One of the toughest things about ministry is dealing with folks so damaged by life that they chase away exactly what they long for. It’s more common than you’d think.
A person will painfully recount how they’ve been burned by folks they’d trusted — divorce, family battles over inheritance matters, a friend who stole a spouse and many more types of hurt.
These things are mortifying, ugly endeavors, often made worse by subsequent slights, perceived slights or outright public hostility.
The person wounded by such can often shut down emotionally, even as they long for connection. This is a defense mechanism.
They don’t want to risk getting hurt again, so they don’t allow anyone to get too close.
But if you listen, they’ll often express a desire for closeness. At that point it seems like there’s an avenue forward, a way to help them break through and overcome — but it often not only proves elusive and frustrating, but becomes a source for more hurt for them.
Their acquired belief that everyone will hurt and abandon them becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy as their expressed desire for community is undermined by their inability to trust anyone, and their suspicion of others makes every action or word a possible minefield for them.
Years ago, we had a guy named John who came around. He passed away in 2019.
He was hard to minister to.
Wounded by infidelity – both his ex-wife’s (with his cousin, to make matters worse) and his own vengeful indiscretions – and fired from his job at his family’s business over what he saw as unfounded allegations of wrongdoing, John’s psyche was constantly vigilant for any threat of betrayal.
He would complain that no one ever drew close to him, then chase away anyone who dared try.
One of the beautiful things about a church is that it’s a community. But if a person is both longing for community and averse to it to the point that they sabotage anything getting close to truly including them, well, almost all groups have a limit to their efforts.
The common saying is “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink,” and that applied with John.
Real efforts were made by many people to provide the fellowship he said he longed for, and likely truly did, but his damaged emotional state refused to allow him to let anyone close. If someone seemed to be breaking through, then the sabotage would become even more overt, with baseless accusations and other friendship-damaging ploys.
Mostly John just gave off an air about him that said “keep your distance.”
Eventually, almost everyone did.
Of course, that put them on his list of folks who’d abandoned or hurt him, furthering the scarring and more deeply entrenching the defenses.
When he quit coming around, he made sure to let others know he’d been the victim of an unwelcoming attitude, just like he always had been.
Folks like this need love, but the only approach I’ve seen even crack the more difficult cases is covered in prayer and long in duration, demanding more grace than many folks care to dispense.
But we have to pray and have grace, even when we don’t feel like it.
We also need to remember that these folks didn’t want to be in this boat; life’s card deck dealt them hand after hand that shaped their difficult outlook. Somewhere inside, that part that really wants to be free of it is gasping for air.
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