Rick Warren - Keeping the Crazymakers from Making You Crazy - Part 1
For the past eight weeks, we have been dealing with how to deal with difficult people, and I’ve called the series «You Make Me Crazy». And what I want to do this week as we conclude it and as I introduce a new series that we’re gonna begin next week, I want us to summarize kind of what we’ve learned about what God says about unhealthy and healthy relationships. And I’m going to take you through some steps that kind of summarize what to do with the crazymakers in your life, and I’m calling this message «Keeping the Crazymakers From Making You Crazy»!
And before we look at those steps, I want to just pause and review, what is a crazymaker? Now, I could give you a list of 100 different kinds of people, but let me give you six of the most common. So pull out a pencil and write these down, and as I write them down, don’t look at them, okay? Don’t embarrass them. But these are different people that we have that we have to work with, we have to live with, we have in our neighborhoods, in our communities, soccer games and church everywhere. And how do we deal with these different kinds of people? Let’s look at them.
Number one is what I call demanding, demanding crazymakers. These are the little dictators of life, the little Napoleons, the little Saddams. They’re bossy, they’re pushy, they’re controlling in every area; they’re intimidating. They dominate every conversation. They turn every conversation into a into a power struggle. They make unrealistic demands on your life, on your time, on your schedule, and they just push, push, push. They are demanding and it drives you crazy, demanding crazymakers, the little dictators.
The second kind is what I call disapproving, disapproving crazymakers, and these are what I call the nitpickers, and they are picky, picky, picky, picky, picky. They are highly critical. Your best is never good enough. They always want more. They tend to be negative, they tend to be judgmental, they are unpleasable, they’re perfectionist, and they love to point out your mistakes. And the disapproving crazymakers, no matter what you do, it’s just not good enough and that drives you crazy, the nitpickers.
The third kind of crazymakers are what I call deafening, deafening crazymakers 'cause they’re loud. They are loud mouths. I call these people the megaphones of life. And they’re loud and they like to talk, and they like to talk at a loud, often 120 decibels. If you get a megaphone on the phone, you’re not gonna get off for at least 15 minutes, because they just keep talking and talking, and they talk you into surrender, to finally just go, you hold up the white flag, «I give up, okay, I give up. You’ve talked me into the ground». And they absolutely love to argue. These are the megaphones.
Number four, the destructive crazymakers, the destructive crazymakers. And these are the people who have uncontrolled anger, and I call them the volcanoes. And we’ve all had volcanoes in our lives, it’s very easy to see them. You never know when they’re going to erupt, but when they erupt, you know it. They’ve got a temper like Mount Vesuvius, or like Mount Saint Helens, and they blow up and they explode, and when they do, it leaves scorching hot lava burning everything in the path. If you have a volcano in your life, you tend to walk on eggshells part of the time. The family can live in fear of when the next blowup’s going to be. There’s a lot of tension and the burn casualties are quite high; the destructive crazymakers, the volcanoes.
Numbers five, I call these people the discontented, discontented crazymakers. Discontented crazymakers get their feelings hurt very, very easily. They’re very touchy, they’re very thin-skinned, and they whine a lot; I call them the crybabies. And we all know crybabies, they have a daily pity party. They invite themselves and they like to moan and to mourn and the «poor me». And they’re chronic complainers and they’ve got a martyr complex, and they get their attention by whining. And when they whine, they kind of get that nasally sound of whining all the time, and it just grates on you like your fingernails on a blackboard. These are the cry babies, the discontented crazymakers. They are never happy.
And then number six, a sixth kind, a common crazymaker of what I call demeaning, demeaning crazymakers. And these people are the smart mouths. And the smart mouths are the ones who are always running off of the mouth, and they’re rude and they’re insulting, and they use caustic language and maybe they cuss. But more than just cussing and complaining and caustic language, they’re bubble bursters: they like to bust your bubble, they like to tear your dream down, they love to deflate you, they love to tear you down. They get particular joy in telling you how you don’t measure up. And they can be disrespectful, and they can be petty, and they can be mean, and these are the smart mouths. And by the way, people who are rude all the time, they’re rude because they have enormous insecurities. The more insecure a person is, the more rude they tend to be.
Now what I want to do this weekend is I want to take you through a summary of verses of what the Bible says about how do you deal with these kind of people in your life, and I’m going to give you six steps. I’ve discovered in my own life that each step tends to get a little bit harder than the one before. The first one’s hard, but the second one’s even harder, and the third one’s even harder, but this is the way you deal with difficult people. This is the way you counter the crazymakers in your life, according to the Bible. All right, let’s get right into it. Number one, the first thing you need to do with a crazymaker is this: refuse to be offended.
