About twenty years ago I was in a conversation with a friend and she said that as humans, we tend to subconsciously (or consciously) categorize every other human as either safe or unsafe. Of course this was in the context of relational issues, but I think it has other layers that can involve physical safety and spiritual safety.
And this conversation about what it means to be a safe person occurred long before the current linguistical shifts and movements that now utilize and weaponize the word safe. At that time, I took the words safe and unsafe at face value. Like love, honor and dishonor, respect and disrespect, or other terms, there seemed to be no question what it meant.
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How do we determine if another human being is generally a safe person or generally an unsafe person? I say generally because we all sin, we all fail, we all have weaknesses and ways of being that can make ourselves and others act/speak in unsafe ways at times, perhaps, yet while not being characterized (and certainly without motive and intention) to be or make oneself an unsafe person.
I think there are a number of cues–either small or big–that help us decide whether someone is safe or unsafe, relationally or otherwise.
I don’t think we can overstate the impact of being intimately entangled (and the ugly process of de-tanglement) with “unsafe” people. Since violent words and untruths can be spoken as though coming from a place of false gentleness, wisdom and kindness, it truly makes the realm of articulating our basis for believing one to be unsafe difficult, if not impossible.
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Many years ago a therapist introduced into my relational vocabulary the label of someone being “an impossible person.” All these years later, I still feel I am swimming and dripping in the rough currents and aftermath of encounters with impossible people and asking myself, “Am I the ‘impossible’ person?”
It has always been important for me to trust others and have others trust me. Trustworthiness is of great importance. While I could make this piece about the specific things that make me trust another person with my thoughts, feelings, vantage points and especially my sins and flaws and struggles, I want to shift this to spiritual safety and a few biblical passages I think address this in a very hard, difficult way.
While these passage talk about specific things, I think there are some conceptual truths to glean about broken relationships and especially, relationships that appear broken for superficial (surface) reasons but at the core, are broken due to a spiritual sword. There is a very real aversion that is experienced between those who seek to walk in the light and those who seek out and walk in darkness.
In terms of relational muck that a follower of Christ finds themselves in, we can expect that our allegiance to Jesus will be the primary basis of essential impossibility of full ‘shalom.‘ If there is intentional rejection of Jesus and biblical truths, then the mutual spiritual basis to guide the tangible manifestation of love, grace, healing and truth presents an essential (as in primary) grievous relational condition.
There is an essential foundational wound (or fault, as in a crack-fault in the basic groundwork/truths of something) that we are told will cause great pain and set household members into spiritual categories of relational ally or relational enemy—spiritually safe or spiritually unsafe.
These days I hear of many relationships that are fitting into this category of difficulty for what seems to me a pattern of similar things. And in attempting to stand in the place of allegiance to (1) the truth, (2) the desire for that which is truly good, right and holy in relationships, and (3)maintaining our own boundaries of healthy self-respect and healthy self-confidence is nothing short of deep heartbrokenness and acknowledgement of our powerlessness to fix such situations.
Who will save me, and who will save you, from this “body of death” (loose biblical reference, so-to-speak)…this “body of irreconcilable relational differences? I want to say and trust that, “thanks be to God–He will come and save us all” and patiently receive HEAVEN-SENT COMFORT AND BALM, wisdom, self-control and endurance…but I am afraid that many times the way feels too hard for me to walk therein…
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II Corinthians 6:8-13 adapted (CEV) “Whether we were honored or dishonored or praised or cursed, we always told the truth about ourselves. But some people said we did not. We are unknown to others, but well known to you…we are telling the truth when we say there is room in our hearts for you. We are not holding back on our love for you, but you are holding back on your love for us. I speak to you as I would speak to my own children. Please make room in your hearts for us.”
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II Corinthians 6:14-15 (NIV) “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?”
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Matthew 10:34-39 (ESV) “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
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Matthew 10:21-22 (ESV) “Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”
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