Stephen
Terry, Director
Rest, Relationships, and Healing
Commentary
for the August 14, 2021, Sabbath School Lesson
"But when the
Pharisees heard this, they said, 'It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of
demons, that this fellow drives out demons.'"
"Jesus knew their thoughts
and said to them, 'Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and
every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives
out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And
if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So
then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive
out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.'" Matthew 12:24-28, NIV
Years ago, a man I
know attended a special family gathering. Rarely having seen many
who were present in decades, he looked forward to the opportunity to renew acquaintances
with other family members and their children. To that end, he began circulating
among them shaking hands and socializing. But soon it was apparent that
something was amiss. Greetings were perfunctory, awkward, and stiff. Some of
the children avoided interaction altogether. He and his siblings had grown up
in an extremely dysfunctional home, and even though decades had passed and the
person primarily responsible for the dysfunction had long been deceased, the
pain and a sense of victimization lingered. The parents had played off the children's
jealousies of each other as a means of control, and as they became adults, even
though far apart and out of contact, they continued to embellish those
jealousies, creating images of one another that bore little resemblance to reality.
Unable to bridge that gap to establish normality
between him and several within his family, he left that day with saddened heart
for what might have been and the missed opportunity for hearts to draw closer
together.
What had happened was
that as they were separated, false images were created based on assumptions
about a person's character and motives. These "straw men" then became the
reality. The problem with straw men is that they often prevent us from knowing
the truth about one another. As a result, they can be the basis for
divisiveness. That divisiveness can be the road to conflict, war, and even
murder. After all, it is not a person we are killing, but an evil "other" who threatens
us by their very existence. Looming large in our imaginations, they bring us
anxiety and fear. Once we create such strawmen, we too often extrapolate the qualities
of that construct to anyone that has even a few qualities
in common. By that means, we can tar large groups of people with an evil shade
that must be dealt with.
Anti-Semitism is an
example of this kind of belief where an entire people are said to possess the attributes of a straw man construct. Every culture,
nationality, race, and tribe has individuals who flout
the rules of accepted behavior. Therefore, we have governments, laws, and
people who enforce those laws. But some will use those aberrant individuals to
create stereotypical strawmen. These straw men then are not limited to type
casting the individual miscreant. Instead, they come to represent an entire
people group. For example, I knew a woman who, because she had seen an abusive
marriage involving a Hispanic person, wanted nothing to do with any Hispanics,
even avoiding eating at Mexican restaurants. This continued until she had car
trouble and a Hispanic person kindly helped to get the car running again. This
changed her world view, and she realized that the Hispanic male in the abusive
marriage was responsible for his behavior, and he was not typical of all
Hispanics. Fortunately, she was willing to allow this Good Samaritan to help
her with the car. Others have lived with their straw men so long, they are not
even willing to allow that there may be good people in the group that they have
lumped together into one large, onerous straw man. They have continued to pick
at the painful wound that started them in this direction, and wounds that are
constantly picked at do not heal. Instead, they usually grow larger. If we do
not find deliverance from our feeling of victimhood, the wound can even become
septic and become our undoing.
Based on the current
political climate in the United States, and some other countries as well, we
can see that fabricating straw men to confirm a sense of victimhood can tear
apart entire countries. No matter our political leanings, we create detailed
straw men to represent those belonging to other factions. Then instead of
practicing and projecting positive moral values ourselves, we spend our time projecting
the negative values onto other political factions. These negative values are often
drawn from a few negative examples and made to apply to everyone within that
political affiliation. Common sense says it is not true, but social media and
the news media continue to be more than willing to help us pick at mosquito
bites until they become gaping, open wounds.
Sadly, some will even
work overtime to ferret out any trait that will allow them to fit someone they
have just met into the group their straw man stands for. We see these over
issues like abortion, guns, gender equality, immigration, etc. There was a time
when two individuals could play together in a team sport even though they had different
opinions about these things. Now, some would require a willingness to play
together be based on having the right political perspective rather than on skill
at the sport. It is as though when we played sports and picked teams in grade
school, instead of picking the best player to be on our team, we pick the
person who echoes all our opinions, even if they know nothing about the sport.
An interesting fact about
men made from straw is that they decompose over time due to their organic
structure. To keep that from happening, they need constant input of more straw.
The same is true of straw men built from our sense of victimization. If left
alone, over time, they will decay and no longer be a source that feeds our
fears. The wound can heal if we leave it alone and stop feeding it with more of
the same material.
One of the worst
problems with straw men is that we tend to project assumptions onto others
based on our own thoughts and motives. If we are a cheat, it is hard to believe
that others do not cheat. If we have bad feelings about others, it is hard to
allow that others might not have bad feelings about us. When our own character
causes us to feel this way, we can find it difficult to change. That is because
the change then is not dependent on others changing, but on our own change of
heart. The Bible goes as far as to say that a change like that is impossible
for us.[i] But what is impossible for us
is entirely possible with God.[ii] God even promises to make it
happen if we will come to him.[iii] When we do that, the spirit
of fear that causes us to create the threatening straw men will be gone from
our hearts.[iv]
The Bible tells us
that Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel, like the person I mentioned at the
beginning of this commentary, also grew up in a dysfunctional family. The
jealousy was intense. Some of his brothers would even have murdered the boy. Instead,
a small amount of rationality prevailed, and they sold him into slavery. Separated
for many years, when he finally saw his brothers again, he had to deal with the
image of who they were that continued to fester in his mind since that day they
sold him off. Unwilling to simply write them off, for the sake of his father
and his brother Benjamin, he tested them against his straw man image of them
and found that in some ways they were different now. This set the stage for
them to open their arms and hearts to one another and eventual family reunion
in the land of Egypt. Like the woman with her straw man about Hispanics, Joseph
was able to let his straw man decompose so that his relationship with his brothers
might heal. But it was not so easy for his brothers to do so. Projecting their
own unfaithfulness onto Joseph, they believed that he would act
as they had and would seek revenge against them, once their father died, for what they had done to him. But
Joseph assured them that what they thought of him was not real and revealed
that when they are surrendered to God's will, those fears can be set aside with
the knowledge that God is in compassionate control.[v]
The challenge for each
of us then is whether we are willing to give up our straw men. Too often, they
are our idols that have replaced God in our lives. We can come to cherish them
more than life itself. We can even be willing to inflict pain and suffering on
others for fear that the straw man we have created will enact the worst attributes
we have given him. Maybe if we can give up these straw idols we have created,
we can find once again the harmony that God intended humanity should have. Are
we willing to let that healing take place? Are we willing to ask if our
feelings toward others are motivated by fear of what they might do or by the
kind of love Jesus evinced for us all? In fact, we might ask how much fear as
opposed to trust motivates all our choices and actions. God can break those chains
of fear that bind us if we let him.