Tag: nasty

Don’t Camouflage the Truth

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When I was in the Marine Corps one of the important lessons we learned was how to apply camouflage correctly. Camouflage is designed to allow you to be in view of the enemy but not be seen because, when applied correctly, it lets you blend into the background colors and also breaks up the recognizable contours and shapes of your face and body.

So, what does this have to do with truth?

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How many times have you read or heard someone talking about the Bible or a biblical truth to someone else in a derogatory or judgmental way? And when they were told they didn’t need to be nasty, they played that old, “I am just telling you the truth” card?

When someone does that, they may be telling the truth, but they have camouflaged the truth with their pridefulness.  And the result is that no good will come of it because the one who needs to see the truth will not be able to see it: it’s been camouflaged by pride and arrogance.

NOTE: When I say people camouflage the truth with their own pride, what I mean is that they are more interested in showing off what they know instead of using what they know to help someone else.

Shaul said he may have many gifts but if he doesn’t have love, he is nothing (1 Corinthians 13), and the same is true regarding telling the truth to someone about God’s word or Yeshua’s teachings. If you can’t show someone the truth without being nasty, sounding judgmental, or insulting them, then whatever truth you may actually have will not be seen because it has been camouflaged by your attitude. In other words, no matter how correct you may be, you might as well be talking to a wall.

The moment you start to insult or demean someone in any way their response will be “Shields up, Scotty!!” And whether or not you think you are being nasty doesn’t matter: another thing I learned in the Marine Corp is that if they think you are being nasty, then you are being nasty. When people camouflage the truth with their pride and arrogance, they have not only failed to help that person but have actually helped the enemy of God because they will turn that person off from any of God’s truth, even from hearing it from another person who knows how to communicate without letting their ego get in the way.

So here is the truth about speaking the truth: if you can’t say it nicely, then please don’t say it at all because your camouflage will prevent them from seeing it from you, and maybe even from someone else.

The bottom line is that if we cannot tell someone the truth about God or Yeshua without making them feel attacked, then we are wasting our time, failing to be effective, hurting the person’s chances of being saved, and dishonoring God and Yeshua, as well.

The next time you want to share the truth with someone, don’t camouflage it with pride but present it humbly and with compassion for the other person’s feelings. That way the truth will be obvious not just in your words, but in your attitude, as well.

Thank you for being here; please subscribe and share these messages out with friends and family. I am always open to comments and often can even see past the camouflage when they are submitted.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

How You Can Be Wrong When What You Say Is Right

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One of the nicest left-handed compliments I ever received was from a Regional Vice President under who I was a Sales Manager for a large home remodeling company (if you’re reading this, Jim, thank you so much for setting me straight back then.)

He told me that what I say is almost always correct, but because I say it the wrong way no one wants to hear it.

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I have heard and seen people who profess to be Christians telling others about what they believe to be the truth, and when someone disagrees with them, they attack that person with both spiritual and personal insults. What they often do that really pisses me off more than any other thing is this: when they are asked to be polite, they claim they are only telling the truth and that if we don’t listen to their wisdom then God is not in us and we are defending the wrong religion, or we are satanically influenced, or some other reprehensible attack.

To those people, I say this: because of your lack of respect for people, who are also God’s children, and because of your pride and self-righteous attitude, even if what you say is correct, you will be wrong because you will never convince anyone by insulting them. Beyond that, you do nothing more than present a poor example of a Christian and when you use the word of God to justify being a self-righteous sphincter muscle, you insult God.

I recently had a discussion with someone about the calendar. He has done a lot of research, using non-scriptural books from the Apocrypha, and insists that because I am comfortable using the standard Jewish calendar that most of the world uses, I am defending a specific religion which is teaching us to celebrate pagan holidays.

Let me digress for a moment: we all know about the “Holy Namers”,  and we also have “Flat Earthers”, but now we can add one more overly-zealous group, who are absolutely obsessed with the “correct” calendar for identifying the Shabbat and the festivals, and I am calling them “Lunartics.”

