Altar Call -- Opelika-Auburn News
Walter Albritton
November 26, 2000
Difficult people are everywhere. But that is really good news. It means that they are
scattered; they don’t all live in the same town.
Perhaps our Creator planned it this way, so that each of us must learn how to deal with
troublesome people. In so doing we learn how to be patient, with others and with ourselves.
It might actually be boring if every person we met was congenial.
Some people are like sandpaper. God uses them to smooth off the rough edges in our
personalities. Such buffing hurts but makes us better people in the long run. Not getting our
way about everything helps us mature. Good relationships require "give and take" for goodwill
to exist.
A pastor friend described his church like this: "It is the home of 3,000 warm and wonderful
people and 2 or 3 grouches." No doubt he was being generous in assuming there were so few
grouches among 3,000 people.
But here again the grouches are spread around; they do not all belong to the same church. Most
of us will admit that we have found a few in every church to which we have belonged.
Some people are proud of their grouchy spirit. They earned it by being hard to get along with
and they work hard to maintain their reputation. They are intentionally disagreeable and enjoy
being a fly in the soup of life. One man told me, "As long as I am on the board of this church,
there will never be a unanimous vote on anything." He was true to his word.
What is the secret to dealing with difficult people? A good place to begin is to examine our
own attitudes and behavior. Instead of pointing a finger at somebody else, we need to ask
ourselves, "Am I a difficult person to my friends and associates?"
We may need to admit that sometimes we are cantankerous ourselves, and willing
to make life difficult for others. Such self-examination is, of course, extremely difficult,
for most of us have 20/20 vision when it comes to seeing the faults of others. We can easily
see "the speck" in our brother’s eye but fail to see "the log" in our own.
The first step, then, toward dealing successfully with difficult people is to admit
that sometimes we can be very annoying and offensive ourselves. Once we can admit that to
ourselves, we can find a way to be more patient and understanding with those persons we find so
disagreeable.
A helpful second step is to offer others more mercy than judgment. Harsh judgment of others
always makes matters worse, while gentle mercy may open the door to
a better relationship. Even if we are "right" in our assessment of another person’s
mistakes, we can never win another over through criticism. It only makes matters worse.
Finally, we can remember that we have not been sent into the world to
"straighten everyone out." Some people appear to believe that their mission in life is to
stand in judgment of the flaws of other people. Thus they make themselves, and everyone
around them, miserable.
Once we recuse ourselves from the judgment seat, we can look for ways to offer
the difficult person our understanding and friendship. Even if our offer is refused, the
rejection does not make us less of a person. Indeed it may even cause the difficult person
to realize that there is a better way to live.
Then when we put our head on a pillow at night we can sleep better knowing that
we did not allow the grouchy person to get under our skin and cause us to behave peevishly also.
It is a lifelong challenge but if we work at it, we can improve our ability to get
along peacefully with difficult people, and in the process become more fun to live with
ourselves. After all, there are no rewards at the end for having been obnoxious, rigid,
and inflexible. Life is meant for love.