Happiness, the late comedian George Burns said, is having a large, loving, caring,
close-knit family…in another city.
Whether or not we want to admit it, all of us can appreciate those words
as sometimes expressing how we feel about family.
This
morning, as we continue our series of messages titled Living In A Divided World, we come to the message One Big, Happy Family? This is a message about family, and the
sometimes difficult and challenging realities of family life. Tanya and I have been married for over
34 years, and for the entirety of that time we have lived hundreds of miles
from our closest family members. I
sometimes joke that there is good news and bad news about living so far away
from your family. The bad news, of
course, about living so far away from our family is that we are far away from
our family. The good news about
living away from our family is…we are so far away from our family. You laugh at that because you don’t
want to admit it, so I’ll admit it for you – sometimes, we all could use a
little space from our families. Am
I right? That’s not a commentary
about what goes on in your family or mine; it’s just how things sometimes
are. Family is a beautiful,
wonderful gift of God, but sometimes family is a challenging gift as well.
As I thought about this message,
two things immediately came to mind – first, there is so much territory that is
possible to cover with this topic.
I have spoken about family on a number of other occasions so my purpose
is not to go back and cover all of that ground, and certainly not all of the
other possible topics related to family.
Second, I spent a good deal of time thinking about which Scripture
passages to use. There are a
number passages to turn to, as the Bible has many stories about not only family
life, but also includes in those stories some of the dysfunctions that come
along with family life. There is
conflict and dysfunction from the first story of family life, as we read of the
tragic violence between Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1-16). There is also the struggle between Jacob
and Esau (Genesis 25:19-34); Isaac, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishmael (Genesis 16:1-16
and Genesis 21:1-20); Jacob and Laban (Genesis 30:25:1 – 31:55); there are
multiple examples of dysfunction in the family of David, such as the violent
episode directed at his daughter Tamar (II Samuel 13:1-39) and David’s
struggles with his son Absalom (I Samuel 15:1-37 and II Samuel 18:1-33); and
there is the Prodigal Son and his family (Luke 15:11-32), which, although we
don’t always think of it as a story of family struggle or dysfunction, those
elements are certainly there.
There were three other passages that also came to mind, and I considered
using just one of them but then decided to use a portion of each one for this
morning’s text. The first passage
is the one I imagine is most familiar, the second less so, and the third is a
passage you might not recognize at all.
I want to use each of those passages as representative of personality
types that we find in every family, personality types that we will all
recognize.
The first story comes from Genesis
and tells a portion of the story of Joseph and his brothers. This is from one of the longest stories
in the entire Bible and the story of Joseph and his brothers is captivating and
fascinating, and I encourage you to read it in its entirety in the coming days.
The second story comes from that
of David and Jonathan. The story
of David and Jonathan tells us of one of the great friendships of the Bible,
but it is a friendship that was greatly complicated by the fact that Jonathan’s
father is Saul, the king of Israel.
Saul is very jealous of David, and when he realizes that David has been
chosen to replace him as king, Saul plots to kill David. The particular passage we will study this
morning is when Jonathan is finally coming to this realization and helps David
escape to safety. The third
passage is one with which most people are probably not familiar. It is a passage, actually, that takes
many people by surprise, as it tells of a time when the family of Jesus
believed he was out of his mind and
they come to take possession of him (the next time your family thinks you’re
crazy, don’t feel bad, as Jesus’ family thought that about him).
There is
so much that we can say about family, but obviously I am limited in the amount
of time that I have, and not wanting to impose upon your Sunday lunch with your
family, I am scaling down what I have to say about the three different types of
characters that we find in all families, which are – the divider, the appeaser,
and the manager. Each of these personalities comes from
the passages we will study, and they each exist in every family. You will recognize each of these
characters in your family. In
fact, you might already have attached some names to those character types, but
if you are sitting with your family, keep those names to yourself. Please. And if we are very honest, we might also recognize some of
these characters in ourselves. I
represent one of these personality types, and you will probably guess which one
before I tell you.