I never said he was wrong, or that I was right, I simply said I don’t agree. As for the details of our discussion, I’m not going to go into that here because they are not relevant to this message.

What is relevant about this event is that because he was so nasty and insulting, even though I asked multiple times for him to not insult me or my faith, and if he didn’t stop I would have to block him, I ended up having to block him.

And you know what? I’ll bet he is bragging about being blocked. I have seen other people do that, always telling others that they should listen and never listening to others until they get blocked, and then they brag about it as if they were like those Yeshua talks about being happy because they have been persecuted for his sake.

If someone asks you to please not be nasty, don’t defend yourself- apologize. You may not think you were nasty, but if they do, then you were. It’s that simple.

There are Bible verses telling us to speak the truth, how the wise accept correction and that fools reject correction. Often enough, these are used by nasty people preaching their own beliefs as justification for their attitude. They don’t realize how much of a hypocrite they are: they accuse others of refusing to hear the truth (which is their truth), and when asked to please be nice or not so nasty, they ignore the correction being given to them. They don’t want to be nice, or respectful, or even to recall that they were once also neophytes in the Lord and didn’t know things. I’ll wager they were taught with compassion, patience, and understanding, which they now sorely lack.

There is one Biblical verse I believe can never be taken out of context because it is universally applicable. That verse is found in 1 Corinthians 13:2, and it goes like this:

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

People who get angry, who become insulting on both a spiritual and personal level, who judge you and accuse you of being ignorant and refusing to hear the truth, all because you don’t agree with what they believe, can’t possibly have the love that a spiritually mature person has. Even if what they are saying is valid, no one will pay attention to them. They will be blocked or ignored, and that is the most shameful thing that can happen because maybe, just maybe, they really have something important to hear.

For my money, if someone is blocked because of what they say, it is more likely the way they are saying it instead of what they are saying. Once blocked, they haven’t performed a service for the Lord, they have helped the Enemy of the Lord because they have turned someone away from hearing God’s word. They leave a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who might be interested in learning about God, especially someone who may not be a Believer and is seeking knowledge.

They place themselves on a pedestal alongside the likes of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Matthew, James, and Shaul, speaking as though they are the only ones with the true understanding of God’s word.

They aren’t full of the spirit, they are only full of themselves, and their mannerisms are shameful, loveless, and not just useless, but harmful to God’s plan of salvation.

As far as I am concerned, if you can’t talk to people compassionately, with understanding, patience, and love, then just shut the heck up because what you say, no matter how correct, will be ignored; and all you will be doing is making it that much harder for the next person God might send to them to make any headway.

To conclude today’s rant, I want you to know that I have thought about this topic and asked God to show me if it is a result of my personal peeve or if it is something that stems from righteous anger. I confess I am still not sure, so I leave it up to you: do you think I am just venting on a personal level or am I justified in being angry and saying what I have said with regard to those people who behave as I have described?

Thank you for being here and please don’t forget to subscribe, check out my whole website (messianicmoment.com) and maybe consider (if you like what you hear from me) to buy a few of my books.

And, as always, I welcome your comments and only ask whether you agree or disagree, just be nice.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

There’s a Right Way and a Wrong Way to Disagree

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When I was a “suit” working on Wall Street back in the 80’s, and you said I should be a Salesman working strictly on commission, I would have told you that you were NUTS!! Yet, as the old saying goes: If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans; my plans were turned around and by 1992 I was working as a commission-only salesman, doing the hardest of all types of sales- in the home from a telemarketing lead. And God helped me by placing good trainers in my path so that after about 2 years in that field I was one of the top two salesmen in the country selling siding, windows, and kitchen refacing.

You may wonder what this has to do with the title of today’s message, and I’ll be happy to tell you how:

Nowhere, in all of my experience throughout three different career paths, did I learn as much about human nature and how to get my ideas across successfully to others then when I learned how to sell.

