Spiritualizing Hurts Hurting People

Spiritualizing hurts hurting people by not responding to the real needs of the person by minimizing their pain and the situation. Watch this video to understand what spiritualizing is and why it hurts. #spiritualizing #hurtingpeople #respondingtoneeds

 

 

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Watch this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZgiMlLsAn8o

 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to an audio recordingby Change My Relationship, featuring
licensed marriage and family therapistand author Karla Downing.
These audios are designed to provide youwith practical solutions
based on biblical truthsfor all your relationships.

(00:20):
Spiritualizing hurts.
Hurting people.
Spiritualizing means that you are
responding to a situation
with only one Bible verse or one
Bible principle,and ignoring the rest of them.
And you'relooking at just one spiritual aspect,

(00:45):
and it is kind of trivializing
the person's experience,the person's feelings, the person's pain.
So here are some examples.
Oh, just trust God.
Pray about it.
Do you think the person hasn'tprayed about it?

(01:05):
I'll pray for you.
And that's sort of your exitout of this difficult conversation,
or your way of just saying to the person,oh, okay, I'll pray for you.
But not addressing the real problem.
God won't give you more than you bear.
You can bear, you know.
So in other words, that's that scripturewhere it says that

(01:26):
in any temptationthat God will provide you a way out.
That's not really talking about this.
It's not talking about pain and trials.
It's saying that God doesn't tempt you.
That you are not trapped from things, thatGod's not putting you in that situation,
but so God won't give youmore than you can

(01:46):
bear, is basically saying to the personwhat it's saying.
Well, this isn't really that badbecause you know, you can handle it
because God wouldn't have given youthe situation if you couldn't handle it.
I'm going to tell you,I've spent a lot of time talking to people
about their life problemsand their relationship problems,
and I have seen situationsthat are more than people can bear.

(02:10):
And sometimes people crumble underthe situations that they've been given.
Sometimes it is too much for somebodybecause there are a lot of very,
very difficultthings that people have endured
and have to endure in this world
that has lots of bad things.
The next one, God works out everything

(02:33):
for good or for your good or for his good.
So in other words, oh, you'll make it.
God's going to work all of this for good.
Now, all of thesethings can be said to people
with.
They have scriptural precedent,scriptural background.
They're based on scriptural principlesor on a scripture, but the problem is
how you use them. Okay.

(02:55):
So basically you're saying,okay, good is going to come out of this.
Quit complaining.
Quit telling me how bad it isor how much you hurt or expecting any kind
of, support because this is all goingto work for good.
Be grateful.
It could be worse.
Ouch. That is kind of painful.
You know.
Wow. So, in other words, don't complainbecause it could be worse.

(03:18):
It could always be worse.
I don't care what situationit is, it can always be worse.
You need to forgive.
So your person is telling yousome excruciating pain in a relationship
or somethingthat somebody has done to them,
and you come back with,you need to forgive again, truthful,
but not the right time to tell the personthat the person needs to forgive.

(03:42):
God will give you the strengthto go through it.
Oh, he will.
That's true.
But again, to say thatwhen you're spiritually using it
and not addressing the person's real paincould be in itself more painful.
Remember the title.
Spiritualizing hurts hurting people.

(04:02):
Spiritualizingactually causes people in already
painful circumstances to feel more pain.
Next one.
Well, depression is a sin.
You know you have the joy of the Lord
again.
Hurtful, painful and not true.

(04:23):
Depression is a biological neural,
biological state that can come froman imbalance in your neurotransmitters
that can even comefrom physical illnesses.
So it's not true.
And people don't always feel joy
when they, quote unquote,should be feeling the joy of the Lord.

(04:47):
Some timesthey're in some really deep, dark valleys.
Think of David in the Psalms saying,where is my hope?
I don't have any hope.
I'm like destitute. I want to die.
I mean, this is horrible.
I feel like God's,doing all these bad things to me.
There's all kinds of thingsI hope my enemy dies These are times

(05:10):
that even Bible giants have gone through.
Next one.
You aren't stressed. You're blessed.
So kind of discounting that person's
feelings, that person's experience.
If the person says they're stressed,they're stressed.
And no matter how many blessingsthey have in the midst of that,

(05:32):
if they're feeling stressed,that's real for them.
The next one be content in everything.
Again, scriptural but not appropriate.
Be content and everything meansyou need to just get over it.
Be content in this situation.
Again,the person is not telling you about it.
For you to come back with a platitude,

(05:54):
with spiritualizing that causes more pain.
God will provide all your needs.
Yes, but sometimes in different waysthan we think we need.
Sometimes we still experiencegreat lack of our needs.
Sometimes it's going through a very dry,dark season.

(06:17):
So again, hurting that person byjust saying pretty much be quiet.
I'm done with you.
God's going to take care of it.Don't worry about it.
But I'm going to walk away and not thinkabout what I might need to do,
because God's gotcha.
God's going to take care of it.
And the next one, it must be God's will.
Remember Job, Job with hisjust his really useless friends

(06:42):
that kept saying things to him like that,like, oh, Job you must have sinned.
You must have done something really,really bad to bring all this stuff on you
and into your life.
Like, come on, Job, what was your sin?
Remember, they kept saying that again,
not helpful, not accurate necessarily.
Right.

