Finding Balance Between Perception and Expectations.

Who’s Glasses Are You Looking Through?

Is it really reasonable to believe that you can make other people happy by always doing what’s expected, acquiescing to the wishes of others to live in their blessing?  In reality you can never make someone else happy, they may be happy that you gave them what they were wishing for, but it does not necessarily make them happy. Much of the problem with viewing life from this perspective is fueled by a low sense of self and how worth, value, and happiness comes in life. The question that is at the core of the issue is: how does a person get to the point of not feeling that if one does not live up to the “expectation” of others, that acceptance, love, and approval will not be experienced?

Is There a Pattern of Response Connected to the Past?

While there are biological factors of personality and behavior, much of what’s beneath response is grounded in performance based thinking-behavior patterns established at a very early age.  The result is an experience characterized by falsely associating rewards for behaviors with value as a person.  A common response is a skewed sense of identity dependent upon reward attached to performance.  Often, when performance based behavior is thought of by some, it is linked with a negative connotation.  Performance and reward are not necessarily bad components when join together.  Human behavior is understood in terms of motivation and goal.  In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need, the principles of felt need and motivation for behaviors are illustrated in the basic way that individual’s act out behavior. The response is connected to how needs-drives are internalized, organized, and acted out. At the basic level, a common thread of response is present that supports the function of a healthy, well expressed life, but the response takes on a different pattern based upon signals from the environmental conditions, and perceived outcomes. Another point of consideration is that, humans are not simply deterministic in responses, but free to demonstrate dynamic interaction in response to what is occurring and has happened over the course of life. Knowing why behavior occurs may be more important to living effectively than identifying or classifying behaviors as good or bad. The truth is that everything that we are doing and how we respond is a continuing flow of experiences, information received, and responses that we organize in the unique way that integrates the information of life in our experience.

Is it Wrong to Respond as You do to Life?

Some individuals describe life in terms of black and white—good and bad.  That is characteristic of a personality disorder that is described as “Borderline Personality” and indicates a behavior that presents with emotional dis-regulation response to stress.  The personality illustration points to a reality experienced when we possess a limited view of life that describes everything in terms of good and bad, black and white. When the experiences in life do not fit linear terms of good and bad—stupid and smart, there is a difficulty in managing information that does not fit in the box, which colors outside the lines, and is not really understood.  Looking at what people do and why in terms of what is effective and works and what do not work and is ineffective will provide a way of connecting behaviors with solutions that work.  In response to the many questions that are within this, there is a place for good and bad, mores, values, and spiritual implications.  However, simply describing the moral quality or value principle of what is done, will not help anyone: it more likely than not– will reinforce the same negative, self-destructive patterns of thinking and behaving. Therefore, understanding why behavior, resulting in performance that is motivated by a need for approval, characterizes how individuals respond to expectations and will provide more substantive answers that describing in terms of good and bad—right and wrong.

Healthy or Unhealthy Expectations?

A good question to ask about what is healthy and unhealthy is to look at the impact of actions in terms of what effect is elicited that promotes a specific behavior. An illustration about perspective and the effects of a point of view, internalized is within how Christians generally respond to behavior problems with guilt or conviction. I have a personal axiom that says, “guilt” drives us away from God—to hide as they did in the Garden of Eden and ”conviction” drives us toward God—as Isaiah’s vision of God (Isaiah  6).  There is a distinct difference in how response is given to guilt and how response is given to an understood cognitive, spiritual truth.  One produces neurotic behavior with its own distinct pathology and another with the response that frees choices and produces intentional responses.  Consideration about what is healthy behavior may be best, framed in terms of motivation and what effect is produced.  For example, a well-founded effort leads someone to let another know that they are a drunk and that they need to change.  A good question to pose is: who feels better after the exchange, the one who identified the behavior or the “drunk “who heard those words describing behavior flavored with a character assessment?  Understanding behaviors that identifies the action and misses the person has the missing component– hope of efficacy.