Selling is the “Poor Man’s” career in Psychology. It isn’t so much manipulation of people as it is getting them to reject their own pre-conceived ideas and actually listen and absorb what you are saying to them. They still get to make up their own minds, but a good salesman will do three things:

  1. Make them realize that what they think they want is not what they need;
  2. Show them that what he has is really what they need;
  3. Allow them to come to their own conclusion that what he has is not just what they need, but what they want.

People don’t buy what they need but they do buy what they want, and when we take this from the commercial applications to the spiritual, we need to be able to “sell” the idea that what they need and want is Messiah and obedience to God which must come about through proper interpretation of God’s Word. .

Now we get into the real meat of today’s message- how do we get past that first step in which we are disagreeing with their pre-conceived ideas without making them kick us out the door? I can tell you this, absolutely…it isn’t by slapping them in the face with the truth.

I am a member of half a dozen different “Christian” or “Messianic” discussion groups, and too often I run into people with ideas totally opposite to my understanding. And no matter what their ideas are, or mine (for that matter), if we cannot discuss or argue in a respectful and proper manner, then we achieve nothing. 

The proper way to disagree with someone is not to tell them they are wrong, and never, never, NEVER attack them on a personal level.  You can’t win someone over by insulting them (remember that old saw about how you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?) I am not saying you should agree with them or say something like “You might be right” if you really believe they are wrong, but disagree with them and do it with respect for their right to choose what they want to believe.

God has given each of us Free Will to choose, and when people tell me (as I often have to deal with) that I am wrong and I have to change, they are (in my opinion) abrogating my God-given right to choose.

NOTE: did you catch that style of disagreeing? Starting off with “in my opinion”, or “for me”, or even “what I have been taught…” is a way to disagree and get your opinion out there which will allow them to listen without feeling the need to defend themselves. Thats’ becasue the focus is on you, not them.

I will try to respectfully disagree with people without attacking them, although I might attack what they have been taught. When I do this I make sure that first I have a biblical reference to justify my position. I state how proper biblical interpretation must account for historical and linguistic context, hermeneutics, etc. in justifying my position, but I will not come right out and tell them they are wrong.

Having said that, there are times when I will be very straightforward and say they are wrong, but not in a way that blames them for being wrong. I will say that what they have been taught is wrong- attacking what they have been told without attacking them. I will say that they have been taught is a form of traditional doctrine, that what they have been told is not in compliance with the Bible (showing them the Bible reference), or some other means of demonstrating that what they are saying is not accurate but not saying that THEY are inaccurate.

At some point, usually after two or three back-and-forth discussions, if I can see that they are not ever going to even consider what I am saying, I ask them if we can just agree to disagree and let God judge between us. If the other side is spiritually and emotionally mature, we will end friends. But, unfortunately, too many times pridefulness overrules spirituality and the other side just can’t let it go. They will continue to post their side, and from the frustration that comes from my not bending to their will, they stop talking about the Bible and begin to attack me, personally. They call me spiritually empty, unknowing, ignorant, demonically possessed (yes, there have been people who have accused me of that), and any number of nasty, virile attacks against me. That is why God invented BLOCKING on Facebook.

When the discussion turns from your ideas and beliefs being argued to you being insulted and berated, it is time to shake the dust off your sandals and move on. Let them have the last word, you be the humble one and accept that you can’t make someone change their mind if they don’t want to.

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the lightbulb has to really want to change.

People are the same way. And remember: there is very little good soil out there to begin with, and we are just here to sow the seeds.

After having read this, if you disagree with me about any part of it, that’s OK- you have a right to! And if you agree with me, that’s much better, but the hard thing is not to just understand what I am saying but to actually use it in real life. When people are so passionate about what they believe that they can’t stand the thought of someone else not agreeing with them, the situation can become very tense and hurtful before you even know it is happening. Practice makes perfect, as with any skill, and if you find that your arguments keep falling on deaf ears, first I would suggest you verify that you are correct. Review your position with an open-minded approach and, if after doing so, you still believe your original position is the correct one but no one is listening to you, consider that you might need to change your method of argumentation.

No matter how “right” we may think we are, if we can’t get people to listen to us we might as well say nothing.