How To Avoid Disappointment

 by adam harbinson

I was part of an odd little religious group for just over ten years; few there were who escaped its clutches without being seriously harmed. The core of the problem was the belief that Christian leaders are God’s deputies in the lives of the faithful. Consequently, ordinary people had unreasonable demands placed on them.

As I began to put my life back together again I made the decision that never again would I have unreasonable expectations of people; a good general principle perhaps, but one that’s not easy to stick to. The problem is the difficulty in deciding what is and what is not unreasonable.

On the one hand you could decide to expect nothing from people, in which case you become cynical and unwilling to trust anyone, but the other extreme is to expect too much from people. Expectations then become demands, and demands lead to the need to control others because you’re convinced your demands are just and fair. That’s when real damage is done, for when we make demands of people, when we expect them to follow our rules, inevitably we’ll end up disappointed, angry and stressed.

For example, you want your teenage son to keep his hair short, neat and clean, but junior wants to be one of the lads, part of which requires him to give the appearance that he rejects his parent’s values, and so his hair grows long, greasy and untidy.

‘Do you always have to be disobedient and rebellious?’ you cry, but he doesn’t see it like that and you fall out. An argument erupts and things are dredged up from the past and hurled in both directions to cause maximum impact. And what was it all about? Long hair? Is that really more important than the parent/son relationship? Will his long hair do him permanent damage? No; the problem is he won’t conform to your model. But is that a major problem?

Of course the dust settles and sorrys are said, but harsh words leave scars, and scars are little pieces of us that have become insensitive, impervious to pain, cold and hard.

I once knew a man whose marriage had become an empty shell. How did it come to be like that?

‘My wife always compared me to others,’ he said. “Why can’t you stop smoking like Jimmy did? Why aren’t you like Mary’s husband; a good steady job, the promise of a pension?” She was so hurtful,’ he said, ‘that each time we had a row I shut her out of another room in my life, and in the end we had nothing in common; nothing more to talk about.’

Why? Because her expectations had become demands, he refused to conform, he was a disappointment, and the marriage died.

That’s the problem with religion, and it’s why religious homes can be violent places. Parents feel they should protect their children, they ‘know best’ and they act out of frustration, sometimes taking; ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ to the borders of brutality – even beyond. But Jesus demonstrated true Christianity that’s non-judgemental, affirming, no attempt to control people. The rich young ruler asked him, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ and Jesus told him, but even though Jesus cared very much for the young man, he respected his choice when ‘he went away sorrowful’.

God is never disappointed with us; because he places no demands on us, rather, when we get it wrong and end up in a sheugh, he draws alongside us, rolls up his sleeves and says, ‘Now, let’s see how we can get you out of this mess.’