It’s complicated. It’s so natural for us to want to defend ourselves and justify our actions when in relationship and accused. We want to focus on and bring to light all that we feel we have done right and minimize all that we have done wrong. We pull the scales out of the closet, blow the dust off them and put all our righteous acts on one side and failures on the other. When we stand back and look at the two suspended bowls, we feel that we aren’t so bad and our good has certainly outweighed our blunders. We think of what others’ scales might look like and compare and think we size up not so bad. So, we defend ourselves and commit to go down swinging. It’s primal.
But exactly right here is where we go sooo completely wrong. We get into self-defense mode. When we defend ourselves and attempt to justify our actions to the offended and accusing party, he or she doesn’t feel heard or understood. Instead of them feeling heard and their feelings being acknowledged or validated, they feel shut down, unheard-like their thoughts and feelings don’t matter. Granted, they likely have their own sin that has contributed to the tension and breakdown in the relationship, but throwing that in their faces will only further cause division and demise to the relationship. Instead of a bridge between us being under repair, we torpedo it by not acknowledging how we have offended them or hurt them-intentionally or unintentionally. Instead, we have caused further damage and reinjured them by not acknowledging the hurt we have inflicted.
Don’t hear what I am not saying. I am not suggesting we admit to wrong that we haven’t done. For instance, if you are a parent and you rightly disciplined your child in love, with self-control, and your child is throwing his or herself tantruming, and trying to get you to cave-that isn’t the time to admit wrongdoing if you haven’t done wrong. On the flip side, if you disciplined in anger, losing control of your words, body language, or spanked out of anger and weren’t loving, even though your child deserved discipline, this is the time to acknowledge that you lost control. This is the time not to defend your methods, but to confess and repent that you, in your sin, didn’t handle their sin well.
Bridge-building in conflict starts with us. You and me, both of us first plucking the log out of our own eye before seeking to remove the speck from our foe’s eye. (Matthew 7:3-5) In other words, we need to first clean up our own side of the street before pointing out the dirt on their side of the street. When we confess and repent of our own failure and sin before others, they are far more likely to drop their defenses and hear us, respect us. In fact, they are far more likely to then take their turn and confess their stuff too. Pretty soon, you will have another battle where you both are in competition to confess your own sin was worse than theirs. But that’s a better battle, isn’t it?
One of our biggest problems is the sin of pride in our hearts. The last thing we want to do is humble ourselves, confess, repent, and ask forgiveness. Because of our indwelling sin nature, we are far more wired to defend ourselves and accuse others; in other words, we play God. Instead of running to the Lord and confessing first to Him and acknowledging we need His forgiveness and sacrifice for our sin, we judge others and try to defend ourselves. Our default setting is to minimize our sin and failure and justify and elevate our actions, and it gets us into trouble. It torpedoes our relationships, our bridges. We lose respect and sabotage our influence in others’ lives because they see our failure and when we attempt to deny it, we look like the posers and hypocrites we are. The only people we are kidding, are ourselves.
So, let’s stop with the emotional taekwondo.
For further study check out James 4:10 and 1 Peter 5:5-6.
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