back in the day) tended to believe credible women, but their hands were tied. They simply warned you never to be caught in a supply closet with Mr. X. What we found amazing, in… Read more »
Or at least include this revised Apostle’s Creed with any possible “trigger” post:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sarahoverthemoon/2014/09/liberating-liturgies-creed-call/
… an abuse victim has just received the message that they need to die to self One can only hope. This is, after all, the clear message of Jesus. One might oversimplify a bit and suggest that it is the gospel itself: a call to put to death the old man and put on Christ. MeMe needs to explain why she believes abuse victims do not stand as guilty before God as the rest of us and need not conform to the image of Christ. that they are too prideful As are we all. that God does not want them… Read more »
Meme has expanded on this here,
https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2017/11/05/not-everyone-should-be-gotten-along-with/
Poked around on your blog a bit. Didn’t much agree with that particular article, but you have some solid anti-feminism stuff. We disagree so much I felt the need to commend you where I’m able.
I think happiness is a good thing. I’ve been blessed to have more than my share of it. But do we have any reason to believe that God put us here to be happy?
I’ve always had qualms about that children’s church song “if you are happy and you know it” for the same reason.
I think God put us here to be happy, but not as the first priority. And since sin entered the world, momentary happiness is not always compatible with what is good.