many that a minister is not supposed to get angry, or even speak firmly, he did so less emphatically than did Canda. That was a maneuver Durwin and Canda had long ago learned in the ministry. They couldn’t blame a minister for what his wife did or said. So Canda performed the task of firm assertion. Durwin reaffirmed her simply by saying calmly, while looking him straight in the face, ‘we know what will make us feel safe.’
“There was no real relenting in the man’s mind. In hostility he snapped, ‘okay, I’ll install them where you say. You can have your way.’ He said it as though Durwin and Canda were people who wanted their own way all the time. He installed the smoke detectors near but not exactly where they suggested. He did the work hastily, and without finding a place where the screws would go into something solid. Consequently, before long one of them fell from the ceiling, and Durwin and Canda had to reinstall it themselves and patch needless holes in the ceiling.
“One of the damaging results of this incident was that almost the total administration of the church took up the position that the Lawtons were demanding type spendthrifts who would have to be watched carefully. This impeded Durwin’s ministry among them greatly thereafter. The Lawton’s, both of them, had always been thrifty over how church money was spent, just as they were over their own. The defamation of the Lawtons’ characters was continuing.”
Brett spoke in tones revealing his difficulty in fathoming such a personality. “You say, Collin, that this man was a member of a fire company?”
“Yes that is so,” reaffirmed Collin.
“Then,” said Brett, “he would certainly know the value of smoke detectors, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Collin again.
“Well,” said Brett, “the man’s pride was beyond all his reasoning powers. First he tried to deny the need for smoke detectors. Then he tried to install them in ineffective places. He was playing around with the Lawtons’ lives. Then as important as it was he installed them carelessly so that the Lawton’s had to do the job over. That kind of pride surely is ill founded, isn’t it?”
“Grossly, I would say,” replied Collin with a smile of approval for Brett’s observations. “Grossly and more.”
“And there is more,” came in Gilda. “That man couldn’t bring himself to admit a little oversight like smoke detectors, a minor thing really. His silly pride was in the way all right, so much so that life or death didn’t matter. Moreover, the Lawtons’ characters were damaged and their ministry impeded by the labels of ‘demanding and spendthrifts’. They put the Lawtons down, or tried to, in order to gain a sense of superiority over them; a sense of superiority based not on performance or the like, but on pride alone, hollow, empty, undisciplined pride, based on nothing except the putting of someone else beneath them to make themselves feel good.”
“That’s it,” replied Collin, “that’s the way these people operate. They gain their false sense of superiority by belittling others around them whom they perceive to be a cut above them. They can’t accept that they are not the most superior ones even though they may be very good. They make themselves feel superior in their own minds by finding reasons, valid or otherwise, to bring down the better people like the Lawtons. They cannot admit, even to themselves, that they are bringing them down because of their envy of them and because of their damaged pride. So they search for derogatory reasons to bring them down.
“In this case, the Lawtons were labeled spendthrifts in order to give the belittlers an excuse and to cover up the real reason for their bringing them down. If they can’t find any excuses, they invent them, or twist some of the good characteristics of people like the Lawtons into bad characteristics. Also nobody is perfect, so they pick little holes in their victim’s weaker areas. But worse still, they take every outstandingly good point about a person and twist it into something derogatory as I shall illustrate later. The better the person is, the more they will victimize him.”
Collin looked at Gilda as he continued, “There is even more here than silly wounded pride, Gilda. Pride that has to put down and/or destroy another person is also riddled with envy and often results in hostility in various ways and to varying degrees.”
Collin then looked around at the group. “I am going to quote two scholars to you now,” he said with a grin. “I hope it is safe to do so in this group!”
“Careful,” quipped Leo, “we may get perturbed.” Collin smiled, “I’ll take my chances with you people,” then continued, “the renowned biblical scholar, William Barclay, in his Bible commentary, says of envy:
‘There is a good and a bad envy. There is the envy which reveals to a man his own weakness and inadequacy, and which makes him eager to copy and to rise to some greater example. And there is the envy which is essentially a grudging thing. It looks at a fine person, and is not so much moved to aspire to that fineness, as to resent that the other person is fine. It is the most warped and twisted of human emotions.’ (The Daily Study Bible, William Barclay - THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS. Page 28).
Collin then commented, “as we go on with our stories, we will see how the resentment to a fine person, mentioned by Barclay, issues in hostility, strife and rivalry. Barclay defined strife this way:
‘The meaning is the contention which is born of envy, ambition, the desire for prestige, and place, and office and prominence. It comes from the heart in which there is jealousy. If a [person] man is cleansed of jealousy he has gone far to being cleansed of all that arouses contention and strife.’ (Ibid).
Collin paused briefly, and spoke again, “Barclay adds this terrific sentence that needs to be drilled into the mind of every belittler:
‘It is a God given gift to be able to take as much pleasure in the successes of others as in one’s own.’ (Ibid).
Collin added emphatically, “Therein lies the big problem of belittlers. They scorn rather than take pleasure in the successes of others; more especially the successes of fine people of whom they are envious. I’ll just repeat that again:
‘It is a God given gift to be able to take as much pleasure in the successes of others as in one’s own.’ (Ibid).
Collin continued. “Barclay makes another interesting comment which I quoted earlier and which needs emphasis because it is so adaptable to our cause. He is commenting on the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to ‘live at peace with all [people].’ But, says Barclay, Paul points out that there are two biblical qualifications for living at peace with all people, (a) ‘if it be possible,’ and (b) ‘as far as you can.’ Barclay then adds,
‘Paul knew very well that it is easier for some to live at peace than it is for others. He knew that one [person] can be compelled to control as much temper in an hour as another [person] in a lifetime. (The Daily Study Bible, William Barclay, THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS, page 184).
Collin added his own comments, “We can apply this passage or rule to the circumstances of people like you and I in our interaction with belittlers. We have to at times, and quite often, put up with more from belittlers with their undisciplined pride, envy, jealousy and strife, in an hour than some people do in a lifetime. With others, it may well indeed be a very occasional occurrence. With us it becomes a way of life, almost continuous, always annoying, stressful and cruel.
“So let no psychiatrist, therapist, clergy person, supervisor, or other person tell you that you are just oversensitive to the little annoyances of life. The people
