One of the best relational tests is history. We can predict future behaviour by looking at past behaviour. This is not to say that people don’t or cannot change. But it does help us with our expectations.
I get the sentiment that “I am not my past.” I’ve got a past. Most of us reading this have. There’s been a growing up. For those who have transcended their past to a great degree, people in our lives attest to the changes in us wrought through transformation. Positive change gives us all something to be thankful for.
Yet there are people who doggedly insist upon entitlement and exploitation no matter how much their lives attest to the fact that those things serve nobody, not least themselves. (Selfishness is a curse upon not only those on the receiving end. Selfish people are rarely contented people.)
Indeed, entitlement and exploitation, that obvious aggression, do trauma. Don’t doubt it.
“By their fruit you will know them,” says Jesus in Matthew 7:16/20. He continues the thought with this pressing rhetorical question: “Does one pick grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?”[1] Again, in Matthew 7:6 Jesus is heard to say, “Don’t throw your pearls to pigs.”
Poignantly, the bad cannot produce the good, and the good does not produce bad.
Out of the mouth comes what’s in the heart (Matthew 12:34). The heart is the seed, and what comes out in behaviour is the fruit. One grows out of the other. The heart, the source; the behaviour, the effect. A good heart repents of something bad that comes from their behaviour. But a bad heart produces aggression and feels justified, with no apology offered, and may issue schadenfreude and disdain to boot.
The character of those who’ve shown their colours in the past can be expected to be repeated. With no intent to change, with no heart change, we can only imagine what that means. More of the same.
One of the ways we get opportunities
to love people is by the truth.
None of us forces another how to behave. We all have our choice. There ought to be no compulsion in any of us to make allowances again and again and again for people—because nobody learns another way when they’re enabled to continue a way without consequence.
It’s a loving thing to allow people the consequences of their actions, with firm gentleness, without judgement, without rescuing them. And to allow people to make their choice is the acceptance that comes from maturity—to live and let live.
By enabling poor attitudes and behaviour in letting it go again and again and always making allowances, we stall opportunities for people who might otherwise choose to change. We don’t know if a person won’t change unless we give them the opportunity.
This is not putting the onus on the person potentially being manipulated, because sometimes it’s a fine line between submitting when we shouldn’t and not reacting when abuse is involved.
The most loving thing about giving someone an opportunity to change is it invites them into a larger version of themselves—to think about others for a change. But it requires a letting go of the enabling behaviours empaths are apt to slip into.
It takes strength a day at a time to hold the line and keep up the firm-though-maturely-applied tough love—remember, it is love after all when enabling otherwise forestalls their development.
There are those of course who are belligerent at your expense and at those you care for.
They will not change because they either cannot change, or they entrenched in being stubbornly entitled to do as they please. They exist, when all is said and done, for their own ends. You’re not going to help such a person. They’re not a relationships type of person, they’re an individual. In workplaces with this type, whatever position they hold, they’re not a team player.
By their fruit,
or what comes out of their lives,
you will know them.
[1] The full passage is related to false prophets: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”
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