I refuse to be offended, and what I mean by that is I don’t take it personally, no matter what they say, no matter what they do, no matter how outrageous their behavior is, no matter what they insult me with, or how they act or react or the way they look with their body language. When people are rude, they are revealing themselves, not you. They’re telling you what’s in them, not what’s in you. When people are mean, when people are controlling, they’re not saying anything about you. It doesn’t say anything about you. It says about who they are. It tells you what their problem is. So don’t be offended by it, it’s not about you. They’re just a crazymaker.
Now the reality is, there’s a lot in life you could get offended by. In fact, there’s a lot of things in life you ought to be offended by. I get offended by a lot of things. I’m offended by injustice in the world, when people go to bed hungry at night and a lot of us have so much. I’m offended by racism. I’m offended by babies whose lives are taken before they’re even born. I’m offended by exploitation of sex and women who are exploited for sex trafficking and things like… there are a lot of things you ought to be offended by. But when it comes to personal relationships, God says, get over it.
As much as you can, try not to be offended by other people. In other words, if you wanted to, you could have such a thin skin, everything everybody does offends you and you’re gonna be unhappy most of your life. So you’ve got to learn that emotional and spiritual maturity is largely determined by how you treat those who mistreat you. Let me say that again: how mature you are emotionally and spiritually is largely revealed in how I respond, how I treat those who mistreat me, and how I treat those who misunderstand me.
Do I do tit for tat? Do I get even? If they hit me, I hit them back? If they hurt me, I hurt them back? If they insult me, I insult them back? They get angry at me, I get angry back? Then I’m no better than they are. Emotional and spiritual maturity is determined by my reaction to the people who try to hurt me, try to, you know, the demanding, the demeaning, the confusing, all of those people, the destructive and disapproving people in my life. How do I handle those kind of people? One of the keys to happiness in life, it’s not the only one, but one of the keys to happiness in life is you need to develop a thicker skin and just not be offended by so many things.
Now, what you need to pray is say, «God, give me a tender heart and a tough hide. Give me a tender heart and a tough», usually we get the opposite. We get thin-skinned and tough-hearted. God said, «No, no, no, you should always have a tender heart». But you need to get a little bit thicker skin so not everything just sets you off, not everything offends you; you don’t always get upset no matter what people say. When somebody looks cross eyed at you or, you know, on the freeway, somebody flips you off, it doesn’t bother you. You don’t get upset about it. Somebody is rude to you, a clerk or something like that, a clerk who’s a jerk, and they, you know, they’re just having a tough day, you need to get a little bit thicker skin.
Now, how do I do that? How do I keep from taking personal offense at the crazymakers in my life? Look at this first verse, Proverbs 12:16. Let’s read it aloud together. «When a fool is annoyed, he quickly lets it be known. But wise people will ignore an insult». Circle the word «wise». If you’re wise, you ignore an insult. If you respond to an insult with an insult, you’re a fool. Foolish people give out what they get. He says that’s not good, that’s not wise, that’s dumb, «When a fool is annoyed, he quickly lets it be known». In other words, somebody hurts me, I hurt them right back. They make a tacky statement to me and I make a tacky statement back, «When a fool is annoyed, he quickly lets it be known. But wise people ignore an insult».
Now we’ve talked about this three different times in this series, that when you’re dealing with people who are offensive, when you’re dealing with people who are irritating, people who are crazymakers in your life, you need to look past the behavior, to the pain, because everything we do is motivated by something. And when people are hurting others, it’s because they’re hurting on the inside; hurt people, hurt people. And they’ve got a fear, they’ve got an insecurity, they’ve got a painful past, they’ve got a pressure in the current that maybe you don’t know about.
And one of the ways you can learn to not be offended by other people is to not look at their behavior, and to just look past and go, «I wonder what causes them to be that way, to be that short with me. Did they get out of bed on the wrong side? They have a fight with their husband or their wife today? Are they going bankrupt, or what’s cause, what’s the pressure? What’s the thorn in their foot that’s causing them to be mean to everybody else around them»? And you look past the behavior and look at the pain and try to understand.
