BOLD LOVE
Session 6
LOVING A FOOL
Transcription
In our last session together, we dealt with evil, talked a little about what it meant for Buck to deal with his father, Charlie. In this session, we will be looking at what it means to deal with a fool. There is a lot of difference between someone who is evil and someone who is a fool.
A fool at some very core level has more capacity and desire for relationship. It doesn’t mean that the fool doesn’t do terrible harm but there is more capacity to enter into relationship and to deal with the affront to relationship. There is less delight in doing damage.
As you deal with an evil individual, what is required is siege warfare that surrounds them and holds them in and holds them accountable and will not allow them to escape until they have surrendered. With regards to a fool, I think we can use the phrase guerilla warfare. There’s a sense in which the individual requires a certain level of a "hit and run" activity, where the individual who is loving them hides in the forest, waits for the judicious and opportune moment to interact, hits with what needs to be said, and then holds back in because almost all fools will react with anger and rage for a period of time until they cool down. And therefore, it requires a certain degree of wisdom to know when to bring the data, how to avoid the direct goring that would occur because the bull will rush you with the red you’re wearing. It will attempt to destroy you at least for a period of time. We’re going to begin to look at what a fool is, and then how to deal with a fool, looking primarily at Belinda, Buck’s mother.
What is a fool? Well, again three major classifications.
Diminishment of Empathy
The first is this, with regard to empathy (if you recall) with the evil individual; it was a profound flight and absence. But with a fool, what you have is a diminishment of empathy. Even though the fool feels pain, joy, generally speaking, all negative emotions are turned into anger. When a fool feels, they don’t feel fear. What they feel is anger. When they feel hurt, they don’t feel hurt. They may momentarily, but somehow it gets transformed into rage. And so there’s a flight from empathy, a flight from hurt from others, or their own hurt into anger.
What you can presume about a person who is a fool is that their anger will be impulsive. It will come out of the blue. What you can presume as well is that it will be repetitive. It will come back in the same environment time and time again. You need to underscore that point because that will be a very important point when we come back to talk about how to deal with a fool. At least with a fool, you know their anger is going to be impulsive, it’s going to be full of rage but it is repetitive. So you know you can count on it to plan your interaction, that is to sneak out of the woods, to bring to bare truth, and then to pull back in a very honorable line of removal from the conflict.
Intimidation by putting blame on someone else.
The second major point is that the fool is willing to be exposed but they are far more oriented to trying to have control over you by trying to intimidate you. They move back into a position of somehow blowing up and blaming you. Fools are excellent in somehow putting the blame on you even though in one sense, it’s illogical how it came to that point. The fool has the capacity to blame you.
Sometime ago, I left my keys in a hotel room, flew back to the city where I was to pick up the car, got my luggage, began looking around for my keys, checked my pockets, could not find them, checked my briefcase, could not find them. Eventually I realized I left my keys in the hotel room. So I called my wife, that was about 9:15 at night. I called her and I said to her, "Becky, I’m so sorry but I left my keys in the hotel room." Well, within a very short period of time, her response was, "It’s 9:15, the kids are in bed, what did you hope I would do with that fact?
Her response was not what I wanted to hear. And within seconds I began to say to her, "I want nothing. I’ll say in the city until I make enough money to buy a new car and then I’ll come home." That didn’t seem to impress her so her response at that point was, "All I am asking is, do you want me to pick you up or do you want someone else to pick you up?"
Well, I was enraged and the anger was flowing freely and so I eventually got to the point (though it’s utterly illogical) of blaming her for having left my keys in the hotel room. Her response at that point was, "Honey, I love you but I am unwilling to bear your rage at this point." The core of it really means to deal with a person who is in a rage (who is a fool at that point in time) to not only draw the line but to then back away when they begin to spout even more. What she did was so very loving. She hung the phone on me so she didn’t have to hear the tirade that would come at that point in time.
Concern for Quick Relief
A third major qualification of a fool is an individual who somehow finds satisfaction for their own emptiness in an indulgence in pleasurable activities that borders on some form of addiction. People who over-eat, people who drink too much, people who are compulsively co-dependent, people who are engaged in relationship in such a way where they find quick relief for the emptiness inside evidences a hatred of discipline.
What is very true about a fool is they hate wisdom and hate discipline and hate reality so that they back away to find some relief elsewhere. And when you have an individual who is angry, who gets enraged quickly, who shames other people and finds pleasure through impulsive activity, you are really dealing biblically with a category of a fool.
What you’re about to see is a vignette. It gives you a bit of a feel of those qualities in the character of Belinda.
VIGNETTE
I love the phrase, "And it’s going to take time." It really is. I hope you have a sense of the incredible amount of conflict that one must enter into if you’re going to deal with a fool. You see some elements of a fool. You see the arrogance in the beginning of the phone call in terms of the catty "know-it-allism". You see a mood of what I’m doing is so impressive and nobody else could be on the same level. And Terry, you are just a junior member."
That level of arrogance then boils over into anger and shaming the moment she is challenged. You can understand, probably very well, why most people will choose to say, "I’m out of here! I’m going to withdraw!" You see occasional points where Buck tries to get into the battle but because he doesn’t have much of a heart for his mom, it’s kind of a fruitless battle where it’s more attacking her rather than drawing forth the realities of what must be faced.
