Who does that?

who does that

I have seen some strange things this week as I traveled from the south to the north and back.  And these things kept making me ask the question, “Who does that?” Let me give you some examples of what I mean.

A utility bill collector calls a homeowner wondering where the payment is.  The homeowner gets irate and slams the phone down thinking they’ve won.  Clearly the lights will be shut off…”Who does that?”

A person volunteers to help with a project.  They get with the committee and their idea isn’t chosen.  They pack up their things and leave in a huff…”Who does that?”

A woman goes and purchases a luxury car that she can’t afford.  When she gets behind on the payments, she asks the church for help.  The church tells her that’s not what benevolence is for.  She says that she just feels that God wants her to have this car.  The benevolence committee gives her a strange look then she walks off angry threatening to leave the church…”Who does that?”

A husband and father of four, starts a brand new job (he’s been out of work for two years).  He’s on the job for two weeks then he meets with his boss to start dictating his schedule based on the perks of his last job…longer lunch periods, flex time, etc.  When the boss refuses, he threatens to quit…”Who does that?”

The person “who does that” is someone who has been over loved or under loved…the results are the same…they have a sense of entitlement. People who over love (ie. Enable) are people who were normally love starved as a child and they’re over compensating for what happened in the past, by over doing it going forward.  There are some cases where this person was over loved as well, but do it now as a learned behavior.  The under-lover follows the same pattern, where in most cases they were over loved to the point of being privileged, which created the stinginess within them.  There are a few cases where and under-lover is imitating an under-loved upbringing.

Love should be balanced.  It is the responsibility of the sender of love, not the receiver of love to balance it.  By balance, I mean that it is not logical to give someone everything they ask for just because you can.  It is not logical to deprive someone of everything, just because you didn’t have it when you were young.  It is not logical to accept any old response for the under and over loving and call it love.  As we learn to love better, we strive for a balance that allows us send genuine love to the receiver who then sends genuine love back.

Now that you know “who does that”, can you help somebody stop that?