Rejection
Rejection and the fear of
rejection play a major part in the development of the character of
every human being.
Proverbs
15:13: "A joyful heart makes a
cheerful face, but when the heart is sad, the spirit is broken.
One of the products of rejection is a broken spirit.
Proverbs
17:22: "A joyful heart is good
medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones." A broken
spirit, brought about by rejection is capable of "drying up," or
taking away the desire for life.
Proverbs
18:14: The spirit of a man can
endure his sickness, but a broken spirit who can bear?" If the
desire for life has gone, there is no chance for healing to take
place.
The most powerful positive
force in the universe is the love of God. 1
John 4:8, 16: "The one who does not love does not know
God, for God is love. And we have come to know and have believed the
love which God has for us. God is love and the one who abides in love
abides in God, God abides in him, and he in God. " God is love;
therefore, love is God's most powerful force.
If love is the most
powerful positive force in creation, it follows that lack of love is
the most powerful negative force in creation.
Rejection is the denial of
love and acceptance in our lives. It is probably the most painful,
the most neglected, yet one of the most common emotional wounds from
which we suffer.
Some of the forms of
rejection are denial, refusal, and rebuff, slighting, shunning,
spurning, ignoring, neglecting, avoiding and disapproving. It becomes
obvious that rejection is not always physical. Nor is it always
recognizable.
God designed us in such a
way that we cannot function properly without love. Our survival in
life depends upon it. It is the one ingredient each of us needs in
order to grow, to flourish, and to become the people we need to be,
to fulfill our destiny in life. Love is to us as water and sunshine
is to a flower. It is essential to our growth. If we don't understand
that each of us needs to be loved, we walk on dangerous ground.
Because each of us needs it, we each desire it strongly. We
need to be loved and accepted.
God created us to
fellowship with Him, to worship Him, and to have a relationship with
Him. Love is the primary ingredient in that relationship. Love is
God's motive, and it should be our motive as well. Throughout the
Bible, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, God's love is
always evident. Whether we realize it or not, God loves us.
When we function in harmony
with God, His love for us generates within us an ability to love one
another. According to Jesus, the two greatest commandments are to
love God, and to love one another. Love is the fuel that makes us
function. It nourishes us and gives us meaning in life. Without love,
we develop serious problems. When we are denied the love and
attention we need, we experience internal affliction.
As we mature, especially as
we grow spiritually, most of us can handle rejection better than we
could when we were young children. We are similar to the palm tree in
that respect. If we plant a small palm tree, it needs a lot of water,
sun and fertilizer. It must have more attention while it is growing
than after it has grown to maturity. Once it has grown, it can
withstand the cold and the storms, but when it is young it cannot
handle the abuse. We are pretty much the same.
Many of us today react out
of the wounds of rejection we received early in our lives. We find
that we still can't handle rejection. This is because we were wounded
at an early age, and we have been reacting through those wounds ever
since.
Emotional wounds are very
painful. Nothing hurts quite like being rejected. When we are not
accepted, when we are disapproved or shunned, we experience emotional
pain. Once we have experienced rejection, we react by building walls.
We begin to lead a life that guards against the possibility of being
rejected again.
We can parallel our
reaction to the way we react when we hurt ourselves physically.
Everything we do revolves around that injury. For example, if we have
a sprained ankle, everything we do revolves around that sprained
ankle. We don't want to hurt it again and feel that pain once more.
This form of self-protection is a natural reaction to any kind of
physical injury.
Emotional wounds from
rejection affect us the same way. Every response in every
relationship revolves around our past emotional wounds in a way that
protects us from experiencing the hurts again. The result is that, as
a wounded person, we behave in a dysfunctional manner. We become
unstable in our attitudes and out of harmony in all our
relationships.
Most deep wounds of this
type take place during our childhood. Children often misinterpret
correction or lack of attention as rejection. It may not have been
intended as rejection, but that doesn't matter. If that is how we
perceived it, that is how we reacted to it.
Even today, many of us
cannot distinguish between correction and rejection. We take
correction as rejection, because that is the way we perceive it
Whether or not rejection actually exists doesn't matter. What matters
is that we think it does, and we react as if it is rejection.
We are wounded by what is
said, even though it may be constructive criticism. We may find
ourselves to be particularly sensitive in a rehabilitation program.
As someone corrects us, we may be devastated because we take it as
rejection.
If we have accepted this
wound of rejection into our lives it generates one of two things. The
first is a fear of further rejection. Once we are wounded, we recoil
at the prospect of being wounded again. For instance, if someone who
is an authority figure in our lives has wounded us through rejection,
our natural reaction is to fear authority and to guard ourselves when
we are around authority figures.
For example, our incorrect
concept of God almost always comes from the relationship we had with
an authority figure in our lives, such as our father or our church.
If we are not given the opportunity to break through that barrier, we
will carry that wrong concept throughout our lives.
The fear of additional hurt
causes us to put up defense mechanisms. We begin to ask, "Whom can I
trust? Will the one who caused me to suffer in the past hurt me
again? Will other persons also inflict wounds upon me?" We develop a
distrust of everyone's motives.
