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Wednesday 15th, March 2023
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Podcast link:
Blog link:
https://www.otakada.org/destroying-every-new-relationship-gods-continuing-parenthood-in-episode-22/
YouTube link:
Partnership with God’s Eagle Ministries (GEM) via this link:
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Series – Perfect Relationship: 24 Tools for Building BRIDGES to Harmony and Taking Down WALLS of Conflict in our Relationships.
Episode 22 : Destroying Every New Relationship – God’s continuing Parenthood in Episode 22
Destroying Every New
Relationship
I want it the way it has always been, but different.
Using our life experiences as our basis, we establish a paradigm of the world. As we go through various experiences, we make judgments. In other words, we determine why these things happen. And because we have a sin nature, we always make that determination from a self-centered perspective: Why did that happen to me?
When we were children, we tended to judge every experience in light of what it meant about us. Through a sin/fear nature, we interpreted every event in our lives as if it were all about us.
Then we interpreted the world through our judgment of those experiences. Some studies indicate that our self-perception is established before we reach the age of five. Think about that. We developed our view of the world through our experiences and subjective judgments long before we ever reached adulthood.
The Scriptures teach that all children are born with a sin nature. This does not mean that every child desires to be evil or commit sin; it simply means that every child is born inherently fearful, (One leading child psychologist believes that fear is the only inborn emotion a child possesses.) The sin nature revolves around self. Because the nature of fear is subjective, fear puts “me” at the center of a person’s experience. Therefore, the person with a sin nature interprets everything subjectively, making it
“all about me.
We Must Renew Our Minds
Our subjective worldview is established before we are mature enough to realize that note everything is about us. Even when we do realize that not everything is about us, we fail to realize that our worldview was established in such a self-centered manner. We don’t know where we got our view of the world; we just know that this is the way we see things, and it forms the basis of our self-perception and all our actions.
This is why it is so essential that believers renew their minds. We must interpret the world in light of our new identity in Jesus. We must look at the world after we have placed Him at the center.
We can no longer be the matrix from which we determine our understanding of the world. We must release the world from our sinful, self-centered judgment. That means we must reconsider
all past interpretations and release our past judgments of all people and events. Otherwise we will be locked into our current views and opinions, making it impossible for us to renew our
minds.
Our concepts of father, mother, mate, and maybe even friend are already established. By our experiences and judgments we have, to a certain degree, cast our lot in life even before we reach
puberty. Apart from a change of heart, most of our major decisions in life are predetermined by how we view the world and ourselves.
Children who grow up in homes where criticism is the norm will live the rest of their lives out of the judgments they make about criticism. A boy may judge, “My mother criticized me because she loved me.” That judgment may predetermine what kind of woman he will marry. When he longs for love, he will look for someone who criticizes him. After all, that is his judgment concerning his mother’s criticism. Criticism equals love, in his view. But then he cannot understand why he is miserable in this adult relationship.
The girl who passes a judgment that all criticism is a form of rejection will be forced in another direction. She will avoid anyone who attempts to add any quality or direction to her life.
She may search out a mate who has no opinion, is afraid of confrontation, and never shares his view. She could be doomed to a life with a non-communicator. Unhappy with this person who seems so “emotionless,” she doesn’t understand why she was ever attracted to him.
What Relationships Are Really All About
Because we have already decided how the roles in life should be played out, we approach new relationships looking for our idea of a friend. We already have a definition of what type of
person this will be. Much of this is done on a subconscious level.
It is, however, clearly directing the course of our lives and it all revolves around judgments. This explains why, when teaching about the heart, Jesus said that what we have, we’ll get more of whether good or bad (Mark 4:24-25). Unless we sow the Word in our hearts and change the beliefs of our hearts, we are doomed to repeat the patterns of our past and relive the same painful
experiences.
Relationships should be places of personal development. They should challenge and stimulate us. They should open us to the many new facets of life. When we get to know new and different people, we have the opportunity to grow as never before. Our problem, however, is that we pass so many judgments before we really get to know new people that we seldom allow those outside of our paradigm into our emotional circle.
We have views of what is a good friend and what is a bad friend. Those views were established by the judgments we made throughout our lives. Based on our views, we will accept or reject a new acquaintance before ever really getting to know the person. This is why people fall into repetitive patterns in their relationships. They have already decided what kind of person they will accept and what kind of person they will reject. This is part of what locks us into following the same destructive patterns in relationships.
Most studies agree that people will never sustain lasting change unless they are resocialized. The Bible is very clear about the effects that fellowship and socialization have on our thoughts and actions. People who make godly decisions never see them through to the end unless they are socially involved with people who can emotionally support those decisions.
Unfortunately, our judgments keep us in the same social circles all our lives, making change virtually impossible.
In this system of socialization, we stay within a predetermined comfort zone. In other words, we keep it the way it has always been and then wonder why nothing changes. Because we are not interacting with different types of people, we are never challenged. We are not forced to grow. When we meet and are attracted to new people, they are the same kinds of people as the old friends from the past. Only the names and appearances have changed.
For the person who is stuck in unhealthy relationships, this cycle falsely confirms their fears and suspicions. They actually come to believe that all people are the same. In other words, they think, There is no reality beyond my past experience. After all, every person I get involved with is just like the people I have already known. Thus, judgments about all men, all women, all whites, all blacks, and so on, are falsely reinforced.
We need new relationships with different kinds of people in order to grow and break out of past patterns. We need people with different behavioral styles. We need people with different
levels of character. We need to grow to accept all different types of people. Not every direct person will hurt you. Not everything about inspirational people is bad. Get to know new people, and avoid a repeat performance of past pains.
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