You are what you criticize

Something may be clicking for me after 40 years of living life. I’d like to know what you think about it.

You’re reading my first attempt to put it into words.

It goes something like this:

As I’ve lived, I observe an axiom that the more I judge someone the more I take on her or his characteristics. I become what I judge.

Or another way to put it: The more I try to change someone, the more I change into what I’m trying to change about them.

For example: A few years ago I had a boss whose criticism, meddling, and mind-tricks bordered on torture. She would have been better a prosecuting deadbeat dads and Ponzi schemers–or perhaps as a James Bond villain–than a manager.

In the beginning, I tried to change her with kindness and love.

It didn’t work. I grew impatient.

My relationship with her became an obsession. I thought about her 24/7: My anger and frustration eventually became rage. My mind never stopped picking over every little way she wronged me and the universe. My conversations started sounding like a prosecutor (me) asking a jury (coworkers, families, friends, whoever) for a harsh sentence. I became highly critical of everything about her down to what she liked to watch on TV with her kids and what she wore to work. I got mean–doing things behind her back to make her look bad to other people.

In short: I became just like her.

As I think back to every person I ever criticized, judged, put down, or tried to change I see the same axiom at work. In criticizing, judging, putting down, and trying to change them I became more and more like them. I take on their characteristics and habits and speech.

Worst of all, all the energy that goes into judging someone doesn’t change them at all. The only person it changes (for the worse) is me.

And because I’m so busy being righteous, I don’t notice my own corruption.

What does that feel like?

I don’t know about you, but to me it feels like Stockholm syndrome. It feels like captivity in which my equilibrium, function, and sense of self becomes enmeshed in my captor.

Do you wonder how much energy–how much life–we spend on trying to change other people and then judging them like hell when they don’t change to our liking? This applies to family, friends, people at church, school, and work. For that matter, it applies to strangers at the grocery store and faceless motorists on the freeway. In 2016, it applies to presidential candidates (and the people who vote for them).

What did Jesus Christ mean when he commissioned his people to go out and “make disciples” of everyone in the world?

Did he admit us to his bar and send us forth as both prosecutors and corrections officers?

Because if we’ve learned anything in this country, it’s that more effective prosecution, stricter sentences, and the largest corrections system on earth are failing to change people or society for the better. We just have higher recidivism and more people in prison than any other country in the world.

As much as the Christ forbid his apprentices from judging (“for as you judge others, you will be judged yourselves”), he emphatically and expressly commanded them to “love your enemies.”

I believe he meant that loving enemies should be/would be the “litmus test” for Christians who are reaching the fullest and most mature expression of their faith.

“Love your enemies”–as opposed to judging them–is a rule of life for Christians when antagonists cross their paths (as they will). The Christian response to antagonism is always a premeditated response (love)–never a reaction (basic fight or flight).

Taken with the Great Commission (“go make disciples”), however, the love that the Christ commanded his apprentices to who for enemies becomes proactive. In other words, loving enemies is not a Christian response; it’s a Christian call to action.

Go find your enemies and love them. Go put yourself out there where you have no choice but to engage your enemies and love them there. Make the first move. Plan your love in advance. Fire the first shot–of compassion, empathy, kindness, peace.

When we actively looking for opportunities to love our enemies and thinking ahead to how we will respond when someone does us wrong, we leave neither vacuum nor void in our hearts for anger to flare up and judgment to take over.

And we need to just give up tying to change people. The only way human beings ever change each other is through manipulation or violence.

Even in the Great Commission, the Christ never ordered his apprentices to change anyone. The command was (and is): Love. Go love. Love first. Love in response. Love if it kills you.

The change comes when that otherworldly power from the mysterious reaches of the universe blows on the spark in every human heart to make a warm fire glow there. Each of us may be a home to that power, but we are not its source. We cannot change other human beings. The change must come from the universe.

I’m writing this because the realizations are convicting me (in a good way) over the last few days. I’m guilty of more than just the story I shared about my old boss a few years back.

I’m guilty of criticizing people and trying to change them.

I’m guilty of choosing to be around people who always seem to like me because I don’t really want to go seek out my enemies so I can practice the love that my Lord prescribes for them.

But I’m not holding on to that guilt. Because my Lord is not a prosecutor. He loves me tender and true before I deserve it. He shows me how to love others by loving me without condition.

I’m looking forward to learning how to do the same.

Onward and upward.