They are often the people closest to us. They are the ones with which we have the most challenging and difficult relationships. They can be our parents, siblings, friends or lovers, workmates, neighbors etc.
They might be abusive to us or have inflicted pain upon us, simply put they drive us nuts.
What does the bible teach us on how to do deal with such characters?
2 Timothy 3:1–5
3 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good,
4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
But how do you AVOID such people
1.Don’t pay attention to the person. To avoid someone, make sure you’re never available for conversation.
2.Don’t engage in arguments with the person. If you’re trying to avoid the person, you should let them know that you’re done with the conversation, and simply walk away.
3.stay away from such people by avoiding places they might be.
4.Stick to light topics
Some negative people are triggered by certain topics, Avoid those topics.
True, some people can be absolute evil but when you reach at that point with someone its better to ask guidance from above, meanwhile… exercising restraint is advised when dealing with such characters.
Bursting out in anger in response will only fuel such people.
Wise words; during the past year I have systematically cut ties with a huge number of family, colleagues and friends.
I simply realized dogs were better company than they were.
Agreed!!!. I recycle them as I deem fit but I also try to maintain some balance as some of them are so thick. In terms of friends mmmmh nje anytime…in terms of family you are in…coz I cannot avoid it.
But all I know is that sometimes friends are better than family.
Well you’re lucky in your selection of friends, mine seem to follow a particular path of unwelcome familiarity which I deeply resent.
It’s the reason I chose to embody the word private as far as family goes.
It is a v difficult thing but you have to choose…YOU.
I just choose what to tell who. And what to listen to and Ignore the rest of the noise. It has worked over the years. Many fall outs in our group and many other friendships created hapo.
So true. Evil manifests in actions such as greed,anger. It can represented by a fire, if you give your attention to it the more you fuel it. As you said, deny it attention and it consumes itself.
I think that the people we don’t understand or those we think are difficult but cannot avoid direct contact with them are given to us to make us a little stronger. It’s not for nothing that they say there’s no test that you can’t take. Now, I think that’s the pure truth. Because these people usually teach us tolerance, and the choice is always yours - you can be silent and just tolerate this person, or you can define your boundaries and agree with him on how you will communicate, how often, what topics you won’t address, etc. So in this case it is always important to remember about yourself, but it is certainly not worth hurting the feelings of another person. You can always solve any issue in a peaceful way and agree on everything.
not that difficult once you learn a fair amount of narcissism