Now, the more you understand somebody’s background, the more grace you’re going to show them. The people who you find it most difficult to deal with, the people who irritate you the most, are people at the office who are obnoxious and you know nothing about their background, so you don’t count them any slack. You don’t know that maybe they were molested. You don’t know that maybe they were orphaned, or you don’t know that maybe they’ve gone through three marriages and the husband walked out on them, you know, three times. You don’t know their story and so you’re not cutting 'em any slack, you’re not showing 'em any grace.
Here’s what the Bible says. Proverbs 19:11, «A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense». You’re going to get offended, why? Because your wisdom gives you patience. When you understand somebody’s background, you understand the current stress, it’s easier to show grace, that gives you patience and then you overlook the offense. What I’m talking about here is real love. In fact, the Bible says, refusing to be offended by other people is actually an act of mature love. It shows you how much love you’ve got in your heart. The more love you have in your heart, the harder it is to offend you on a personal basis. The less love, the more insecure you feel, the easier it is to offend you.
Now, the Bible says in Proverbs 10:12, «Love overlooks the wrongs that others do. Love overlooks the wrongs that others do». The more filled I am with love, the less I’m going to be upset with you when you are demanding or demeaning or disapproving or whatever. So this is the first step, I must choose to refuse. I choose to refuse to be offended, and I don’t take it personal. I don’t take it personal. Pastor Tom’s going to come and talk about the next two steps.
Pastor Tom: Number two, you don’t wait for an apology before you forgive them. You don’t wait for an apology to forgive them. I think many of us, we’ve got some crazymaker in our life who has done some crazy hurtful thing to us, or maybe even more importantly, to somebody that we love. And in our minds we think, «Well, I know the Christian thing to do is to forgive, and so I will, I will forgive them as soon as they give me an apology, the right kind of apology, then I will forgive them». The problem with that is you’re still holding on to the hurt. The problem with that is, in fact, the truth of it is, they may never ask you for forgiveness. They may never say, «I’m sorry,» because they’re a crazymaker. They don’t get it, and because they don’t get it, they may not even realize what they’ve done and so you end up stewing over something, holding resentment over something that they’ve long ago forgotten, and it’s eating you up inside.
Never hold on to a hurt, because resentment tears you up. Resentment, they don’t even know about it. It’s not hurting them, it’s hurting you. Resentment is like you drinking poison, hoping it’s gonna kill them. It doesn’t work. It never will work. So you just say, «Even before anything else happens, I’m going to decide right now. I’m not going to wait for this to happen or that to happen. I’m going to decide right here, right now, maybe even tonight, I’m going to forgive them. I’m going to forgive them».
Question, is it smart to ignore God’s directions? No, it’s a dumb thing to do, because God gave us directions knowing who we are. He made us, he created us, and God gave us directions loving who we are. He wants to make of our lives the best that he can. So if I ignore his directions, it’s always a dumb thing to do. It’s always an illogical, irrational thing to do. It always creates self-inflicted pain. That person who hurts you, they are facing that because of their sin against you. So why should you double that up by you ignoring God’s directions about forgiving, about letting it go? You put it into God’s hands.
Forgiving doesn’t mean you forget that it ever happened, you’re still going to remember. It means you put it in his hands and you stop holding on to the resentment, and you also realize that some of those hurts that you and I are holding resentments over, there are many times when people act foolishly, I’ve done this towards others and you have to if you’re honest about it, we act foolishly towards other people and we don’t even realize what we’ve done. So you’re holding the resentment and they have no idea they’re even supposed to ask for forgiveness. Jesus said this even in the most extreme of circumstances.
Look at this next verse in the outline, Luke 23:34, he’s hanging on the cross, and Jesus says, «Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know what they’re doing». Not everyone who is a crazymaker in your life, who bugs you or even hurts you, realizes what they’re doing. Oftentimes they’re responding to their own hidden pain and they don’t know that they’re hurting all these people around them. So what do you do? Well, when I have a hard time forgiving a crazymaker, and I think we all struggle with this sometimes. We all struggle with forgiving. When I have a hard time, I remember what a hard time I gave God in forgiving me and not accepting his forgiveness.
And I remember the great gift of his forgiveness. I remember a verse like the next one in your outline. Colossians 3:13 says, «You must make allowance for each other’s faults and forgive the person who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others». Basically it means, cut people some slack. You want people to cut you some slack, you cut them some slack. Jesus said, «Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy». I want God’s blessing in my life, in your life. And one of the ways that you receive that is by being merciful, and it also keeps you from being torn up by resentment. So you don’t wait for an apology to forgive them, number two. And then number three, and as Rick said earlier, it gets harder and harder as we go along.
