Bad Things CAN Make Good Relationships: An Unconventional Guide to Building Better Relationships

Bad Things CAN Make Good Relationships: An Unconventional Guide to Building Better Relationships

Dr. Keith L. Posehn

copyright 2010 Keith Posehn

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Introduction

When It Helps to be Angry

Overcoming Misperceptions About Anger

Handling Anger

Can Anger be Helpful?

Three Steps to Making Anger a Helpful emotion

Jesus’ Real Message About Anger

When It Helps to be Unforgiving

What Forgiving is Not

What is Forgiveness?

The Process of Forgiveness

Why Should We Forgive?

When It Helps to Confront

Why We Don’t Do Confrontation

Why We Should Confront

Benefits of Confrontation

How to Confront Effectively

When It Helps to Discriminate - Part 1

Discrimination in your Relationships

Why be Discriminating?

Benefits of Discrimination

Appropriate Discrimination

Four Factors to Identify Toxic Relations

When It Helps to Discriminate - Part 2

Discrimination in Your faith

Why Discriminate?

Appropriate Discrimination

What’s the Big Deal?

When It Helps to be Loving

A Common Gift

What Gift Do You Have?

How to Lose a Friend

A Challenge Issued

How to be More Loving

Three Loving Strategies

INTRODUCTION

Relationships. So many trees give their lives in the cause of understanding, improving, dissecting, and building relationships. The lion's share of these books are written about creating positive, helpful environments for reinforcing our relationships. This book is not one of them.

You see my problem lies in the fact that these environments must be created. It is difficult enough just to live in and understand the environments in which we find ourselves let alone endeavor to create new ones. I always read these books and got fired up about the ideas in the book and went about creating the new environment the author suggested so I could improve my relationships. The trouble was that I worked so hard creating the environment that I lost sight of the improvements I sought for my relationships. The method became the goal and it never worked for me the way I'd hoped or the how author said it would.

After years of frustration, I began to wonder how we might better our relationships in the midst of the environment in which we find ourselves. What if we could use our current circumstances and find ways improve our relationships? What if the negative things we all experience in our relationships could somehow turn into positives? Why can't we use bad things to make good relationships?

There are certain negative forces common to the human condition that almost all folks experience: Anger, Unforgiveness, Confrontation, and Discrimination. If there was a way to turn these negatives into positives, it could be revolutionary. Folks could operate within the common circumstances of their interactions and use them to build better relationships. Wouldn't that be wonderful? So I set off to work.

As a pastor, convinced that the answers to most every human problem are hidden somewhere in scripture, I started my search there. I was amazed how easily I found passages that supported my hypothesis. I found many of these in one of the most famous portions of the New Testament: Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Others were found in equally well-known passages, most were the words of Jesus himself - not initially what I expected in this particular search of scripture.

This book is not a Bible study, and I did not write it solely for Christians. The Bible, like most sacred writings, is full of common sense. Sometimes we have to search for it and try to understand its original context to get a clear picture of its meaning, but that does not discount its helpfulness. If you are not a believer, I respectfully ask that you Suspend Your Disbelief for a while and try to find the nuggets of truth for your own relationships I think I've discovered.

Whether you seek to better your relationship with God or not, I believe these principles will help you use your current relationship circumstances to improve your interactions with your loved ones and even those you don't love so much. So grab a cup of coffee and a blanket if you are somewhere cold or a cool drink and a beach chair if you are somewhere warm and join me in an odyssey we all live daily. Maybe we can make good use of bad situations. Maybe we can use bad things to make good relationships.

Pressing on toward the Goal . . . (Philippians 3:14)

Dr. Keith L. Posehn

Chapter 1

WHEN IT HELPS TO BE ANGRY

Matthew 5:21-22

"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca, ' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Ephesians 4:26

In your anger do not sin : Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,

Proverbs 29:11

A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.

Psalm 119:53

Indignation grips me because of the wicked, who have forsaken your law.

James 1:19-20

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.

(All Passages NIV)

You're probably saying to yourself, This guy is completely nuts! How can anger be helpful for a relationship? You probably know someone who was in a relationship, whether it be a friendship or a marriage, or even in a relationship with their child, where there was a lot of anger. You watched them go at each other time and time again; they screamed and yelled at each other; they threw things and the violence escalated; they may have even physically hurt one another. Over the course of years, because they argued and they fought, eventually they were no longer friends, they were divorced, or they hadn’t spoken to their child in 20 years. Maybe this sounds familiar because you fit this description.

For most of us, we experience anger in relationships as a destructive force. It can quickly become the dominant emotion in any relationship, and it seems to feed on itself and grow out of control. It seems that the closer the relationship, the more damage inflicted. Many times the anger turns to verbal violence, which leaves deep emotional scars. Occasionally the anger turns to physical violence and the emotional scars are compounded with visible ones. Marriages end in divorce, Friends become enemies, Children and their parents disown each other; lives are destroyed.

