Why people without self control try to control you

There’s a tremendous difference between feeling powerful and actually being powerful, for example, some people childishly confuse cutting down or cutting-off others with having power.  Real power is unrelated to inhibiting others.  How so? 

Authentic power minimally includes, letting your guard down, empowering others & building them up, blessing them, and giving them what they couldn’t achieve on their own.  Yet, true power incorporates more than exhibiting vulnerability or edifying others.

So, what is power?  Power is controlling yourself, not others.  

Who are truly powerful people?  Not tyrants, but folks who practice self-control, as we read in Prov 16:32, “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”

Powerful people are reserved, humble, grateful, as well as confident, and they do not believe that anyone owes them anything.  Powerless people with their fragile egos are rash, arrogant, rarely satisfied, and lacking in confidence they always feel slighted by the world.   

At the negotiating table of life it is the unconfident ones who resort to threats, steamrolling you by shunning & shaming you, not the confident people.  Weak people seek to discourage and dominate while the strong prefer to encourage and liberate.  In our desperation to feel more powerful we try harder to control others around us by withholding our affections, our compliments, even access to our very selves, but again, these pitiful efforts aren’t actual power.  

The more we feel the need to constrain others, the greater the depth of our own felt-weakness is magnified.  The weaker we feel, the stronger our struggle to appear powerful becomes -- think of bullies and how they suppress others out of a sense of ineptness, frailty, and self-loathing.  

Sadly, our culture encourages us to disregard self-control, instead to overeat, overspend, overextend, over-do-it and to ignore the consequences.  Consider the fallout resulting from the counterfeit feeling of power that high interest credit cards entice us with, and then the predatory title-loan institutions lurking in the shadows waiting to exploit those already buried in debt.  These corollary disastrous financial examples often pale in comparison to the pain we inflict on each other.

Weak people lash out at those who anger them or stand in their way while powerful people try to help people -- that’s the main outward/visible difference between weak and powerful people.  And, our actual strength or lack thereof comes down to embracing self-control.  Therefore, the most important people-skill we can instill in our children is exhibiting self-control, and as adults it might be our most important continuing endeavor as well.  

Rewriting history doesn’t really change the past, and moving the field goal when others are trying to accommodate your needs doesn’t really improve any relationship.  Perhaps the more we want to change others only amplifies how poorly we fail to personally change ourselves.  In the end, ignoring our own need for greater self-control hurts us more than we’d like to admit.  

What if Christians could quit fighting each other?

 

Thankfully not all churches are territorial, yet the devil is, I imagine, awfully delighted whenever we allow our doctrinal differences to divide us.  Does doctrine matter? Absolutely, but just think of what we could accomplish for God if we looked past the pride and smugness of those Bible believing brethren down the pew or down the road who disregard our perfect interpretation of the Bible and what if we chose to cooperate instead of debate?

Like leftovers forgotten deep in the back of the fridge, somehow we’ve overlooked this: As followers of Jesus we are only Christians, but we are not the only Christians.  Instead, to “prove” our authenticity what we’ve settled for is bickering about form over function, perpetuated infighting by pitting traditional & contemporary folks against each other over worship styles, arguing over which is the authorized translation of the Bible, fighting over whether God finished creation in 6 literal days and rested on the 7th or took millions of years, squabbling over women’s roles, quarreling about the role of the Holy Spirit, clashing over the name over the door, and of course locking horns over our favorite hobbyhorse theological preferences like our battle-royales concerning pre-post-amillinalism/endtimes.  

Instead of contending for the faith, we’ve become contentious about the faith.  Not so with Jesus, He said there was one way the world could spot an authentic Christian if they ever chanced upon one, “[34] A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. [35] By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35 ESV)

But shouldn’t we correct them for their own good?  “[38] John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” [39] But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. [40] For the one who is not against us is for us.” (Mark 9:38-40)

In what amounts to pettifogging, our antagonistic approach is counterproductive — we’re losing the lost and we are not winning the won with our argumentative, arrogant, judgmental attitudes and our habit of labeling & insulting each other.  Like an undertaker in a spaghetti Western sizing-up the doomed gunfighter with his cloth tape measure as the gunslinger saunters out the Saloon’s swinging doors, Americans are unsuspectingly passing through the same portal as Europe, once a stronghold of faith but now they are nearly completely secular.  

While not all, many have traded in the Kingdom of Christ for conflict and chaos -- you can either row the boat or rock the boat, but you can’t do both at the same time.  Rodney King famously asked after the 1991 race riots, “Can’t we all get along…?” Well, what if we as believers could…, just get along? 

Originally published in the Kingsport Timesnews 8/16/25

Credibility: What what you say says about you

In what amounts to same amount of talent as an armchair quarterback, social media is overrun with complainers who add their .02 cents without ever producing valuable thoughts or contributing to the greater good.  It is interesting to me how many people on social media think their comments are more important than the content they comment on.  People complain and criticize and correct far more often than they actually share quality content all on their own, and completely lacking originality they apparently think their opinions are very profound.  

Lacking their own platform, these cyber bullies are acting like a parasite commenting on your posts.  Like a heckler who lacks the ability to come up with their own one-liners they try to interrupt your performance.  

Actually, if you want to be taken credible, create your own content.   Anyone can do a "drive by shooting" of other people's thoughts or content, the truly brave person though puts pencil to paper and with a touch of vulnerability opens themselves up for the nitpickers and naysayers of the world.  

Critical people are self-deceived, they think they are cleaver and witty, but really they are sad pitiful miserable people.  They leave one star reviews on business pages without ever taking the risk of starting their own business, they are faultfinders who never are satisfied but never actually do anything that can be analyzed, and most likely are jealous or envious of the people they attack from behind the safety of their smart phones.  

It's funny and sad how brave people are when they hide behind their keyboards and take potshots at the people who actually are creative and productive.  Like the old saying about turning your prized oxen into bullion cubes, most critical people lack the ability to generate well thought out ideas, so they settle for inaction and cowardly complaining about your content while they pedal their mineral pyrite hoping you think their ideas ideas are pure gold.