Relocating To Elfland

In the Christian circles I’ve been a part of, it’s conventional wisdom that one ought to focus on others more than oneself. Other-focus is a big part of love, and therefore it’s a big part of growing in holiness.

Strange as it may sound, I’ve started to question the validity of this accepted wisdom. To be sure, if we were all more like Jesus, it would be great advice: focus on others. But the fact is that most of us aren’t all that much like Jesus, and apart from the perfect love that shaped His every action, focusing on other people can actually be a bad thing. In fact, I would argue that most of us in our human relations should focus on ourselves a lot more than we do. There’s an I-focus (an I-factor, if you will) without which focusing on others can damage them in horrible ways. Far from being too self-focused, I wonder if we’re not self-focused enough. Let me hurry to explain.

The human heart has an incurable desire to play god over other people; we flatter ourselves (insanely) that things would be much better if people would just do what we want. We don’t think of ourselves as this prideful, but we are. The proof is right there every time two people face off in a conflict. Most of the energy of each party is spent focusing on the other. Each renders all sorts of judgment on what the other has done, thought, felt, and intended; second person pronouns fly like arrows (“you did X”; “you thought Y”; “how could you have intended Z?”). Each person zeroes in on how the other person needs to change, and exerts as much pressure as possible to that end. Neither adopts the posture of a learner with respect to the other. Neither wants to talk about the fact that he or she has taken offense; both are stubbornly focused on how the other person has given offense.

Let’s picture it concretely. (We’ll use marriage, since most of the ugliest fights on earth happen in marriages.) Jack and Jill are man and wife. They’ve been married for ten years, long enough to carry the scars that inevitably come when you’re joined to another sinner till death do you part. They’ve had a fight recently and are trying to talk about it. It’s not going well. Why?

For one thing, Jack doesn’t really listen when Jill talks about her hurts. He’s immediately angry and defensive, because she’s being inaccurate, unfair, and unreasonable. In his head, he sizes up her hurts and judges them, and then (ironically) he feels judged! This messes up his emotional equilibrium and calls forth evasive measures and/or aggressive countermeasures.

Jill pretty much reciprocates when Jack starts talking about his hurts. Soon neither can talk about any hurts without starting a shouting match, so both parties retreat and fume. End of round one.

Cue round two. Jill again starts talking about her hurts, this time with feeling.

Jill has a way of talking about her hurts that drips judgment. She doesn’t really talk about what’s going on in her heart and head; she talks about what Jack has done, thought, felt, and intended. If he tries to explain, she doesn’t want to hear it. She’s not looking for a way to extend grace to him; she’s looking for a way to make him hurt as much as she does; and if he doesn’t hurt, this messes up her emotional equilibrium and calls forth evasive measures and/or aggressive countermeasures. You already know how Jack responds to such measures. End of round two.

The problem in this marriage isn’t the hurts. Hurts are no big deal, actually. They can be quickly resolved if hearts are right. The problem is that Jack and Jill can’t talk constructively about their respective hurts, the reason being . . . they’re not nearly self-focused enough.

If Jack had a better grip on the fact that God is sovereign and Jack isn’t, he would be able to listen to Jill’s hurts knowing that God, not Jill, is his Judge; this would enable him to listen to her without insecurity and reaction (his self-understanding would regulate his responses to her). He would also know that Jill’s Healer is God, not Jack; and freed from the burden of needing to fix Jill, he could simply care for her. He would also realize that, not being God, he really has very little idea what’s going on inside of Jill, and since Jill is the only one who can tell him, he’d do well to shut up and really listen before he tries to respond. In short, if Jack were more self-aware and less delusional, he would be a better listener and a better husband.

Likewise with Jill: if she had a better grip on the sovereignty of God, she would know that she can’t read Jack’s heart, mind, or motives; and she would spend more time explaining what she has thought and felt rather than judging what he has done, thought, felt, and intended. She would be a better communicator and a better wife.

A passage from Edwin Friedman’s Failure of Nerve (pp. 62–63) speaks to all of this:

Members of chronically anxious families will be quick to interrupt one another, if not to jump in and complete one another’s sentences, and they are constantly taking and making things “personal.” Communication is marked more by diagnostic or labeling “you” positions rather than by self-defining “I” statements. Rather than saying, “This is what I believe,” “Here is how I perceive it,” “This is what I will do,” family members stay focused on the other: “You’re just like your mother.” “You’re a control freak.” “You’re insensitive, unfeeling, irrational, missing the point, or just don’t get it.” The family is thus easily “heated up” as feelings are confused with opinions. Those inclined to become hysterical and those inclined to be passive-aggressive will both find their tendencies promoted.

That’s the trouble with us, and it’s exactly how we’re not like Jesus. We don’t stay focused on our own hearts and actions (the only person God has told me to control, after all, is myself); we think we know what’s going on in other people’s hearts, and we really want to (and insanely think we can) control other people’s actions. Jesus wasn’t controlling in the way He related with people, and He was God; He really did know what was going on inside of them! What’s missing in our relational breakdowns is precisely the biblical “I-factor”: a clear understanding of what we are and what we’re not; and a resolute focus on doing our duty of love before God while trusting Him to take care of everything else.