One of things that I was not prepared for when I first became a pastor and our church started experiencing growth was the number of people that would publicly come out and criticize the ministry that I believed that God had called me and our church to do.
I’ve been very honest and transparent on this blog about critics, how to deal with critics, and such, however one of the things I have never dealt with here is why do people attack people. Specifically why do people who claim the name of Jesus feel it necessary to attack others who claim the name of Jesus? I believe there are four reasons.
Reason number one - Hurting people hurt people.
One of the things that I have personally discovered in having a few conversations with people who felt it necessary to criticize and attack me individually is that many times they were dealing with some sort of personal hurt from their past that they felt necessary to take out on someone who reminded of them of the person that actually hurt them.
If you are in ministry and someone in your church has been abused by a ministry leader at some point in their past and they did not deal with it, they will many times unintentionally begin to take out their anger, pain, and frustration on you.
If we do not deal with the pain of our past it will dominate our future.
Hurting people hurt people and its one of the things and its one of the things we must consider when we know of someone in our church that is continually in attack mode.
When we begin to see this type of person through this lense it allows us to have compassion on them and help them through it…because if someone doesn’t help them they will continue to tear people apart…all “in the name of Jesus.”