Serfc27au17 How to Deal with Difficult People -1- August 27, 2017

SerFC27au17.doc “How to Deal with Difficult People” -1- August 27, 2017

Rev. Dr. Ron Patterson

Lection: Romans 12:1-8

Every once in a while someone comes up to me after a service where I have been the preacher, usually at the door or out in the coffee hour and tells me that they felt like I had been talking only to them. Let me share a preacher secret, on most Sundays I’m actually talking to myself, hoping and even praying that other people are struggling or thinking about the same things I am.
For example, if I preach about worry, it’s because I worry all the time and forget about the lilies of the field. If I preach about fear, it’s because I’m often too afraid to remember the thousand times the angelsshout, “fear not”. When I stress the importance of a positive attitude it’s because I need to remind myself about how negativity can sap our strength and warp the way we look at this wonderful world. There is so much that is good and joy filled and beautiful—why do we dwell on the negative?
If I preach about faith, it’s because I really could use a little more and the ways Iavoid hearing Jesus tell me my mustard seed supply of is more than enough. When I preach about Jesus, it’s to remind me that even when I have trouble loving myself, Jesus loves me anyway. So if over the next weeks of my stay here in Ft. Collins, you ever feel that I am speaking directly to you, I thank you for that and I am deeply honored that you might think that. Life is a journey and we’re all on it.
I wanted to begin with that statement this morning because I’m going to attempt to answer a question with which I struggle. How do you deal with difficult people? How do you put up with those tough nut personalities who grind your gears or who drive your political or moral sensibilities into conundrum mode? It’s tough work. We all have those people in our lives and in our families. Some of them are where we work. Some of them live next door. Some of them are on the other side of the world. Some of them are public figures. If I look up and see you smiling now it’s because you might think one of the difficult ones is sitting next to you this morning or filling your own shoes.
You already know that Jesus wants you to love them—we’ve all heard that before. You already know that and chances are you have already said the same thing I’ve caught myself saying: “Yah, Jesus I know I’m supposed to love them, but do I really have to like them? I’ll love them in that Jesus sort of way, but I’m sure not going to like them!”
So how do we deal with difficult people? Several years ago, I had minor surgery and after the surgery I was forced to sit still for a week or so andto pass the time, Ichannel surfed. And for some reason, I decided I would play a little game with myself. Sitting there, watching TV, I had a mini seminar on the various ways to deal with difficult people. Here’s some of what I saw and heard being suggested as I channel surfed.
You can deal with a difficult person by taking out a contract on them. You know, hiring a hit man. You can use the dark arts, something like voodoo—just get a doll and some pins. Another possibility of escape from the difficult is self-medication, a good stiff drink orsome pills and self-medicate those difficult ones right out of your consciousness. If you have a problem, just get another prescription or a bigger bottle. If you then become addicted you can live in a haze that the difficult ones can never penetrate. I saw several programs where difficult people got into cages and beat on one another—the theory being that if you could make someone else hurt as much as you were hurting, you could feel better. Then I watched a few of those court T.V. programs where someone judged difficult was taken to court and found guilty of being difficult. I saw one talk show where groups of difficult people got together and swore at one another and chased one another around screaming. I suppose the theory being that if you can get physical you can get revenge against the difficult. I even took a look at the old gold standard of the chronically difficult—the soap operas and learned that if I wanted to deal with difficult people, I could shop my way to happiness, or find joy against the difficult by getting my friends to hate them too and with my circle of friends wall my difficult people off from my life with a barrier of nasty gossip whether that gossip was true or not.
And I can joke about how stupid and small and “un-Christian” all of that is, because I know that here in Ft. Collins in a progressive Church community you all only watch public TV, right? I can joke, except for the fact that in ways not as public and usually a whole lot more polite and civil, I have camped in most of those compounds overtly or covertly without much compassion and maybe so have you. I’ve never hired a hit man, but I have caught myself hating. I’ve never filed a suit or gone into a cage with a club, but I have found myself sometimes wishing that another child of God would just disappear. Do I recall that Jesus said once that to hate in the heart was exactly the same thing as killing with the hand?
Now and again, I have shared a tasty bit of gossip. More than once I have been complicit in some activity that choose up sides and I havetried my best to make my side look better than the ‘other’ who I found difficult. Do I recall that Jesus said once that a word spoken in anger was exactly the same as a dirty deed?
I guess I’ve even found some secret delight in the pain of another and medicated my own pain. Those are some of the places I have been—and I suspect that maybe more than a few of you have been there too. Those are all ways of dealing with difficult people.
