Are you growing resentful for helping someone? Maybe you’re growing resentful about a boss who is always handing you emergency work as a result of their poor planning, or a child who seems to always forget they have an assignment due and you have to spend all night helping them prepare, or a friend who always calls when they need something but somehow they are never around when you are in need.
Could the frustration you are experiencing at work, at home, with your parents, with your kids, or with your friends be because you are taking responsibility where you shouldn’t be? When you step in to assume responsibility and rescue an irresponsible person, YOU pay the price for THEIR choices. It’s easy to think you are helping them, but in reality you are hurting them. To be more precise, you are enabling them to continue in this destructive pattern.
God has established His world to run on a principle of sowing and reaping (Gal. 6:7-8). The principle is obvious: whatever you plant is what you are going to harvest. It makes total sense. If you are mean, rude, and short with others, what do you expect to get back in return? The principle applies to your health, relationships, finances, career…everything. This principle allows us to learn from the choices we make. We experience the consequences of our actions in a natural way. If we don’t like what we are getting then we need to plant something different. The problem is that when we are trying to help someone who is irresponsible, we can unintentionally short circuit the natural learning process of sowing and reaping.
The principle of sowing and reaping is always in effect. There is always a harvest, someone always reaps. The issue is that the person who does the sowing isn’t always the person who does the reaping. Sometimes someone else steps in and reaps the consequences for the irresponsible person. Could your resentment and frustration stem from the fact that you are reaping the consequences for something someone else sowed? You are paying the price for their irresponsibility over and over again.
(This was an idea I was first exposed to in Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life
This happens all the time. A child forgets (for 2 months) that they have a big report and then they remember the night before it’s due. So you reap the consequences for them by staying up all night and helping them finish. Your child maxes out a credit card in college so you reap the consequences and pay off the $10,000 they incurred having a grand time. Your team member at work doesn’t pull the numbers together you need for your team presentation so you reap the consequences and stay late to do their work. Someone always reaps, but the question is: was it the person who did the sowing? If you step in and reap for them they’ve learned nothing except you’ll bail them out again in the future. Don’t miss this…now you are suffering from the principle of sowing and reaping. Now you are sowing–bailing an irresponsible person out–so you’ll reap–having to keep bailing them out in the future.
I imagine some lightbulbs have come on and now you are asking what you should do. You should stop paying for them. You should let them reap the consequences of their action. It’s the only way they’ll learn. God doesn’t enable irresponsible behavior and He isn’t asking you to either. (Check out these passages: Galatians 6:5, 2 Cor. 5:10, 2 Thess. 3:10, Gen. 3:19, Lev. 19:9-10, Matt. 25:14-30)
Hot-tempered people must pay the penalty. If you rescue them once, you will have to do it again. –Proverbs 19:19
I’m sure you’re thinking yeah but that doesn’t sound very nice. Aren’t Christians supposed to be nice? It’s true we aren’t supposed to be rude. It’s also true that…Our highest aim is not to be nice, our highest aim is to be loving. Nowhere are we commanded to be nice in Scripture, but we are commanded to be loving. Sometimes being nice (as most people understand that word–polite, don’t rock the boat) can get in the way of being loving.
God isn’t asking you to be a doormat for anyone. If you are growing resentful towards someone it’s a good sign you might be an enabler. When you stop enabling it will get worse before it gets better so you’re going to need some support around you. Where are you going to find those people to support you? The best place I know is a church.
Being passive and sticking your head in the sand won’t change your situation. Neither will wishful thinking. Some of you need to stop praying and get to work. You’re waiting on God to do something that is your responsibility. He won’t do our work for us–God is not an enabler either.
God asks of us to help people who are carrying a crushing load–a load they can’t carry by themselves (Gal. 6:2), but He isn’t asking us to do for others what others can do for themselves (Gal. 6:5). When we take responsibility for someone we take responsibility away from them.
