Some of us avoid conflict because we’re people-pleasers and can’t handle people being upset with us.
Our reasons for avoiding conflict are various and numerous.
I don’t tend to have this problem, but the opposite of it. My tendency has always been to jump into conflict, sometimes with too much urgency, in hopes of making sure the other people involved know I’m in the right, even if they don’t like me afterward!
Scazzero says, “Jesus shows us that healthy Christians do not avoid conflict… Out of a desire to bring true peace, Jesus disrupted the false peace all around him.”
8. Covering over brokenness, weakness and failure
Shame is one of the most universal human feelings.
All of us are ashamed more often than we ought to be because we don’t remember our Christ-earned standing before God as much as we ought.
In our sinful shame, we, like Adam and Eve in the Garden, hopelessly try to cover our brokenness and failure with figurative loin cloths in hopes of convincing everyone around us we’re good—nothing to see here!
Scazzero says, “The Bible does not spin the flaws and weaknesses of its heroes,” and we shouldn’t spin ours either.
9. Living without limits
I love my wife, but if there’s one of these that makes me think of her, it’s this one. Really, this symptom of emotionally unhealthy spirituality is just a tremendous gift of God taken a bit too far.
God in his Word calls us to love and serve others, our friends and enemies alike, but if we aren’t careful, we can exhaust ourselves to the point of breaking ourselves.
My wife is so good at loving and serving people, I sometimes fear that she isn’t taking good enough care of herself. She knows this about herself, too, and she knows I have the opposite problem—I send to be too self-focused.
Don’t be so focused on loving and caring for other people that you don’t take care of yourself. Put your own oxygen mask on first or you won’t be good to help others out with theirs, right?
10. Judging other people’s spiritual journey
This one runs rampant in the local church and in our own hearts, doesn’t it? We are competitive, sinful people, and this causes us to evaluate our own spiritual triumphs and failures in light of those around us.
Scazzero says, “By failing to let others be themselves before God and move at their own pace, we inevitably project onto them our own discomfort with their choice to live differently than we do.”
We must care about our own spiritual shortcomings before we even look at the shortcomings of others. We must deal with the logs in our own eyes before we address the specks in others’.
So, which symptom or few symptoms of emotionally unhealthy spirituality stand out to you as the ones you struggle with the most?
This article originally appeared here.