But then, is that how Jesus would want us to deal with difficult people? Now before I answer that question, let me insert a footnote. There are some bad actors out there. There are some nasty people. There are addicted people and hurting people and hating people and people whose politics fill them with irrational fear that has consequences that truly hurt children and the earth. And just as bad, as I suggested last Sunday, there is a lot of bad religion out there and some of it even dares call itself Christian.
A few years ago, a man went into a church with a gun and did what he did because somehow he believed that hate was a family value and that killing religious progressives was the right thing to do and then Charleston and Charlottesville. Well, liberal or conservative, progressive or regressive, a faith that needs to find other people to hate is not a faith that follows Jesus or brings anyone closer to God. A faith that separates and condemns others and proclaims publicly that believers need to become bigots is not about Jesus or Mohammed or Moses, or the Buddha, no matter how loudly they sing it or say it.
Viciousness and violence is not difficult behavior, it is demonic and we need to stand up for the truth of that fact. We need strong laws and a justice system and good courts and sometimes military force to deal with people and movements and even religions that surrender themselves to hate. That’s a topic I would love to discuss with you in another setting, because I know some of you know more about that that I do. End footnote!
How should we deal with difficult people? You and I can never deal with difficult people until we find a way to deal with the single most difficult person we know best but who we sometimes treat as a total stranger. Do you know who that is? He is currently standing here looking out at all of you. She or he is currently sitting out there looking at me standing here.
Let me appeal now to three eminent authorities on the subject of difficult people. First, as an Ohio farm kid of Swiss decent, I cut my teeth on the wisdom of our Amish neighbors. Here’s how they said it: “Everybody is a little crazy except me and thee and sometimes I do wonder about thee.” Second, anybody here today who remembers the old comic strip philosopher of my childhood, Pogo, who said: “We have met the enemy and they is us.” And finally if you don’t trust the Amish and don’t believe Pogo, just what do you suppose Jesus meant when he connected loving others with learning to really love and respect the person on the inside of our own skin?
There are difficult people. There will always be difficult people. Dealing with difficult people begins when you and I learn to deal with ourselves and our emotions and our self-image and our understanding of the powerful reality that we are each the beautiful and wonderfilled creation of a loving and forgiving and nurturing God. If you want to deal with difficult people, begin within.
To deal with difficult people take a long loving look inside of your own heart. Chances are you might not like what it is you see there, but there is a very high probability that at least some of the problem you have with other folks is really a problem you are having with yourself. If I don’t love me I am bound to have trouble loving you. If I don’t respect and take care of me, chances are pretty high that I will disrespect you and in some way deny the image of God in you. If I can’t see Jesus in me, I will probably do little more than fake seeing Jesus in you. You begin dealing with difficult people by learning to love and respect yourself.
And here of course there is a great danger that when we look inside we might end up being too hard on ourselves. You are not perfect and neither am I. If you think you are perfect, I am bound to be a failure in your eyes and if I think I am perfect, you will never measure up either-and we are bound to find one another difficult or hopeless or chronically flawed.
That’s bad, but on the other hand, if I look inside and see only what’s wrong, that’s what I will see in you and if you look inside and just see the negative, that is all you will see me and in others. The great Jewish philosopher Philo said once that on this life journey it is always best to “be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”
So, to deal with difficult people, look inside and be honest with yourself. Make sure that you know how much God loves you and then you will have the strength to be patient and kind to the person you find difficult. Try to understand and accept the pain that another person is experiencing. But at the same time realize that you can’t help another person by allowing them to make you miserable or allowing another person to use you as an excuse for not taking responsibility for their own lives or their own actions. Some people call that tough love—but I think that’s true love, because the love of Jesus accepts and cares and forgives, but it does not enable the bad behavior of another. No one can ever feel better by making another person feel worse—but lots of people try that everyday—it just doesn’t work.
One more thing: Did you ever wonder how God puts up with it? How in heaven’s name God puts up with broken lives and a broken world and all the difficult people running around? God is not revenge. God is not judge. God is not score keeper. God is not all sorts of things you and I might seem to be when we try to deal with difficult people or are difficult ourselves. God is love and love keeps no score of wrongs. In our struggle with the difficult in others and in ourselves, God sees the gift that each one of us is. God looks beyond the difficult to see the divine. Let’s pray for that vision when we deal with the difficult. Amen.