(07:03):
So who knows?
Lots of things happened to us.
Yes. Did they filter through God'spermissive will? Yes.
But are we affected by sinful peoplein a sinful world?
Absolutely.
And again, not helpful
spiritualizing and minimizesthe person's pain by responding
with the simple answer that appearsto care without taking the time

(07:28):
to understand what the person needsor what the person is going through.
It basically tells the person,I don't really care.
I'm kind of done with you.
This is my one responseto your whole problem.
And I'm going to walk awayand I'm going to be okay.
It kind of masks concernwith an exhortation

(07:50):
that kind of brings a little judgmentwith it.
A little bit of,oh, you're overreacting or oh,
you're making too big a deal about itor this is not a problem.
It's just a spiritual thing, or God'sgoing to give you everything you need.
Okay.
And it definitelydoes not take time to consider.
What does this person need?
And can I help this person?

(08:11):
Now, we cannot helpevery person that comes in our path.
It's impossible.
But there are situations
in which we can do something without.
Maybe we don't have the moneyto help a person, but we can listen.
We can give the personsome type of response that lets him know

(08:31):
we actually get it.
We care, and even if we don't get it,
we care enough to listen and to say, I'msorry that you're going through that.
That sounds really, really hard.
That sounds really painful.
That sounds really difficult.
Maybe I don't get itbecause I haven't been in that situation,
but geez, that sounds really awful. And

(08:54):
spiritualizing hurts
because it doesn't hit the person.
It doesn't meet themwhere they're really, really at.
The Bible does have a lot to sayabout our lives.
There's a lot of truth.
There's a lot of principles in the Bibleand a whole bunch of scriptures.
But you need to listen to

(09:15):
what the person is going throughand to understand, to find out
what does a person really needand what may God want you to actually do.
For this person to actually do somethingthat minimizes the pain
rather than adding to the pain,we don't want to do that.
So you if you think about this, John

(09:36):
James tells us that faithwithout deeds is is dead.
And so basicallyyou're throwing out a platitude
or some spiritual little nugget there,
and yet you're not doing somethingto actually care for the person.
Now, there are some scriptures that goalong with that, for you to think about.

(09:57):
And one of them is Romans 12:15 andit says, rejoice with those who rejoice.
Mourn with those who mourn.
So basically,it's to kind of mirror this person's
experience,to mirror what they're going through.
If they're rejoicing,we can rejoice with them.
But if they're mourning,we can't just give them some nice

(10:17):
spiritual platitudeand walk away like everything's okay.
The next one is Proverbs 25:20, like onewho takes away a garment on a cold day.
So it's like taking somebody's coat
when they're in the snow and saying,Now I'll walk ten miles to go home.
Or like vinegar poured on a wound
is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.

(10:38):
So if you're going to sing a songof a nice little spiritual
nugget to somebody who has a heavy heart,and you're just going to be like,
everything'sokay, God's going to take care of you.
It's all going to work for good.
Okay, I'll pray for you, then,what are you doing?
Okay. You are actually.
That's like taking away somebody'sgarment on a cold day by doing that.

(11:01):
The next one, is the ones I referred to
in James James 2:15-17.
Suppose a brother or a sisteris without clothes and daily food.
If one of you says to them,oh, go in peace, keep warm
and well fed, butdoes nothing about their physical needs.
What good is it?
In the same way, faith by itself it

(11:25):
if if it is not accompaniedby action, is dead.
So that's a perfect exampleright out of Scripture.
If the person needs foodand the person needs clothing
and you say, go, be blessed,keep warm, well-fed, I'll pray for you.
And the person doesn't have those thingsthat didn't do any good.

(11:47):
Don't deceive yourself.That wasn't helpful.
And 1 Timothy 5:23I love this one because Paul
writing the letter to Timothygives him some very practical advice.
He says, stop drinking only water and use
a little wine because of your stomachand your frequent illnesses.
He stops to writing all this stuff

(12:09):
about spiritual things and about Timothy'swalk with the Lord, and he addresses
something really real, like just likewe would in our relationships today.
And he just says, okay,you've got some stomach problems.
Go ahead and drink this wine,
which was very watered down backthen, very, very low alcohol.
But he says this might help your stomach.

(12:32):
Okay,so it's not I'll pray for your stomach.
God will make your stomach betteror God is giving you the stomach problems.
He's going to work everything for good,but you know what, Timothy? No.
How about try this?
Okay,so he is attending to Timothy's real need.
So Scripture has a lot of waysof responding to people's problems

(12:55):
and spiritualizing
it at the wrong time, in the wrong way,and not addressing
a person's real needs is actually hurtful.
Don't spiritualize and hurt hurting people
more than they're already hurting.
Thank you for watching this videoon Change My Relationship.

(13:16):
I hope that you will check out my websiteand that you will look at the,
studies and booksand other materials that I have for you.

This is my book Change My Relationship: 365 Daily Devotions for Christians (13:26):
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in Difficult Relationships, it will giveyou all kinds of scriptural truths
and really help you in to navigatethose difficult relationships.
Thank you for watching. God bless.
Thank you for listeningto Change My Relationship.

(13:46):
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(14:09):
Downing's ministry, including her books,studies, devotionals, podcasts
and YouTube videosvisit changemyrelationship.com.