The epilogue is this: if the guilt of not pleasing others is placing expectation on you remember, “Healthy people with good self-worth and identity have a solid foundation from which to operate. They enjoy love and approval and success, but do not crumble without it. Their good feelings come from the inside, not from the external people and things which surround them” (Smith A.W.).

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Can Change Have a Negative Impact on Relationships?

Image by Beverly & Pack via Flickr

In Gary Collins book The Search for the Soul, quotes Mother Teresa who was asked: what is the greatest problem that people in the world face?  Her reply was “loneliness.” At the same time the culture of today has been described a time of emptiness and spiritual hunger. In the loneliness and spiritual emptiness that is explicit within our modern culture another term has been used to characterize the outlook of people in modern America; pessimism. Is the cynicism of our age, widespread dissatisfaction with a culture that has embraced rationalism, obsession with technology, only to see increased evidence of war, violence, poverty–environmental pollution–the decline of spiritual influence–things are not getting better with all our technology, an indicator of the absence of distinctives beliefs that can empower hope that transcends, mere, things and provide significance to existence?

The existentialism of the modern world that has put so much emphasis on me and I resulted in a generation of people who are together every day, but we have become solitary islands in the masses of humanity and technology.  I recently posted on Facebook, “The hardest thing about being an island is the solitary existence of being alone against the elements. The islands stand alone, solitary and are hardened by circumstances, weather, and time. When the sun goes away and the storms bring the pounding surf and the ravaging winds, the island must stand alone because that is what islands do until they are washed away” (2010).  It is a painful and isolated position that many people in the world have arrived at, but have no destination in mind.  With all the text-messaging, posting on social networks, and twittering; while people are connected to so many people, they may still be disconnected from healthy, meaningful relationships with others that will bring an efficacious way of living.

One of the great problems that characterize existence today is that life is replete with narcissism and self focused interests. If a person wants to deal with the problem of loneliness and find spiritual answers, then having a meaningful relationship with another person is something that requires integrity, honesty, and willingness to get off the island. Maybe, what is needed is realizing that what is best for others may not be what is best for me and being okay with that. This is the place where an attitude of servant-hood begins. The greatest of all spiritual gifts is the expression of love that is given in a way that sacrifices what benefits me and gives what someone else needs. (1 Corinthians 13.)   The great paradox of today is that we have evolved with a great amount of intelligence and technology at our finger tips, but the basic communication skills of people are deficient when it comes to relating to others in ways that foster healthy outcomes.

Has the individualism of the 70’s that spawned humanism, the “Me” generation, the “Now” generation been more than can be absorbed and processed? Alvin Toffler wrote about the stress that too much change to quick has upon culture, “Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in people by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time”.  It is implicit within the behavior cues that are demonstrated by the absence of effort to connect that there is the subtle deception that says, “everything is all right and that we have become an advanced people”, when the evidence suggests that we are broken and need intervention to address the spiritual emptiness and loneliness of people today.  It has been said that, “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions” (Leonardo da Vinci).  What can we learn from marriage and divorce statistics? One half of all first marriages failing in the first five years and  that sixty percent of all second marriage fail?  It is evident that the side effects of an evolving culture has rippling effects that can be seen in the lack of ability to function in relationships which is the thumbprint of the spiritual void in American culture.

One of the great challenges is to understand and not just to diagnose the problem.  To possess the ability make a meaningful contribution to life by being a change agent is the challenge.  We have the ability to understand, but will we? An imposing truth about what will be the answer to loneliness and the spiritual void may be characterized by a statement of truth, “The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn” (Alvin Toffler).  In the Garden of Eden, the first relationship problems were solved by a spiritual solution to the needs of humanity.  What is it that can be learned from that?  The people have changed, but the solution remains that when we do not have a right relationship to God, all other relationships disintegrate.

