Day 2: Pleasing or Loving?

This is part of a 7-day commitment during Lent 2024.

At a parenting discussion group, a couple asked the rest of us about a parenting issue. I didn’t think anyone gave a definite or satisfying answer. I withheld my opinion because I think more information is required to “personalise” the solution. However, something the lady said struck me. She said she was brought up by parents who didn’t spank and that’s why she believed children can be brought up without spanking. I assumed the parents used gentler methods and thus I was curious if that meant a closer parent-child relationship.

“How’s your relationship with your parents?” I asked this lady after the session.

“People would think fierce parents would hit, but not necessarily. I had wanted to share this in class too. My dad didn’t hit, but he was very fierce. I still fear him to this day. And that’s why I said words (emotional abuse) can sometimes hurt deeper than physical punishment,” she said candidly.

So it must be the mother who used the gentler methods – so they must be close?

“So are you close to your mother?” She was a little evasive, but I probed more because I am genuinely curious if gentle parenting works in the long run.

“Not really…” she said and the conversation ended coldly – awkward or weird? But I felt I touched a raw nerve.

“Why am I always like that? Why did I ask so much? Why did I cross the line and make people feel uncomfortable?” I blamed myself. I wanted to please others and be accepted, but I did it again. I made people feel uncomfortable and pushed them away.

I was beating myself up as usual when I was interrupted by a God thought: “We asked questions for people to answer their questions by themselves. Even if it’s uncomfortable.” Perhaps my question about her mother would lead her to reflect on that relationship in a way that answers their parenting question in the session.

As if to confirm, I remembered two days ago, I heard a snippet of Dr David Jeremiah’s sermon which is similar to the thought, “When speaking to non-christian, Jesus was patient and He sought to draw that person in that conversation allowing her to see her own need. Jesus didn’t extend the invitation, He waited for the people to invite themselves.” This can be observed in the conversation between Jesus and the woman of Samaria at the well (John 4:1-26).

We don’t need to be eager to give advice, I can be guilty of that. Sometimes asking the right questions, opens the heart to the right answer.

As a consolation, God highlighted how He would sometimes bring up people’s uncomfortable/shameful past forthrightly too, like the case of the woman of Samaria and her five husbands.

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

John 4:16-18

Is it more important to be pleasing or loving towards the other person? Do we avoid difficult conversations to be pleasing to the other person? Or are we willing to question or point out certain things so that hard truth can be shown/said in love?

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