The question is, "What is involved in loving a woman like Belinda, loving a fool?" Well, there are four things we are going to underscore. The first is this, that somehow as you choose to love a fool, you must:
The fool needs to see the impact he or she is having on other people. The one point where Belinda says, "I think you are a very disturbed young man." Buck kind of wallows in his angry self-pity and it draws forth the response of Belinda of, "Are you trying to make me feel guilty?" Again, these are very clear interactions of a fool.
But what is he to do at that point in time? When Belinda says, "I think you’re a very disturbed young man. I don’t know what I could have done better, but just wish that somehow you were a different human being."
Well, that’s a great time for Buck to have looked at his mother in the eye and say, "Mom, I am so surprised to hear you acknowledge regret and somehow a mistake on your part. Mom, I haven’t heard you quite yet put to words what you regret and where you think you made an error, but I would love to hear more."
One is quite knowingly drawing forth data from her the fact that she has failed. Now is she saying that she failed? Not at all. But it is using the momentum of her comment to get to the heart of what she ought to face. If I can put it as a contrast, it’s the difference between boxing, a force against force, which is the terrible error of most people in the midst of a conflict. They try and fight force with force rather than more of martial arts, which has the promise of using the momentum of another person to your advantage.
Remember, the prerequisite, and that is to have a heart that’s wise, but also a heart that’s innocent. "As wise as a serpent but as innocent as a dove." If that were the heart that Buck had, he would look for opportunities, shall we say, to pull the rug from under her.
She mentioned regret, and she mentioned something of a mistake. What a brilliant point that would have been to pull her off the lie and then to follow it up with curiosity. God shows, shall we say, such a holy, wise curiosity, as he undermines people who have sinned.
As you recall in the Bible, what was the first question ever asked? It was the question to Adam. The question that God asked him was, "Where are you?" as if an omniscient God of the universe was fooled by Adam’s clever hiding place. I don’t think so. I think what he was doing was exposing the fact that Adam was hiding and underneath his hiding was his fury at God and his fury at Eve. And so part of the first part of interacting with a fool is to expose with wisdom, with a cleverness that follows up with curiosity.
The second major part of interacting with a fool is to ..
This is so that the fool is aware, not only of what they’re doing, but aware of the freedom they have to continue being a fool, but that there are consequences that will come.
I know it would have been very fair for Buck to say at some point to his mom, "Mom, are you aware of how angry you sound right now? Are you aware of how demeaning you have become? Mom, if you want to be mean because somehow you feel such anger at me or at Dad or someone else, it’s really your choice. But let me tell you, there’s no point to continue interacting with that fury because you don’t want to really talk, or at least that’s what’s apparent." That would open the door to holding consequences but giving the fool freedom.
The third gift that you can give is to:
And hear the next phrase without anger on your part or without drama. Fools have an incredible capacity to draw forth on your part defensiveness or a power struggle. We need to draw the lines of consequences with a certain calm demeanor of, "Mom, this is your choice. That’s the way you want to go, that’s the way we’ll go." And then simply backing out of the relationship that’s "retreating into the woods" and to let the fool have a chance to deal with the issues that have been brought forth. Then when they calmed down, coming back.
It is saying, "Mom, what would you like me to do when you are angry? When you begin to demean me or my wife, when you begin to shame, to use rage to intimidate? How would you like for me to deal with you because that’s very important to me to have a sense of what’s happening inside you? I know there’s more inside of you. And that’s what I want to deal with, Mom, when we do have a chance to interact."
All that is "opening the door". There are 2 basic points: 1.)Closing down the damage by holding forth what they’re doing, exposing, and 2.) bringing consequences.
And then making it clear you’re aware that there’s more inside of them and you’re willing to get to that at some point.
That’s what’s involved in loving a fool. It’s very easy as you interact with a fool to lose hope. It’s very easy to lose a sense of real purpose because of their power. One must know that fools can change! I would look at my own life and say I was a classic fool in many ways. When I say I’m a recovering or a repentant fool today, I sure am to this day.
I can’t believe what I put my wife through, my family through. But my children have learned to interact with me. My daughter, the other day, as we were interacting over a problem, looked at me and said, "Are you unfair, or are you just that stupid?" That’s powerful language for 12-year-old girl to speak to her father. We normally think of that as disrespectful, in one sense, unconscionable for a child to speak. But my children have learned that there are times when my rage, my anger somehow blocks the man I want to be. And I really believe I have taught my children, I have taught my wife, I have taught my friends, that there’s a heart within me that wants to change. And with that there are times where the interactions have to be "hard" for me to see the effect I am having on them.
If you are a recovering or a repentant fool, do you give people the opportunity to speak that directly to you? And to have that kind of impact. To see the effect that you are having on other people. If you don’t, you’ve lost the opportunity we spoke of many weeks ago in terms of being silenced by your own sin and being surprised by the response of those who do love you. It’s possible to change! It requires enormous courage and enormous risk. It opens the door to the potential of a heart that is overwhelmed by the gospel.
In our next session and our last, we will be looking at the question, "What does it mean to love a Simpleton?"