A QUIZ FOR
BIBLICALLY BALANCED,
BORN AGAIN, EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS
by Sue
Gibbings
1. Are
you a workaholic?
2. Are
you easily angered?
3. Do you
like to help bear another’s burdens?
4. Is
your love for that significant other person in your life the kind that always
protects, always trusts, always hopes & always perseveres?
5. Do you
love your neighbour as yourself?
QUESTION 1
Work is God honouring and “All hard
work brings a profit” (Prov. 14.23), but there is a difference between hard
work and workaholism. The latter is a compulsive behaviour and one of the means
of avoiding self and dealing with emotional baggage.
To suggest to someone on the mission
field that if they hope to serve effectively they must first take care of self
causes neon lights to flash. Surely good Christian workers must put self aside?
We’re to deny self, yes, but that doesn’t include denying even the sensible,
ordinary needs of self. In that context workaholism is a distortion of the
Christian ethic of service to others.
QUESTION 2
In 1 Cor. 13:5 we read that love is
not easily angered and yet this is often misinterpreted as a call to repress
anger. Christians often believe that it’s very un-spiritual to own any negative
emotion like anger. Yet it is very necessary to acknowledge the feeling because
it is a fundamental human need to have our feelings validated. Naturally, we
need to find acceptable ways to express our anger if it is valid. Acknowledging
the anger is healthy even if the reasons for it are wrong, but denying the
feeling is unhealthy. In an attempt to anaesthetize emotional pain we all
practise denial at times, but co-dependents become experts at denial and they
usually have a lot of anger to work through.
QUESTION 3
Actually we are called to bear one another’s
overburdens but our motive is suspect if we do it because of a need to be
needed. Each person should carry his own load in terms of personal
responsibility but the co-dependent feels inordinately responsible for others
and wants to take on the whole load and feels quite noble and self-righteous
about doing so. It is not surprising then that burn-out is an inevitable
consequence.
Moreover, when we allow a person to
feed off us in that dysfunctional way, we encourage the growth of a parasitic
relationship. We need to stop and ask ourselves whether our love and caring has
resulted in a relationship where there is one person who is LESS responsible
and MORE self-centred.
QUESTION 4
By way of example, let us consider
the woman who is married to an alcoholic. She believes she is acting in his
best interests when she regularly phones his boss to excuse him from work, when
she bails him out of scrapes and takes steps to ensure that his problem remains
a secret - because “love protects & perseveres”.
Embodied in our Judeo-Christian
ethic is the teaching that we should always respond with compassion and
generosity to someone with a problem. She believes that if she stops rescuing
him he will fall apart, and she applauds herself for her long-suffering and care
taking.
In fact, her husband needs to fall apart before real change can
occur, and she is just as sick as he is.
Her enabling and rescuing are part of the baggage she is
carrying. Her behaviour arises from a need to change and control others, in order
to experience the security that was not present in her own childhood. By
keeping her focus firmly on another’s pain, the rescuer avoids attending to her
own unmet needs and pain. Interestingly, it is often the caring professions,
i.e. medicine, counselling, teaching and the pastoral ministry that attract
people who are rescuers.
QUESTION 5
We are called to love our neighbour as
our self, not instead of our self. We may always be very willing
to do anything and everything for our neighbour. However, we need to learn to
say no, and not always to say yes because we fear criticism and rejection and
want to be a people-pleaser. Co-dependents do not love their neighbour the same
way they love themselves. They love as they would like to be loved in return. Their
apparently sacrificial and unconditional love has a hidden agenda. In essence,
they are loving in order to be loved, caring in order to be cared for, and
giving in order to receive.
Few of us have ever loved another
person unconditionally. Even less, I suspect, are those of us who have ever
experienced truly unconditional love.
Hence the pain - and the co-dependency.
Now, if you were
to take the quiz again, would your answers still be the same?
Our theology often masks deep
insecurities, fears and pain. Many Christians are unwittingly locked into
co-dependent patterns of behaviour when biblical principles are taken out of
context and misinterpreted. They may make a sincere attempt to obey God’s Word
and live according to His precepts, but they are trying to obey a false “word”.
According to Christ who gave us the Second Commandment, the mark of true
spirituality is how well we love.
Many to Many Issue 3 February 1993