Tuesday, October 10, 2017

When Personal Change is Not Accepted



When a politician “flip-flops” and we find out that they were for abortion before they were against it, a common response is to say that they are “lying” or “manipulative” in their current stance. We don’t trust that their views on abortion, or anything else for that matter, could actually have changed.

When a person makes a mistake, and apologizes, people may say that they are only apologizing because they are “embarrassed” or, distrusting sincerity, accuse that person, again, of “lying.”

When someone does something in their 20’s that they later acknowledge and disown as a previous behavior done in a less mature and enlightened mindset, other people often react by continuing to hold them to that previous behavior to this very day.

It’s the “Yeah, but...” syndrome: “Oh sure, Pete is a great guy now, yeah! But you should have seen him in college. I mean, it’s tough to forget that, and that he won’t revert back at some point.”

Does this describe us? Do we hold someone else to a standard that we don’t hold to ourselves? Do we allow ourselves to change but not others?

I, for one, back in my college, pre-Christian days, was for abortion. That was 34 years ago. You don’t honestly believe that my thinking on this could have changed in 34 years? (It has).

I have made mistakes at work, with society, at home and with my family. Can a person honestly believe that, if I wasn’t sorry for those mistakes then because I didn’t see any problem with them then, that I am sorry now, have said so and made sincere attempts to not repeat those mistakes?

I have done and thought things in my twenties, thirties and forties that I can’t fathom doing or thinking today, in my fifties.

Do we honestly believe that every person on this planet must be held accountable to a few years in their past for the rest of their life, regardless of what kind of person they have since become?

Maybe people change so infrequently that, as a society, we have come to not trust it when it does happen.

Or, although we do concede that people can and do change, perhaps our resistance to it is because we don’t like it when it happens. Our self-interest is often served by change denial. In that way we can continue on in victimhood, cold-shouldering, being a control freak and not having to be vulnerable with family and friends.

A perfect example is found in the situation of a spouse who wants “out” of a marriage. Let’s say it is the wife. She signs up for counseling having already settled the matter in her mind that her husband is beyond the ability to change.

I have seen this first hand in my work in marriage ministry.

What inevitably transpires, however, over the weeks of my husband and me meeting with the couple is that the wife’s husband does begin to change. He implements the communication strategies, checks off the wife’s required boxes of things to do at home, apologizes for past incriminations, etc.

This is the point at which the ball bounces into the doubting wife’s court: will she now accept, and work within, this irrefutable change?

The answer is often “No” because this wife doesn’t actually want her spouse to change because it means that now she, too, has to change.

The wife discovers, much to her surprise and chagrin, that she is, in fact, part of the problem in the marriage. This can be too much for her pride to handle, and so, unable or unwilling to acknowledge that her spouse can become a better person, and to avoid any accountability on her part, she leaves the marriage anyway.

It’s a very stubborn defensiveness. And it is what we lob at family members, co-workers and politicians every day.

What about the reaction to those who have died to an old life due to being born again in Christ? For us, especially in our early years of learning to live as Christ—and all the “hypocritical” offenses we rack up—we quickly become, if not peculiar, then a laughing stock or offensive stench to those who are outside of the life of Christ who cannot comprehend or willingly accept a redeemed life.

There is nothing we can do about them, but there is everything we can do about us, and that is simply to continue to grow in the knowledge and love of the Lord, and continue to become Christlike.

Now, I support and acknowledge that trust in change must be earned.

So, for example, someone who has used drugs and alcohol, and declares them self “clean,” must prove it.

I agree that spouses must each be intentional about long-term transformation in their own persons and in the marriage.

I agree that we do not become pushovers and enablers in accepting someone’s newly turned over leaf.

But to continue to find fault with someone ten, twenty and thirty or more years after they have committed some act or held some attitude and have since acknowledged, repented of, and turned away from it transfers the fault onto the blamer’s heads. They are now the guilty party of un-forgiveness and self-righteousness.

How would we feel—how do we feel, when people will not consider and accept who we are today versus who we were back when?

The outcome of this refusal sabotages relationships and, in a social sense, the ability to work and cooperate together.

I live in a community in which I have lived for 20 years.

I came here as a non-believer, with a drinking problem, and lugging strong opinions that were a mile wide and an inch deep.

I continuously run into people from that (thankfully) receding past who haven’t had the privilege of observing my transformation over the last 15 years. To them, I’m sure I am still the jerk I used to be.

And then there are those who I’ve met recently who have no idea of what I have ever been nor I, them. I find these folks refreshing and encouraging because my relationship with them is current: it is based on who I, and they, are today.

I include in this latter group my husband, who, although he knows everything about me, the shadows of the past don’t haunt due to our both being regenerated in Christ, meeting God’s new mercies every morning. Our relationship today is based on who we both are in Christ today.

I take no credit for the regeneration and clearing-of-the-slate of my person and worldview. That is all Christ.

It is His redemption—the washing away of the worldly, secular and human over the last seventeen years. The melting, day by day, of pride.

Today, I don’t recognize or know the person I was twenty years ago: she is a complete stranger and enigma to me. And I can’t thank Christ enough for pulling me out of her and bringing me to this new personhood in Christ.

Redemption is possible for everyone. It is real for some.

We do well to sober our strong convictions that people (including ourselves) can’t change their opinions or behavior as time goes by, or at the hands of Christ.

We do well to stop pointing the finger at other people’s explanations and stated motivations for the change we see in them and ask ourselves why it is we are so reluctant to give them their due, to accept that the evidence does, indeed, point to a metamorphosis?

And to ask ourselves, “Who are we to hold that positive reality against them?” If we accept it in ourselves, then we accept it in others.

 copyright Barb Harwood


“If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions.” Galatians 6:3-4a

“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” Ezekiel 36:25-27

“Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ‘Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’” John 3:1-3

“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” John 3:19-21

“Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank my God always concerning you for the grace which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

“For the word of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
‘I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE,
AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER I WILL SET ASIDE.’” 1 Corinthians 1:18-19

“And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” 1 Corinthians 6:11


“But by his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,” 1 Corinthians 1:30

“Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12

 “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old has passed away; behold, new things have come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17

“For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; and in Him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Colossians 2:9-14

“For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” 1 John 5:4-5






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