Overcoming Misperceptions About Anger

We now live in a world of 24/7 media, and we've learned that often the initial press coverage makes things out to be worse than they really are. In the rush to get the breaking news on the air, the whole story isn't told. We later find out that there was much more to the story than we initially thought. Tragically, the damage is already done and it can take years for individuals to recover from the half-truth of the 'News Alert'.

The same is true with our experience with anger. It is not a pretty emotion. It can, at times, rush out of us before we are able to stop it. It often does damage we do not intend. We often learn later that we expressed our anger before we had all the facts. Anger, however, is a powerful emotion that we all experience. Though we may express it in different ways, it is an integral part of who we are as human beings.

My great grandfather once told me that all things in their natural state are God-given and therefore cannot be bad. He was indeed a wise man and I took his pearls of wisdom to heart. I start with his premise as we consider how anger might be helpful for relationships. So, if my great grandpa is right and even anger in its natural state can't be bad, then there are some misperceptions about anger that we need to overcome.

1. Anger is a Negative.

Be . . . slow to anger . . . James 1:19

The first misperception we need to overcome is that anger is a negative force in our relationships. We all experience anger and our gut tells us that those experiences were significantly more negative than positive. Our anger led to harsh words we regretted; it made someone we cared about cry; it caused us to do something of which we were not proud; it may have even led to violence.

Folks tend to avoid those who openly and fearlessly express their anger; this is a learned response. We have been hurt by the angry and we don't want to put ourselves In the line of fire again. We figure that by evading angry individuals, we will avoid getting hurt. This sense of security is hollow, however, because anger is an emotion that is deeply engrained in the human emotional make-up and it is unlikely that we will be able to avoid it even if we hang around with the nice folks. In my experience, even nice folks get angry and they can be even more dangerous than those who look the meanest!

Anger seems to be a huge threat to relationships. We say, think, and do things that fester inside and we build walls between us and the ones we care about. Anger is met with and breeds more anger. Things escalate until the anger destroys the relationship.

The problem is that we all get angry. The psychologists tell us that the average American gets angry about six times a week. I don’t know about you, but that seems a little low to me! Maybe I’m just not very average.

I heard a story about a father wanted to teach his daughter about the different types of anger we experience. He said, Melinda, come into the kitchen, I want to show you the difference between frustration and rage. They had one of those telephones with a speakerphone up on the wall. Then dad opened up a phone book and put his finger down on a random number, and he pushed the speakerphone button and punched that number into the phone. The gentleman on the other end of the line said, Hello. Dad said, Hello is Melinda there? The gentleman on the other end of the phone said, No, I’m sorry, there’s no one named Melinda here. You must have the wrong number. Then Dad said, Oh, I’m sorry, and hung up the phone.

He looked at his young daughter and said, Now pay very close attention, Melinda, and he pushed the speakerphone button, and he pushed the redial button and the gentleman on the other end of the phone said, Hello. Dad said, Hello is Melinda there? I have a message for her. The gentleman said, Look, you have the wrong number. I told you there’s no Melinda here. Please check the number and don’t call me again. Then dad said, Oh, I’m sorry, and hung up the phone. He said to his daughter, Melinda that was frustration. Now I want to show you rage. Dad pushed the speakerphone button, he pushed the redial button, and the gentleman on the other end of the phone growled Hello! Dad said, Hello is Melinda there? I have a message for her. The man on the other end of the line screamed, No, there’s no one here named Melinda, I told you that! You’re bothering me! Don’t call me here anymore! and slammed down the phone.

Then dad looked at his daughter and said, Now, Melinda, I’m going to dial that number again and when the gentleman answers the phone, I want you to say, ‘Hello, this is Melinda. Are there any messages for me?’

In Psalm 119:53, the writer is singing praises to God when he interjects, Indignation grips me because of the wicked, who have forsaken your law. This righteous indignation is in response to the evil he sees around him in contrast to his experience of God's love. Likewise moved to anger, we seek to fight injustice when we see it around us. Our anger against injustice is surely not a negative emotion! On the contrary, that anger often prompts us to do God's work to help those who those unable to fight against that injustice. Perhaps this type of anger is the clearest evidence that we were in fact created in the image of God.

We all experience anger, but it’s difficult to know how to use it in a positive way. Perhaps the reason is that we don't really understand anger and have never experienced the positive benefits of anger.

2. Anger is A SIN

"In your anger do not sin . . ." Ephesians 4:26

The second misperception about anger is that anger is a sin. For centuries, Christians have largely viewed anger as a sinful emotion. The Catholic Church even included it in their list of The Seven Deadly Sins as wrath. If the results of an emotion can be used as a measure of its sinfulness, then it appears that anger rates high