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Easter Week: A Reminder of the Cross as the Core Message of Christianity

Easter is a day when Christians all around the world focus upon the events that take place around a geographical location in Israel where Jesus was crucified and died upon the cross as the Savior of the world. The events around the Cross are also focused upon the character and capability of Jesus, a person  who’s life and death paints a picture or redemption through suffering.  The death of Jesus upon the Cross portrays the most horrid act of all humanity.  Nevertheless in the midst of depravity of men rejecting God’s Son,  God’s greatest gift is given through the complete satisfaction for a sin debt that was passed down through the human race and assumed by Christ.

The three solitary crosses tells  a story of one innocent man, who lived as a servant, hanging between two men convicted of crimes worthy of death. The emotionally charged story of the Cross portrays a picture of Jesus feeling the pain and sting of rejection from friends, family, and His followers.  It was a final rejection that culminated in that final act of bearing the pain being abandoned on the Cross in suffering that led to death.  His suffering was a public display of humiliation in the midst of sinners who had committed acts worthy of punishment.  On the Cross, Jesus gave His life as a ransom for human beings held hostage by the power of sin.  In His sacrifice, “He that knew no sin”, became sin and was nailed to a Cross by the people that He loved, served, and gave himself willingly to liberate.  Indeed, one image that resonates from the Cross is the depravity of the human race that  is juxtaposed against the grace of a loving God witnessed in the passion of Christ on the Cross.

In the rejection of Jesus as the Son of God, it was a rejection of God, as well as,  how in His goodness and demonstrated favor, virtue, and benefit for those who crucified Him.  However, in their vile and malicious acts they were so blinded by their own depravity that they could not see any need for what God offered in Christ. So their anger at what they could not see nor understand is validated by every striking striking blow of the hammer ringing out the sound of depravity.  Obviously, as religious as they were; they could not achieve a right standing with God.  Jesus was a visible reminder of their sin and the insufficiency of human efforts to remedy the sin condition.  Then, in the heinous acts of nailing the sinless Savior to the Cross,  a great paradox is portrayed in the presence of God and man. In the act of hatred for all that was good, nailing Jesus to the Cross, they were nailing down the guilt and depravity of a human race detached from God.  Indeed, the sad truth echoes from the Cross: when they got close enough to the greatest potential in life, they tried to murder it and push it away because they were not capable of a relationship with God.  In fact, they could not receive it nor understand their condition of detachment from a relationship with.  As a result, the people nailing Him to the Cross were blind, hopeless, and helpless and incapable of righteousness without God’s intervention.

When people see the life of Jesus and His death on the Cross, the attributes of His life are magnified by how He loved and served others.  Servant-hood  through the acts that He performed and the message that He communicated by willingly giving His life and surrendering in death to God’s purpose in redemption    However, what is missing from the understanding of many people who look upon the historical event (the Cross), the historical person (Jesus), is a personal relationship and personal identification with the place in history.  It is the story of the man who died abused and was rejected to offer forgiveness, redemption, and acceptance through the  grace of God.  His death on the Cross is a reminder of how all humans need a personal, spiritual attachment to God to create a healthy balanced relationship to enable a way to live effectively. Obviously, the point is that without Christ people are detached from God and His blessings.  Detachment occurred in the Garden of Eden and severed the once intimate relationship felt and experienced in every dimension of life.

An identity issue occurred and man no longer knew who he was because  relationship with God is what defined life, existence, and purpose in the Garden. As a result, their relationship, identity, and connection to spiritual life was altered in a solitary act of sin.   However, in one act sin changed  how relationship would occur with God.  On the other hand, the death of Jesus on the Cross has great theological meaning to Christianity and holds a great application to the human experience.  Do you remember the words,  “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled.  In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight” ( Col. 1:21-22).  Obviously, the felt need of every human being answered in the work of Christ is to have a relationship, to experience forgiveness, to remove guilt through redemption, and to know unconditional love and acceptance.

Therefore, this is the work done on the Cross by bringing a relationship of hope through His redemption.  Consequently, we have the great potential in the Cross to be connected and attached in a relationship with God through the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross we remember at Easter.

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