The word for such feeling
is paranoia. We feel that everyone is out to hurt us. We can't trust
anyone. The root behind paranoia is the fear of rejection. It is the
fear of not being accepted, not being a part, not being loved. The
paranoid person lives in torment. Paranoia is active within the
person 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He always reacts based upon
his paranoia.
The other path that occurs
is self-rejection. After we have accepted rejection in our lives for
an extended period of time, we begin to reject ourselves. We actually
believe we are unworthy and unacceptable by others. We are convinced
we don't fit in or measure up, that we are not a legitimate part of
society. This belief causes us to reject ourselves. Very often this
will manifest itself in our relationship with God.
Both the fear of rejection
and self-rejection control our behavior. They always generate
unhealthy fruit. Rejection is probably the most common and the most
severe problem human beings face. Everyone who enters a
rehabilitation program has experienced rejection in his life. Some
have been wounded over and over again. This eventually produces
self-rejection.
The more rejection we
receive, the more rejected we feel, and the more apt we are to
believe we deserve to be rejected. We begin to ask ourselves what it
is about us that repels others. Rejection from a loved one will make
us think we are unacceptable or unqualified or unworthy. We can
handle being spurned by someone we don't know, but when we receive
rejection from someone we love, the knife goes deep. This helps
convince us we are unacceptable failures.
A situation of this type
occurs often in father /son relationships. If we see ourselves as
failures we try desperately to change. We try to become someone
acceptable, someone other than who we really are. We think if we were
different, or even if we were someone else, we would be loved and
accepted.
After concluding that the
key to enjoying acceptance by others is to become different from our
actual selves, we seek to change our personality and become someone
different, so we can have the love and acceptance we need. We may
begin to pattern ourselves after a fantasy of our own mind.
We may try to pattern
ourselves after someone we have read about in a book, or have seen on
television. We will certainly pattern ourselves after someone whom we
have observed as being loved by others. Through this process, we try
to reconnect a broken relationship.
Without exception, everyone
attempts to recover the peace, love, affirmation, confirmation and
acceptance that were lost in a broken relationship.
Some characteristics of
the fear of rejection are as follows:
ANGER:
We may be angry with
ourselves, at other people, or at God. Anger always follows closely
behind fear. We can become very dependent upon anger, because it
becomes an excellent barrier to protect us from others
HARDNESS.
This is another defense
mechanism that keeps people away.
BITTERNESS:
About the situation or
condition in which we were wounded. Anger, left unattended, will
eventually generate a root of bitterness.
REBELLION:
An outward expression
caused by an inner feeling of rejection.
Before World War II,
mothers stayed home with their children. During the war, the economy
picked up and the standard of living improved. Eventually, the
standard of living became much higher, with the addition of
television sets and other material things. Then the economy softened.
Families discovered that one person could not earn enough money to
maintain the new standard of living.
Because of this, mothers
left their homes to seek employment to help maintain the standard of
living. As a result, the children came home from school to an empty
house. This was unnatural to them, so they felt rejected. They felt
they were not important. The parents did not intend this to be
rejection, but many of the children took it that way.
Those who grew up under
those circumstances reacted to the rejection. They became rebellious.
Those were the days that spawned the hippie era. It became an age of
rebellion. Then, out of that rebellious generation came a generation
that became susceptible to addiction. The result is that today there
are more single parent homes than in any other time in history.
There are more absentee
fathers than any other time in history. The current generation is
creating the same atmosphere, another generation that is being
rejected. Parental rejection doesn't necessarily have anything to do
with abuse. It primarily has to do with not being there when needed.
In the case of parents, it is an example of misplaced
priorities.
This is the source of most
rebellion. Rebellion says, "Nobody loves me, so I'm going to do what
I want to do, regardless! Other people don't care about me, so I
don't care about other people!"
CULTS:
False religions come out of
rejection. The hippies were a type of cult. They promoted peace,
love, and sex. They had their own belief system. Most 4th world
people are considered to be outcasts, so they have formed their own
cults in order to be loved and accepted.
Today's new age movement,
Satan worshippers, and all the other cults are able to recruit from
this sea of dysfunctional people. These are hurting people who are
looking for a place in life. They are looking for acceptance and
love, and the cults fill that need. The cults draw them in and accept
them, no questions asked.
A young teenager who has a
wound of rejection is an easy target for an organization such as the
Moonies. The Moonies accept hurting teenagers. They love and feed
them, and the teenagers willingly become part of the organization.
They are simply looking for a loving relationship.
That is also what happens
in addiction. When the addict is unsuccessful in his attempt to
reconnect to a loving relationship, he anesthetizes his pain. It
becomes clear that when love is denied somebody, the door is open for
Satan to step in.
True love repels anything
ungodly. When a baby is born, Satan cannot attack it because the love
and the covering of the parents protect it from anything ungodly.
However, if the covering is not there, the baby will be exposed to
satanic attack.
Spiritual covering is
available to us through the love of the people with whom we have
relationship, and through those who have spiritual authority over us.
If we don't have that covering, and if we're looking for love and
acceptance, we are subject to the influence of cults or anything else
ungodly that might offer us acceptance.
