We Destroy Each Other

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

2 Samuel 6:16, "As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal", who was David's wife, "Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart." She didn't even do anything. She just despised him in her heart. She looked down on him. She thought about how undignified it was for the king to do that. She began to judge him and set him aside as somebody light. Somebody that wasn't worthy of her respect, that's it.

See, you and I, we don't even need to say anything. You know we don't. We don't need to say anything to our friends or our partners or our sons or daughters. We don't need to say anything. We just, in our hearts, determine that our job is to make them what they should be by our subtle pressures and none of our relationships were meant to bear that burden. Do you see that? Our close relationships are not made or meant to bear that burden, they aren't. They are not made to bear that burden that we put upon them.

Do you see why? The moment we start to take upon ourselves the responsibility of making our son or our daughter or our husband or our wife or our roommate or our business colleague, what we think they ought to be, we cease to be their husbands. We cease to be their wives. We cease to be their fathers, we cease to be their mothers, we cease to be their sons, we cease to be their daughters, we cease to be their colleagues, we cease to be their roommates and we become their judges and their gods. We do.

I know we think, "No, you don't need to do that, you can mix a little in it." But no you can't. You become their judges and their gods and you begin to take upon yourself a responsibility that you have not the wisdom or the power to take -- that of a God and a judge. Some of us say, "But isn't that our responsibility?" Our responsibility in a close relationship is to try to help the other person to be such that they will get to heaven, and indeed to get them to enter into their full potential as human beings. God answers that very clearly for us loved ones, in a piece in I Corinthians 1:21.

I Corinthians 1:21, "For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe." "Since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom", that's what you exercise when you try to make your partner or your friend be what he or she ought to be. You use wisdom. You use the best of the world's wisdom. The world’s wisdom in the human sense is usually knowing right and wrong, knowing the difference between good and evil, and laying that on the other person. That wisdom, God says, does nobody any good. Indeed, all it does is burden them with a sense of oughtness that they probably have already. But that doesn't help them at all.

Now, you may say, "But don't we have a responsibility to make them aware that they're missing God or that they could be different or that they're missing some of his life?" No, God appointed somebody far more divine than you to do that difficult and very delicate task. That person is doing it continually. He keeps on doing it even when you're asleep. He is doing it all the time through myriad different ways and you need to leave it to that person. Here he is, he's in John 16:8.

John 16:8, "And when he comes," (the Holy Spirit of course), when the Holy Spirit comes, "he will convince." And you see the x (footnote) if you track it right down to the bottom left-hand side of the page and the top of the footnotes there, it says, "or convict" because the Greek word is actually 'convict'. And when the Holy Spirit comes, "he will convince," or convict, "the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me;" (not sin because they do not do something that you think that they should do), but "concerning sin because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged." The Holy Spirit will do that.