I should say at this point that
each of these three personality types have their positive attributes. Not every aspect of a manager, for instance, is negative. I should also
reiterate what I have said in earlier messages from this series, and that is
the reality that conflict is inevitable in life, and that includes the reality
that there is conflict in families and conflict in relationships where love is
incredibly and deeply rooted. Just
because there is conflict in your family, however, does not mean your family is
dysfunctional and weird and in need of serious therapy. It simply means your family is normal
and like every other family.
Everyone in a family is different, and those differences are one of the
sources of conflict. There are some
things I just don’t like, and they are things that Tanya loves. I don’t like much of the music she
likes, and she doesn’t like much of the music I listen to. We have different tastes in what we
read and what we eat and in many other things as well, and sometimes we wonder
how we get along so well when we have such different tastes in most
things. But our core values about
life and about what we believe are the same, and that is very important.
Well, that long introduction doesn’t give me
much time, and as I have already been reminded several times that Jordan let
you out earlier last week than I normally do, I better get moving.
The Divider
Genesis 37:17-22
17 Joseph went after his brothers and found
them near Dothan.
18 But they saw him in the distance, and
before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.
19 “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to
each other.
20 “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him
into one of the these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured
him. Then we’ll see what comes of
his dreams.”
21 When Reuben heard this, he tried to
rescue him from their hands.
“Let’s not take his life,” he said.
22 “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the
wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.”
Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his
father.
Years ago, my family gathered at the home of
one of my siblings for Thanksgiving dinner. All five of us, and our extended families, were able to
attend, so it was a large gathering.
Several of us stayed at the home of my mom, and before leaving for
dinner my mom gave a very stern warning to one of my brothers-in-law and myself
about not getting one of our relatives all wound up, because we had already
planned to mention some of the political issues of the day, knowing we would
stir up a big discussion with that person and get them upset. Looking back on this, I don’t know why
we felt compelled to do such a thing, because all it did was bring about a
level of division. We thought it
would be funny, but in reality, it was an immature and unfortunate decision on
our part.
That was a conscious decision to do something
that caused division, but many dividers
do so without even realizing they are being divisive. Joseph was such a person. Joseph was favored by his father over his other brothers,
and he was gifted in many ways, one of which was the ability to interpret
dreams, interpretations which he sometimes used to hold over the heads of his
brothers, such as telling them that they would one day bow down to him (Genesis
37:1-11). Doing so became so
divisive that even Joseph’s father, Jacob, rebuked him for not just his dream,
but for the way he seemed to enjoy what his dream meant.
I don’t think Joseph understood the discord he
was sowing in his family. Even
though he was correct in what he said – his brothers would indeed one day bow
down to him – there is a way to deal with people and a way not to deal with
people, and one way not to deal with
people is to rub your successes into the faces of family members. What wants to hear about someone’s
promotion and accompanying large raise when you are struggling in your work and
struggling to pay your bills? Who
wants to hear about that trip around the world when you struggle to pay for the
gas to go across town to the grocery store, let alone come up with the money to
buy some groceries? Who wants to
hear about a big new house when you know that if you miss one more mortgage
payment your house will go into foreclosure? It is a wonderful gift to have such blessings, but basic
sensitivity will make us realize there is a way to talk about all manner of
things in our lives without being divisive. Joseph seemed more interested in reveling in his status as
the chosen child and bragging about the successes he would one day enjoy than
he was interested in showing some level of sensitivity to his brothers.
The divider
is also the one who uses politics, faith, and the issues of the day to drive
wedges between family members. We
all know that, at family gatherings, there are those conversations everyone
hopes won’t come up because seated across from one another is one member of the
family who supported Hilary Clinton and another who supported Donald
Trump. Just mentioning those names
makes us tense up, right? The
difficulty is that rational, polite conversation can so quickly deteriorate
into name-calling and shouting, which does absolutely nothing to bring a family
closer together. Any time you
begin a conversation, or further a conversation, by asking a question in this
way – please tell me how someone as
intelligent as you can believe, support, or vote for… Questions and comments that immediately
put others on the defensive do nothing to further understanding and family
harmony. It is better, I believe,
to ask questions that lead to greater understanding, not questions that are
accusations and insults that masquerade as questions. Ask questions such as, what
is it that you see in that person, that belief, or that policy that is
important to you? Help me to
understand what you would like me to know about your stance and your
belief. How can we disagree on
such fundamental beliefs and not allow those differences to divide us as family
members who love one another?
