tough day at work, difficult patient been difficult for months, exhausted, got unloaded with everybody else's anger + anxiety for decisions not made by me.
feeling hard pressed on every side, narcissistic injury +++, got home and thought i will go and check out my old writing site and see if any additional reader/comments to comfort myself.
...site got hacked, random inappropriate stuff added, then got locked.
now i don't even know how to retrieve my old stories and other ppl's comments etc...
now really hard pressed on every side.
欲哭无泪...T_T
well, listening to a nice chinese song to keep myself sane in this madness... more T_T...
hard pressed on every side
the psychology of the unmerciful servant
i haven't been writing for a little while. in the meantime i've turned 30 (but sadly haven't mellowed out and in fact maybe even getting a bit worse -_-|||) and passed my exam. anyways, i've been wanting to write about this for some time now. I still cringe a bit when I think I am putting down something which will sound like "I know what is going on", and especially "I know what's going on from the Bible"... 囧 but now is probably a good time to spill things out...I think.
I remember a long time ago when I first read the parable of the unmerciful servant I thought the actions of servant really MADE LOTS OF SENSE. for years I was too embarrassed to admit it. after all I don't want disclosure that I am a ridiculously stone hearted unmerciful person myself... @.@
only this year I slowly started to understand why I thought he made so much sense, being on the receiving end of some very pragmatic gestures of mercy. for me I think why the unmerciful servant did what he did comes down to an inability to believe that he has well and truly been at the receiving end of mercy.
Just taking the parable on its own I am also in utter disbelief that the servant's debt has actually been cancelled by his master. Things too good to be true as a rule are not true.
how many times have the authority figures in our lives said one thing and did (or wanted) another? how many times have they in a moment of grandiosity did something nice only to change minds later?
and thinking about Asian parents who actually expect a payback of monstrous scale when they make any gestures of apparent mercy... all very unspoken and nebulous... and much more frightening.
out of disbelief, naturally he still wholeheartedly operated from his outdated end of the bargain.
"i will pay back everything."
with even more urgency.
despite not saying it, maybe paying back everything is what my master really is saying.
maybe thats what he really wanted.
maybe that will please him more.
it is extremely difficult to undo the automatic thoughts, most of which belongs to the subconscious realm. but the problem goes further than this.
the hope placed in something that is so beyond our control, and something that we are completely undeserving of, the subjection of ourselves to a state of utter powerlessness in front of our masters...
will make this a very very frightening experience.
With every hope there comes a possibility that the hope will be shattered and replaced by despair. The more this hope matters, the darker this despair will be, and the more intolerable the pain and fear thinking about it. The more one tries to deny and suppress the thoughts about such a possibility, the more it will come back to haunt us.
Coming from an unloved upbringing, and daily surviving in unloving environments, will make this battle, again, much harder to fight.
over the years i have heard numerous sermons on this parable that went along the lines of "you ungrateful bastards the punishment is coming unless you now put in the hard work and do ABCDE " in less crude and more church appropriate language, but I think what the master did in this parable really not a case of "I will cancel your debt on the following terms and conditions" but that "i have cancelled your debt unconditionally and now you do likewise".
yes for some of you there maybe appear to be no difference between the two.
but instead of paying back, this is a call to pay forward.
I have loved you thus. Now go and love likewise.
This really is not about the beating of oneself for holding grudges and now going and forgiving everyone by sheer willpower as it is the right thing to do.
The crux of the matter is actually how much you can emotionally trust and hope in your master's good character and the fact that his unconditional love is actually love, and not a dubious manipulation of some kind?
To the point of realisation that you are so loved and valued that all kinds of grudges/debts pale into insignificance.
There is much more to rant about this story but I will prob stop here. I must admit I find the emotional aspect of trust and hope with consistency, instead of a mere intellectualisation, against the fear of despair, still the worst struggle I have daily.
something less shrinky next time~ :p
