How Do They Think

Often people interpret events and words in terms of how they already think personally.

If someone frequently tells lies they will accuse others of lying. They expect others to do what they do. Seldom do they evaluate each event or words on their own merits.

Our culture is becoming more this way every day, most of the people in our world are assessing things according to their feelings and not according to facts. Or according to how they wish to be seen and not what is real.

When the culture as a whole is fixated and driven by personal feelings over facts they will interpret most things erroneously. When they are dedicated to seeing themselves as special and superior they will frame their view of all events in their favor.

This is the reason we are seeing so much fighting in families, churches, and workplaces. Drama is preferred over the resolution of problems. Each person biting and devouring one another while gossip runs amuck.

Since many people are more dedicated to appearing perfect and right all the time they have no sense of empathy that allows them to listen to anyone else. There are some people who are genetically predisposed to the tendency to think they know everything. I have seen this in small children who grow up to become worse in their adult years.

I have experienced this in my personal life often when a family member will rage at you merely for suggesting that "we need to talk." That assertion alone, "that we need to talk" is seen as a challenge and an attack to the malignant narcissist.

Often the attacks and demeaning begin at the mention of the idea that something is wrong that needs to be fixed. Narcissists hate more than anything else the thought of solving a problem through honest dialogue. I am convinced it's because they had to be confronted in the first place for their own overt or covert attacks to dominate and they know it. Winning over others takes priority over the quality of the relationship and over any solutions.

People who are honest and kind do not rage immediately when told they have offended someone. These people want to hear how they did that and when they find out the reason they apologize quickly, even if it were unintended offenses.

Because it is the devil who controls the mind of the narcissist they are unwilling to self-reflect to see if perhaps they were at fault. Since they must be seen as perfect and flawless they will never dialogue to resolve relationship problems. Their false image is paramount to everything in their lives. Truth is not very important, only that they are seen as special is important to them. And, anyone else they think is more important than them will be targeted for defeat.

Over the years I have watched this phenomenon grow exponentially since the self-esteem teaching became full-blown in the public school system. This system fostered intense pride in the students, so much so that parents could no longer reason with their children. The teaching of self-esteem fed the baser nature of the human condition, causing irrational responses to perfectly legitimate life experiences.

With this teaching came the lack of respect for authority, especially parents. The school system taught the children, often covertly that their parents were not to be seen as the "wise ones" in their children's lives, it was the teachers who were to be respected above the parents.

Sadly in marriages, one spouse will understand the Biblical way to raise children attempting to obey God with love, instruction and discipline in the ways of the Lord, but the other spouse has bought into the lie of self-esteem and works against them. The children will nearly always follow the way of the lenient parent because it is their natural bent to dislike correction and rebuke.

As we ponder this very sad truth we can see how the world will become ripe for the antichrist rule.

Churches and parents are ignoring the Biblical standards for raising children allowing the godless public school system do the job for them only to be kicked in the teeth by their children when they no longer love or respect them.

When this happens there is only one thing to do, when they are grown and worse than ever we must allow them to go letting God deal with them in the world. It is only through a transformed Spirit in Christ that they will see their need to be changed into a new creation. Without this, the adult children grow worse as they grow into middle age and their elderly years. In the meantime, they have taught by example their own children how to act disrespectfully without restraint, conscience, or empathy for anyone else.

2 Timothy 3:1-5

Difficult Times Will Come

"3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, [a]haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of [b]godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these."

What should our response be in these troubling and often frustrating times? We ought to be seeking to be thinking with the mind of Christ while obeying His principles in the Bible. We must speak the truth as led by the Holy Spirit and leave all the results to Him. How a person responds to God's truth has nothing to do with us, that's God's business.

When we know we have obeyed the Holy Spirit we will have peace no matter how others act toward us. We will be able to move on from those who don't want to hear and who treat God as disrespectfully as they do us.

Bottom Line: Obey Christ and give others to God to deal with!