Also understand that dividers are a personality
type who seek to create a diversion from what is going on in their own life so
that they do not have to deal with those matters. Illusionists, for example, perform their illusions by
creating some kind of diversion.
They get us to look over here, at one hand, while over there, with the
other hand, they are doing something they don’t want us to see. Dividers often create conflicts and
division in order to divert attention from themselves and from the issues in
their lives that they do not want to address.
The Appeaser
I Samuel 23:15-18
15 While David was at Horesh in the Desert of
Ziph, he learned that Saul had come out to take his life.
16 And Saul’s son Jonathan went to David at
Horesh and helped him find strength in God.
17 “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “My father Saul will not lay a hand on
you. You will be king over Israel,
and I will be second to you. Even
my father Saul knows this.”
18 The two of them made a covenant before the
Lord. Then Jonathan went home, but
David remained at Horesh.
I may be a namesake of David, but I am the
personality type of Jonathan. I am
not the David of the Bible, in terms of personality but like Jonathan, I want
everyone to just get along. My
personality type, in case you hadn’t already guessed, is that of an appeaser. Can’t we all just get
along? I’m the one who, on a
camping trip, will tell you, that bear
really doesn’t want to eat you.
Yes, he’s hungry, but he just wants food, and isn’t that what we all
really want? We all get
hungry. Why punish a bear for
being who he is? Let’s just give
him all our food and hike that 500 miles back down the trail without any food
of our own because it will make the bear happy. Am I speaking for anyone else?
I think Jonathan was a really kind-hearted
person. I imagine Jonathan as the
kind of person who got along with everyone and was the kind of person everyone
liked, because Jonathan was an appeaser,
and what appeasers want above all else is for everyone to get along. The problem is, appeasement is not
always a good idea, because others will take advantage of the desire that
everyone get along. Saul would
have liked nothing better than for Jonathan to bring David to him, under the
guise of making peace and trying to have everyone just get along. Jonathan could not see that his father
was so jealous and so threatened by David that the only solution he could
consider was killing David. And
that meant that the last thing needed in that situation was for Jonathan to be
blind to his father’s threat against his friend David and to formulate any plan
to overlook or downplay that threat against David. David needed wise counsel and protection, not appeasement.
Now, it should be said that there is often a
need for someone to keep some measure of peace in a family. Someone needs to, at times, take
someone aside and say is it really
necessary to speak to your parents that way? Is it really necessary to treat your children that way? Is it really necessary to treat your
siblings that way? I knew two
siblings who lived only a few miles from each other and went over thirty years
without speaking to one another.
Thirty years! It would have
been so helpful had someone talked to them and said does this really need to continue? Isn’t it time to work out your differences? That is being a peacemaker, however,
not an appeaser.
The danger of the appeaser is this – the
appeaser is like the homeowner who papers over a crack in the wall but does
nothing to fix what caused the crack.
Everything might appear fine and good when you paper over the crack but
underneath, the problem continues to grow, which will ensure that not only will
the crack reappear, but when it does reappear it is going to be far more
serious and far more difficult to repair.
Jonathan was dangerously mistaken about his father, and when he said to
David, don’t be afraid. My father Saul will not lay a hand on
you. You will be king over Israel,
and I will be second to you. Even
my father Saul knows this, he was being dangerously naïve. Jonathan was, however, correct on one
point – everyone, including Saul, knew that David would be king, but his belief
that Saul would not hurt David was wrong to the point of putting David’s life
in danger. Jonathan was so
interested in everyone getting along that he could not see his own father’s
murderous intentions toward David, his closest friend. Jonathan’s desire to appease his father
was wrong to the point of being dangerous.
Jonathan either did not see – or would not see
– what his father was capable of.
Some people cannot, or will not, see the harm that is taking place in
their family. Some people turn a
blind eye to abuse in their family.
Sometimes some, or most, of a family will be aware of harm or abuse in a
family and the damage that is being done, but no one wants to say anything
because they don’t want to cause any
trouble. How rescuing someone
from trouble becomes causing trouble is beyond me. What it generally means when someone says we don’t want to cause any trouble is
this – we don’t want to deal with the
fallout from confronting what needs to be confronted. Some things just need to be said, and
Jonathan had the wrong thing to say, initially, to David. Sometimes there are difficult things we
need to say.