Number three is refuse to gossip about them. This one’s tough with crazymakers. You refuse to gossip about them, because, let’s just admit it, when there’s some crazymaker in your life, and they’ve done the craziest thing and they’ve done it again, it is almost impossible not to get in the car, pull out the cell phone, immediately call somebody, «You won’t believe what they just did. I got to tell you». In fact, you’re texting as they’re doing it. «Let me, they’re doing it right now. They’re doing this to me». That’s what we do with crazymakers. We want to tell somebody else. We want affirmation from somebody else. It’s the most difficult thing in the world to not let go of it, to not say… or to let go of it. And instead we want to say, «You won’t believe what he just did. You won’t believe what she just did». It may feel good, it does feel good. Let’s admit it when we say that, but it’s unloving. And the Bible says love even your enemies.
Proverbs 17:9 says, «Disregarding other people’s faults preserves love; but gossiping about them separates close friends». And what’s gossip? One definition is gossip is sharing information with somebody who’s not a part of the solution or a part of the problem. They don’t have nothing to do with it, but you bring them into it so you can feel better about yourself, let’s just be honest about it. Gossip in its essence is a form of retaliation. You’re getting back at them without talking about them or talking to them, but instead you’re talking about them behind their back, and it is incredibly destructive. Gossip is incredibly destructive to churches, is incredibly destructive to families, it’s incredibly destructive to businesses, it’s destructive to your life. It tears you up. It separates the closest of friends.
1 Peter 3:9 says, «Do not do wrong to repay a wrong, and do not insult to repay an insult. But repay with a blessing, because you yourselves were called to do this so that you might receive a blessing». That’s the point. You can gossip and miss out on God’s blessing, but instead if you choose not to, look what happens. By choosing not to gossip, not only do you get the conversation in the right positive way in your life, but you receive God’s blessing in your life. I want you to receive God’s blessing in your life. And one of the ways we do that is by saying no to gossip.
Pastor Rick: Step number four is I refused to play their game. After I’ve done these other things, I refuse to play their game. You see, crazymakers love to argue and they love to debate, because they love to get your attention. Now, if you fall for this trap, you’re going to start thinking, «If I could just clearly, logically explain to them what they’re doing, then the light would come on in their mind and they would realize how self destructive and how inappropriate their behavior, or what they’re saying is. And if I could just reason with them, then they will say, 'Well, yes, thank you for helping me see that. Thank you so very, very much.'»
But here’s the point: crazymakers don’t come to their position through reason, so you can’t reason them out of it. It doesn’t work. You can’t talk people out of a behavior they didn’t talk themselves into. They got into that behavior because of an emotion, not because of logic. It’s reasoned, motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning means I come up with a reason for doing something because I feel this way, and so I need a reason to do it. The motivation actually comes from the feeling, not from the reasoning. And what I’ve discovered is, is that people are going to either like you or not like you. And if they don’t like you, you can’t make them like you. And if they want to think a certain way, they’re going to think that way. And all of the logic in the world isn’t going to change their mind.
In fact, if somebody has a motivated reasoning for something, then what’s going to happen is when you show them how they’re wrong, they just get mad at you. Show them the facts, «You got the facts wrong,» you get them the facts, you think that’s going to change them? Of course it’s not going to change them. It wasn’t the facts that caused them to make that decision anyway. They were making the decision based on emotion. But you refused to play their game.
Now, there are lots of examples of this in the Bible that shows us how not to do this, but the master of it was Jesus Christ himself. Jesus did not play games with people. There were crazymakers in Jesus’s life, they were called the Pharisees. They were the religious authorities of those days, and they hated Jesus. And they had motivated reasoning, so they’re always trying to trap him. They’re always trying to get him to say the wrong thing. They’re always trying to get him to make a mistake. They’re always questioning, always probing, always playing games with Jesus, mind games. Jesus simply wouldn’t play their games.
Let me give you an example. Here on your outline in Matthew chapter 22, verse 18 and 19. «The Pharisees plotted a way to trap Jesus into saying something damaging,» sounds like some reporters I know. «Jesus knew they were up to no good. And he said, 'Why are you playing these games with me? Why are you trying to trap me? '» See, Jesus wouldn’t even fall for it. He would not be pulled into their crazy-making games. He wouldn’t be drawn into an argument that he knew was going to go nowhere.