Hey, this is John Ortberg. And I want to talk to you today about how to deal with irritating people. Do you have an irritating person in your life? Is there somebody where they’ve got habits? They’ve got attitudes, maybe it’s their politics. Maybe it’s somebody at home that you live with. Maybe it’s somebody that you work with and they just bug the heck outta you. Uh, if you want to become a more loving person than one of the things that God will do is send into your life a person who is difficult to love an irritating, hard person. And of course, if you live with somebody and they want to become a more loving person, then you may be the person that God has assigned to them. We all wrestle with this, and I’m talking these days about, uh, passages to wisdom, looking at great thoughts from great thinkers.
And right now we’re in CS. Lewis’s book, the screw tape letters where old uncle screw tape is giving diabolical advice to his nephew, wormwood about how do you attempt people away from God? So this advice is really how to be an irritating person. And if you want to figure out how to deal with an irritating person, how to be different yourself than you just turn it upside down. So how to be an irritating person. Number one is avoid self-awareness of your own irritating qualities. This is what uncle Screwtape says, uh, to warm. What about wor warm what’s patient? The human being that warm, what is tempting? Keep his mind on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned it present to the states of his own mind, or rather to that very ex version of them, which is all you should allow him to see encourage this, keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones aggravate that most human, that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. This is so good. You must bring him into a condition in which he can practice self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself, which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.
And I, I think about my learning about my own irritating qualities, very painful point to find out from the people that I live with, the way that when I get very angry, my face can express contempt. And I did not know this was true about me. I don’t think about myself as an angry person, but it’s very clear that it is, or when I learned from people that I work with, that I can be in these moods of, uh, self preoccupation that make me me impatient and snippy and treat other people badly and they can feel it and see it quite easily. And I don’t like to think of myself in this way. I want to think of myself as this joyful person. Uh, but that’s not the whole truth about me at all. I don’t know who said this. Somebody said a long time ago. If one person tells you you’re a horse, you can ignore it. If two people do think about it, if three people tell you you’re a horse, buy a saddle. So if you wanna be an irritating person, just avoid self-awareness. And then secondly, if you wanna be an irritating person, separate your prayer life from your real life, again, here’s old uncle screw tape. It is no doubt impossible to prevent his praying for his mother. Now, this particular situation is dealing with a human being who’s living with mom and finds her to be an irritating person.
Uh, we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous, make sure they’re always very quote Spiritu that he’s always concerned about the state of her soul and never with rheumatism two advantages will follow in the first place. His attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which with a little guidance from you. He can be induced to me any of her actions, which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus, you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day, a little sore even while he is on his knees. The operation is not at all difficult, and you will find it very entertaining. In other words, even while I am praying, I can be sinning in the second place. Since this idea is about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous. He will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily, less and less like the real mother, the sharp tongue, old lady at the breakfast table, uncle screw tape rights.
I’ve had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moments noticed from an impassioned prayer for a wife or son’s soul to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm. And it’s very striking to read those words and to think about people that I know we had dinner last night with a friend who had been in an abusive relationship for many years inside the church and suffering physical and emotional abuse. And if that’s you or, you know, somebody where they’re experiencing that, get out of that unsafe relationship, it’s amazing how it is so sad through the years. Sometimes the church has not only failed to clearly call out the evil of that, but even tolerated or condoned it. Third, if you wanna be an irritating person, uh, rehearse other people’s irritating qualities, uncle screw tape.
When two human beings have lived together for many years, it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face, which are almost UN endurably unbearably, irritating to the other work on that, bring fully into the consciousness of your patient, that particular lift of his mother eyebrows, which he learned to dislike in the nursery. Let him think about how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy. If you, if you know your job, he will not notice the immense probability of that assumption. Like irritating people are not walking around all day, thinking about here’s a good way to irritate me, but it’s easy for me to convince myself that they are. And of course never let him suspect that he has tones and looks, which similarly annoy her. And that this is just such a simple but profound insight as he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed.
I can get myself to think over and over again about man. I don’t like that about this person. I remember one time I was in church and there was someone sitting in the room behind me and it was a worship time and we were singing and they were singing loudly and really off pitch. And I just sat there irritated and thinking, I, I, somebody ruining this experience of worship for me. And, and eventually I turned around to look and it was a disabled person. And I thought probably to God, there is no sound in this room that brings him more joy or delight than that. A person who suffers these challenges would just be pouring out their heart to him. And I was just sitting there brooding my irritation. Uh, if you wanna be an irritating person, just learn to rehearse the irritating qualities of other people.
And then number four, operate with a double standard. If you want to be an irritating person, screw tape again in civilized life, domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper. The words are not offensive, but in such a voice or at such a moment that they are not far short of a blow on the face to keep this up. You and glove OS glove OS is the name of the tempt who deals with, uh, the patient’s mom, you and glove OS must see to it that each of the two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value. And judge, simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother’s utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and context and the suspected intention, she must be encouraged to do the same to him.
Hence from every quarrel, they can both go away convinced or very nearly convinced that they are quite innocent. You know, this sort of thing, I simply asked her what time dinner will be in chief flies into a temper. Once this habit is well established, you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending, and yet having a grievance, when a fence is taken now for people of a Scandinavian background, this is simply called conversation operate with a double standard. All I did was all I said was, and the alternative for this is expressed by Paul when he is writing to the community at Ephesus in the fourth chapter of the 32nd verse, be kind and compassionate to one another for giving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you. I am to relate to the people with whom I work and live and play and talk, uh, as a person who has been forgiven because of my own sin because of my own irritating qualities cuz of my own brokenness. And when I’m remember that, then I’m able to look with compassion and kindness on another person. So today, think about that irritating person in your life and name five qualities about them that are positive, that are good things. Maybe they’re courageous or maybe they’re truthful or, um, maybe they’re patient, what, whatever those qualities are, think about five of them. And thank God for them. Let’s take a moment. We’ll pray to end today and pray for that irritating person.
So God, I bring this person to my mind. Each of us do, I can confess my own difficulty and inability to love and the blindness of my eyes. And I ask for new eyes that I might see this person as somebody you made and you love. And I ask for a new heart that I might love the way that you do help me today. God help all of us in the fellowship of the withered hand today we can’t, but you can love through us. We pray in Jesus name.
Amen.
You don’t irritate me at all. I’ll see you.