Are we having fun yet? This is not easy, is it? But let’s continue on with our third
and final personality type, which is –
The Manager
Mark 3:20-21
20 Then Jesus entered a house, and
again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat.
21 When his family heard about
this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
Again, you don’t have to raise your hand, but I
wonder how many of you see yourself as a manager? I understand this personality type very
well, because I am married to this type of personality. Tanya is the most efficient person I
know, and she can get more done in an hour than I can accomplish in an entire
day. She is very driven and
focused. She is so driven and
focused, in fact, that she would run over her grandmother if her grandmother
got between her and her task. She
would not mean to run over her grandmother; she just wouldn’t see her because
of her intense focus. Most of the
time, the manager is referred to as a
controller, so if you do see yourself
as this type, just to let you know, when I looked up some information on the controller personality type, here is how
it was labeled in one article – Controller/Leader/Psychopath. Psychopath? I like that part about being a leader, but wow, that psychopath
part really scares me! If you are
a controller, don’t worry, I’m not
insinuating that you are a psychopath, but I found it interesting that in one
article, that’s how this personality type was listed.
In all honesty, every family needs a
manager-type personality (and, after each worship service, I was reminded of
this by many of you who fit this personality type. It was told to me more than once, if it weren’t for us manager types nothing would ever get done! Fair enough, and point taken). Somebody, after all, must organize a
family and their gatherings; plan and organize the reunions; make sure everyone
is where they need to be, when they need to be; and help to keep everyone in
line because, you know, sometimes families get out of line. What families don’t need, however, is
the person who takes it upon themselves to tell all the other members of the
family how to live, where to live, who to love, where to work, and all the
other details about life. People
can make those decisions for themselves.
In fact, people will make
those decisions for themselves, and not always in the ways that please the
manager.
If you are a manager, here’s the best piece of advice I can offer – understand
why. Seek to understand what has
shaped you into being a manager, or controller. In some instances, the manager
was raised in an environment where they were made to feel less than worthy,
which caused them to create a personality that is very driven, very goal
oriented, often a perfectionist, and seeking to control their environment in a
way that will make them feel better about themselves. In many instances – not all, but quite a few – I have found
that managers are individuals who
come from a home where some type of addiction has been a factor. Did you know that? Don’t raise your hand, but if you
recognize yourself as a controller, has addiction been a part of your family
history? I’m going to guess that there
is a strong probability that it has been.
What that addiction does, then, is it causes the person who is the
controller to seek to control their surroundings because so often when they
were younger their surroundings were out of control. Some of you were part
of the prayer walk that took place here in Shelbyville yesterday morning. That prayer walk was to bring attention
to the problem of addiction in our community and to pray for the individuals
and families who are struggling with that difficult disease. I am sorry that I was not able to be
part of that event, but I was in Scottsburg, Indiana for a similar event. Our band had committed several months
ago – before I was aware of our local event – to play at an event for an
addiction ministry. At the event
we heard several stories of how God changed the lives of people who had very
difficult struggles with addiction.
One of those individuals now works with the ministry, and his story was
very powerful. Addiction led to
him losing his family and losing five years of his freedom, as he was
incarcerated because of crimes committed that were related to his
addiction. He had fourteen car
accidents under the influence, four of which took place while he was traveling
at speeds of over 140 miles per hour, and he walked away with no injuries. He has now been sober for seven years,
is an ordained minister working on the staff of a local church, serves on the
staff of the addiction ministry, and has had his family restored. He is part of a prison ministry that has
seen over 300 individuals baptized in the last seven years! God truly can change lives!
Wherever you see yourself in relation to these
personality types, remember this – we are all created as unique, special
creations of God. We are also,
however, powerfully influenced by our surroundings and experiences, and those
surroundings and those experiences can shape us in ways that create
difficulties in the way in which we relate to others, especially our
families. Your personality type
has gifts that it brings to your family, but it also has challenges, challenges
that can bring difficulty to your family.
Take care to understand who you are and why you are who you are, so that
God can make you fully into the person you were meant to be!
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