Self Protection

05/22/08

THE HUMAN PROBLEM OF SELF PROTECTION

Nearly all living things, even trees, have a God-given means of self protection.  Some of these means are very effective, and some are minimal.  None of these living things want to die, or even be hurt.  They utilize their means of self protection when the situation seems to call for it.

We humans have a unique ability to anticipate danger to ourselves.  We have the mental ability to plan for our own protection, and to utilize somewhat sophisticated means of protection.  Nevertheless, many of us die young, and all the rest of us get hurt in various ways.  God has put within our physical bodies a wonderful means of healing, which can close up wounds to our skin, and even knit back together torn muscle, if the injury is not too great.

However, we do not have a built in, God-given, means of healing the emotional wounds that come from our normal interaction with humans in our environment, and even with members of our own families.  We live in a “hostile environment” (Rom 8:18-25, Living Bible is best here), and it hurts us.  The enemy has put a lie into our culture which says, “time heals all wounds”.  This is a lie spawned in hell.  Millions of humans, in their 40s and on into old age, still suffer from childhood wounds to their souls. Time has not healed them. They try to cover up the wounds, and protect them from ever being touched by other humans, but they still hurt, and cause various patterns of avoidance and other kinds of dysfunctional reactions when they do get “poked”, even accidentally.  We can learn ways of “coping”, but this leaves us dependent on patterns of protective behavior that are not best for our Christian lives.  Only the Lord can heal emotional wounds.

The grade school child may be required to sing a short little solo in front of the class in order to see if he has done his homework and learned the little song the class will sing together at the school assembly.  He doesn’t have a very good voice, and it cracks a couple of times, and then the class snickers at him.  This humiliates him, hurts his feelings and wounds his soul.  His self-protection system doesn’t want that to happen again.  He may simply develop an avoidance pattern that causes him to shy away from circumstances where he may have to sing by himself, or even sing at all.  He may make an inner vow that he will never sing again.  This is a much deeper step into self-protection.  It binds him into feelings and behavior that could prevent him from ever wanting to attend a church service, because singing will take place and he will be expected to sing.  He may not be willing to share the reason for not wanting to go to church, even with his wife, because he believes it will sound like a silly and unacceptable reason for not going.  He believes it is likely that he will then receive additional pressure to go.  He doesn’t want additional humiliation over his reason for not going, so he may become hostile over the issue and make a pronouncement that “we are not going to talk about this any more……ever again”.

A six year old boy is becoming aware that mom and dad are fighting a lot.  He is alarmed about the tension in the house, but has no idea what to do.  Mom doesn’t seem to want to talk about it. He prefers to ask mom, because she seems to care about him more than dad; but, she gets cold toward him when he asks.  Dad gets too angry to talk about it when asked.  He feels isolated.  The fighting escalates.  Finally, mom leaves the home, angry and in tears.  She says she can’t stand being a wife and mother any more, and “don’t expect to see me again”.  The boy is crushed, because she was the only parent that seemed to love him.  He feels betrayed, abandoned, rejected, scared and deeply hurt.  His soul is deeply wounded.  He has to stuff his emotions, because dad says he has enough problems, without hearing the boy crying about it all the time.  Both parents have turned away from him at just the time when he needs support, understanding and love.  He learns to stuff and hide his emotions.  He learns that “men don’t cry”.

He fears any future abandonment, so he makes an inner vow that he will never let himself trust anyone like that again.  He may make a bitter root judgment against his mother, and all women: “they can’t be trusted”.  When he is 32 and the girl he has dated for 5 years wants him to decide about the future of their relationship, he freezes up, afraid to trust her with his heart, afraid that he will be abandoned again.  His abandonment wound is being nudged, good and hard, by her demand.  He withdraws and enters into a delaying pattern, and then she says “goodbye”.  Even though he tried to protect himself from the pain of abandonment, he feels the pain of abandonment anyway, because his abandonment wound is still fresh after 26 years, and she has smacked it firmly.  He may then say, “see there, I knew it would happen”, and then go deeper into the “bunker” he has built to protect his heart.

The world says, “But why couldn’t he just get over what his mother did?  It happened so long ago”.  The world doesn’t see into the spirit realm and doesn’t understand the human soul.  The world doesn’t understand the devastation that human souls are experiencing every day on this planet, in this hostile environment.  The world doesn’t understand that time does not heal all wounds.

The 10 year old girl is beginning to “individuate” (the normal process of establishing her own identity), and her mother doesn’t like it.  Her mother feels her pulling away, as she seeks to become “her own person”, not wanting to rely entirely on her parents.  After all, it is time that she decided on some of her clothes.  Her mother has controlled her all her life, and some of that controlling has hurt her—like the time her friends wanted her to go to the beach with them during the summer.  Her mother said, “No”. She thought that she “had spent entirely too much time with those girls”.  Her process of individuation is causing her mother to feel rejected by her, and it hurts her “mother-heart”.  Her mother is now reacting by trying to get her back under control.  The girl’s life is feeling like it is being controlled, painfully, because of situations like the beach incident, and now the new pressure that her mother is applying.  She knows that there is very little she can do about it, at age 10.  However, she is determined to be in control of as much of her life as she can, from now on.  She makes an inner decision, an inner vow, to take control of her life in her own hands.

At first, she discovers that she can control certain things by clever manipulation, but soon she finds that life is too big to control.  When she can’t be in control of certain situations that are very important to her, and to her feeling of well-being, she gets stressed over it.  She has now entered into the world of stress and anxiety that everyone experiences, which comes because of their “need” to be in control.  This stress steals away any semblance of peace that she might have.  She will remain in this condition until she discovers how to get set free. God has a way for her to gain freedom from this stress and the need to be in control.  When she takes action to get free, and when she allows the Lord to heal her wounds, she will be able to live in the wonderful peace that Jesus gives, as described in John 14:27.

If you would like to discover how to get free from your strong inner need to be in control of your life, and let God be in control, then go to the page called God in Control.