Surely there are times when someone doesn't want to talk about something, that is understandable. However when someone makes a practice of doing strange things secretly, and rages when asked to explain their actions, it is time to move on to reasonable persons who care enough about you to resolve things.
Hiding and secrecy is often a symptom of a deeper problem. Open and honest people with nothing to hide readily admit their feelings and desire a solution.
Often those who do not want to resolve something are caught in evil thoughts in their own minds, hiding is a way of protecting anyone from finding out those thoughts. These thoughts are revealed by their very bad unbilbical advice to others.
God calls for believers to be transparent. transparency allows us to face our own fault to be able to grow and learn as well as resolve situations with those around us.
All our lives, some of us have been around family members who treated us with contempt, never telling us why they had such a low opinion of us. I have heard many testimonies just like this, in which the target cannot figure out what they did to deserve this contempt.
There are indications often that people who are jealous or those who cannot tolerate anyone thinking differently from them, just think up something to dislike, even deliberately misinterpreting events in order to believe we are evil. Worst of all they listen to unfounded gossip and make the decision to never ask us our side of the story. These gossip mongers refuse to communicate, refuse to resolve anything because they would have to admit something about themselves.
Those who listen to one side of a matter and believe it, without ever getting the other side are choosing to believe the gossip. As believers we are never to treat anyone with contempt simply because of something we thought we saw or based on what anyone else said about the target.
Proverbs 18:13 "He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him."
There has been much family destruction because of gossips and liars. Those who listen to them are choosing to believe what they want, rather than having an interest in truth. Those who listen are partakers in the sin of those who gossip, they are all cut from the same cloth.
It is one thing to relate to a friend something that happened to you personally, it is quite another to interpret events based on one thing you thought you saw without any evidence or having not been an eye witness to the whole matter.
2 Corinthians 13:1 " This is the third time I am coming to you. “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.”
One can always tell those who are gossips and liars, the gossips and liars always get angry when asked to explain why they believe something or when they are chastised for the things they said that had no proof.
2 Corinthians 12:20 "20 For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.'
Exodus 23:1 "1 “Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness."
Assuming things based on one or two minutes of observation, is a from of gossiping. It allows ones mind to develop scenarios in the heart that shape and color the way we treat the target.
There are also those who base their opinions of us on their own version of the rules. These people have rules that God never made, even taking scripture out of context to assert these rules, as an excuse to judge and demean others who do not think as they do.
When we have a rule for ourselves that is not clearly expressed in God's word, then we have no right and should not place that rule on anyone else, nor should we judge others who do not obey that man made rule.
It is all well and good to place restrictions on ourselves that might be helpful for us personally, even if they are not in Scripture, however we must never judge or punish others because they don't follow our man made rule.
Galatians 5:1
"For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."
We are not free to sin, our obedience ought to be to God's principles not the mandates of man that God never intended.
No comments:
Post a Comment