蘑菇视频

Nov 22, 2019 By Tracey Gardone 4 min read

This article is the first in a two-part series titled Better Marriages and Parenting. The second will publish on Dec. 6.

We’ve all heard stories of parenting and marriages gone wrong. In some cases, there wasn’t even any good to begin with.

Parenting and marriage have the word “relationship” in common. They both speak of what should be a togetherness ideal. Both have the principle of “til death do us part.”

While there are many great examples of excellent parenting and marriages, proving themselves worthy of emulation, there has been an increase in unsuccessful, sometimes shocking, examples of parenting and marriages.

There are contributing factors in what makes up a bad parent, and a marriage partner. Reasons or excuses? There is a range mixture of things that manage relationships we learn or are influenced by.

Tragically, some people are abused as children and that behavior can be induced into their psyche, training that child to adopt that same behavior towards other relationships.

The abusive past may still manifest in some emotionally handicapped way. Maybe a person is going through a health trauma, personal loss, an extremely stressful period that negatively affects their relationships. These are mainly temporal situations. Once the health trauma is recovered from, the personal loss has been through the grieving process, and the stressful period winds down, the relational disturbances return to their conventional norm.

And while there is an open acknowledgment of a variety of influences and valid reasons, selfishness is the No. 1 reason for bad parenting and bad marriages.

In another article, I introduced the TEM principle (Time, Energy, Money), and I asked the question, “How much of our TEM do we apply to life?” This is the center self-examination question for relationships. This is the dividing test line as to whether we are selfish as a parent or spouse. How much of our TEM do we give, or hold back in these most important of relationships?

You may be wondering, should there not be a sensible concern for your own well-being? Is it wrong to think about things for you? We should have a healthy principled concern for our lives.

That is self-interest, not selfishness. Having a beneficial, productive concern for your well-being and your loved ones is part of a balanced life. There are lines to be drawn between what is selfish and what is self-interest. There are some distinctions that can be made and observed.

What consequences, fallout or collateral damage have we witnessed over people exercising selfishness? Even to one’s own detriment, which happens to be the opposite goal of most folk’s intentions.

Some scriptural thoughts on selfishness are as follows.

James 3:16 states, “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.”

Here, it is taught that disorder and every evil practice follows envy and selfish ambition. What goes along with selfish ambition or selfishness? Envy, pride, ego, greed.

And when these inferior qualities are introduced and promoted into someone’s sphere of influence, like relationships, it corrupts that person and the corresponding social network. Imagine competing selfish ambition and interests in a workplace, on a team or among siblings?

Gal 5:20 reveals that selfish ambition is included in a laundry list of items proving a sinful nature that is part of a forbidden lifestyle. Let’s not kid ourselves and pretend that we have never acted on selfish ambition. But incidents do not make a lifestyle. We all have moments or times when we exhibit wrong behavior and attitudes. But the Christian character expectation is that we turn from those moments and don’t let those moments become habits, which in turn mature into a lifestyle.

This would include not taking our relationships for granted.

Selfish ambition in those relationships would expose itself when we don’t consider the interests of our spouse or children along with or over ourselves. And then disorder will follow because we are not following God’s order, which is to give, but just the opposite, there is a withholding or a withholding back.

We don’t give, or release to our children or spouse the proper amount of our TEM, to the needs or interests of the “others.”

Read part two in Dec. 6th’s issue.