There is a strong movement
of cults around the world today. One of the main reasons they are
gaining ground is the breakdown of the family. The father image has
been removed: therefore, the stability is gone. Rejection is rampant.
This forces the children to look to whatever source is available to
receive love and acceptance.
When the fear of rejection
has established a stronghold in a person, he learns to reject others
before being rejected himself. Although he may not realize it, his
thought is, "If I reject first, I won't get rejected." Unfortunately,
that attitude generates an inability to receive love or to love
others. And out of that attitude grows rebellion. His statement to
the world becomes, "Before you get me, I will get you."
SELF-REJECTION:
This is another product of
rejection by others. We buy the lie that we are unworthy of
acceptance by others; therefore we are unworthy of acceptance by
ourselves. Self-rejection spawns other negative
emotions.
HURT:
There is pain inside us.
Because we hurt, we feel that we have done everything wrong. We are
to blame, and there is no place to turn to make the hurt go away.
SELF PITY:
This is the "poor little
me" syndrome. We become very conscious of our inadequacies and the
fact that no one seems to understand or care what is happening to
us.
DESPAIR:
Another word for despair is
hopelessness. When we have totally rejected ourselves, we can't see
ourselves as capable of being loved by others. Through this attitude,
we lead ourselves into a hopeless state of mind.
DEPRESSION:
When we have rejected
ourselves, we will always have a spirit of depression about us. We
have resigned ourselves to the fact that we are useless. Depression
becomes a very thick wall around us that doesn't come down
easily.
ISOLATION:
This becomes our next move.
Because we feel hopeless, it seems logical to us to withdraw from
society. Society will never miss us because we have nothing to
contribute to it.
SUICIDE:
If no one else cares, why
should we? Suicide becomes the ultimate withdrawal. We are so
desperate; we develop an underlying death wish. What we don't realize
is that suicide is the ultimate ego trip. We are totally "turned in"
at this point, our total attention is on self. We have become our own
god, even to the point of making the ultimate decision in our lives,
our time of death.
As we observe the two paths
of rejection, we can see the expression of two distinct personalities
reacting in different ways as they are exposed to rejection. One
personality is mostly aggressive, while the other is mostly passive.
It is not unusual for us to move from one path to the
other.
We may display
characteristics from both sides at different times. But one side will
eventually emerge to be more dominant than the other.
It is possible for us to
become very critical or very judgmental when we have experienced
rejection. That is one of the ways we deal with the fear of
rejection. We put other people down, and we become very critical.
The pathway of the
fear of rejection is always
aggressive. Anger and resentment dominate us. We become aggressively
active. On this path, we are more prone to overdose or to be killed
in an automobile accident.
On the other hand, the
pathway of self-rejection displays a
personality that is generally beat down. On this path we are more
prone to suicide. There is always hope for those who are on either
pathway, and neither pathway is worse than the other.
As we study inner healing,
we are always drawn back to God's word and our need to understand our
relationship with Him. God is love. That means He loves us. People
whom we love may have hurt us, and we may have experienced broken
bridges, breaks in our relationships that have devastated us. But we
have God, and God tells us He wants us to bring our hurts to Him.
Understanding these
situations in our lives helps us to recognize our need for healing
and wholeness. But inner healing is beyond our capability, there is
no way we can heal ourselves. Only God can heal us permanently. Once
we realize this, our next step is to look at our responsibility in
this matter.
As we reach this point, it
is time to ask ourselves who has felt rejection more than anyone else
in the world? We don't have to look any further than Jesus Christ. He
has felt what we have felt, and undoubtedly much more.
Now let's think logically.
If we suddenly were confronted with a big problem, whom should we
look to for help with it? Naturally, we would look to somebody who
had been through a similar problem. Jesus Christ has certainly been
through rejection, because He experienced the ultimate rejection.
To get Jesus involved in
our hurts and wounds, we need to get in touch with those hurts and
wounds. We need to take a bold look at what we have experienced
through rejection. This brings us to the grieving process. We are not
to become preoccupied with behavioral changes. We want to look at the
losses in our lives, the loss of love, the deep cuts, and the wounds
of rejection.
Our lives have been
orchestrated and directed by our reactions to those wounds we have
received. We need healing in those wounded areas, those specific
events in our lives in which we received rejection. We need healing
whether the wounds were inflicted intentionally or not. The process,
in which we get healing from rejection, is to say, "Lord, this
specific incident I have written down still hurts me. I am hurting,
Lord. I need Your help. I give this to you right now. Please take it
from me."
HOMEWORK:
Take one incident of rejection in your life, and write down the
details. Share it with another brother, and ask the Lord to help you
with that wound of rejection. Ask Him to show you the fruit of that
wound. Let Him show you what has come out of the wound, what your
reaction has been and how it has affected your life and the lives
around you.
Personal And Group
Exercise (see page 108)
1. Why do emotional wounds
we received as children continue to affect us today?
2. Why is self-rejection so
destructive?
3. Why do we try to act
like someone other than who we really are?
4. What generates rejection
even more than physical abuse?
5. Why are cults so
successful today?
6. Why is it important for
us to take a bold look at what we have experienced through
rejection?
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