Termite
Sins
that Undermine Love
and Unity and Ruin Families and
Communities
.
.
by Carlos Mantica
When we look for the reason for our failures, we
seldom come across terrible sins or enormous
faults. Instead we find sins that we often
neglect to confess and ask for forgiveness.
In my work for the Lord I have related with many
people. And every once in a while I have met a
couple whose marriage has been destroyed by an
atrocious infidelity or some serious misconduct.
But this has happened very seldomly. What I have
normally found are hundreds of ruined marriages,
divorced couples, that have been destroyed by
what I call "termite sins."
I call them that way because they are so small
that you can hardly detect them. When termites infect a house,
their presence and destructive work can
go undetected for a very long time – often until it is
too late and the whole house is on the verge of
collapse.
Termite sins in marriage
Termite sins in marriage are things like
jealousy, indifference, sarcasm, discourtesy,
personal untidiness, biting mockery...
These are things that, like a shaving blade,
will not kill, but make a wound, and little by
little they infect our relationships until one
day the whole marriage breaks down.
The same happens in our personal relationships
as Christians, especially when we are involved
in a movement, prayer group, or community.
Christian groups often enter into a crisis
because of some termite sin on the part of their
leaders. Someone has a "vedette complex," and if
there is a funeral he would like to be the
deceased. Someone else becomes resentful because
he has attended training sessions for three
years, but has never been appointed to a
leadership position. Someone else in the group
behaves like a dictator in a banana republic. He
thinks his word is the law, and whoever does not
think just like him or her should be expelled
from the group or movement. To make things
worse, once such an individual has been
appointed to a leadership position, nobody can
remove the person from that position except
through a bloody revolution.
People usually fail through pride, childishness,
cowardice, shyness, or foul play. Let me offer
you a mirror for each one of us to see his or
her own image (not your neighbor's image) and
discover if there are things in you that need to
change. And, since I know that the things that
often destroy our relations are not usually the
enormous sins, what we are going to look at in
the mirror are our "termite sins."
Termite sins of speech
I would like to begin with termite sins that
have to do with speech. Much of the damage that
is done in the world, certainly the most
frequent and often the most harmful damage, is
done with the tongue. The tongue is the cheapest
lethal weapon known to man. And anyone can
afford it. The poorest man can use it. And the
richest and most powerful ones fear it. It is
very difficult to protect yourself from a sharp
tongue. Its wounds can last for a lifetime, and
can even be carried from one generation to the
next. Its damage is one of the hardest to
repair.
But perhaps its most terrible feature is the
easiness with which this weapon is triggered,
and goes off, almost inadvertently. One second,
one moment of carelessness... and the damage is
done. Like poisoned darts, the wound it causes
is almost invisible on the surface, but the
inner damage is ravaging. That is why we are
seldom aware of the damage caused, and do
nothing to repair it immediately.
As I said before, we are not going to deal with
the big sins here, and therefore we are not
going to deal with the big sins of the tongue,
such as slander, defamation, false witness,
insult, blunt vulgarity, and the like. I would
like to think that they do not even occur among
Christian leaders and mature brothers and
sisters in Christ. So we are going to focus here
on poisoned darts.
Sins of the tongue could be classified into
three groups:
1. Sins against the truth,
2. Sins against Christian
love, and
3. Sins against freedom to
coerce others.
Sins of speech that harm
the truth
Examples of sins that harm the truth are
exaggeration, sensationalism, generalization,
and half-truths. We can understand these better
with a couple of examples.
Suppose the husband comes home hungry, opens the
refrigerator and says, “I never find anything to
eat in this house!” Or says, “The only thing we
eat in this house is soup, and I’m already tired
of it!”
His wife then replies, “You never come on time
for dinner! What do you think this is, a hotel?”
The conversation becomes increasingly bitter,
and a little later the husband remarks:
“Whenever I want to have sex, you have a
headache!” Finally, even the kids get into the
fray and complain, “You never let me use the
car! I can never go anywhere!”
All of this is exaggeration, generalization,
sensationalism or mere half-truths. This
marriage is about to be devoured by the
termites.
Let’s now move to the leaders’ team meeting of a
Christian group, where a plan is under study for
improving things. One member says, “The truth is
the whole plan is ridiculous! It’s never going
to work!” We all know this is not true. The plan
has some holes in it, but basically it is a good
plan. But now the meeting has become bitter, and
anything can happen.
Another example: someone says,“The last leaders’
training course was a complete disaster!” And
the truth is that only one of the speakers did a
poor job in presenting one of his talks for lack
of proper preparation.
When sensationalism, exaggeration,
generalization and half-truths become a habit in
our way of speaking, we begin to destroy a lot
of things. In every Christian leaders’ team, and
almost at every meeting, there is often a guy
like that (See, I am already exaggerating!). If
the guy also happens to have a spirit of
contradicting everybody, he gradually undermines
all the good things that are proposed, and
erodes people’s desire to continue working.
Termite sins against
Christian love
Let us now move on to some
of the termite sins against Christian love,
which most often are also sins against the
truth.
Let’s begin with "speaking against others."
Slander is one thing, saying or repeating
something that is false and that damages
someone’s reputation. Speaking against others
occurs when you say or repeat something that,
even if it is true, damages someone’s
reputation.
Harming the reputation of others: So,
speaking against others simply means harming the
reputation of others. It does not matter whether
what you are saying is true or false. Speaking
against another person causing a damage to that
person's reputation I have no right to cause. It
does not even need to be anything serious.
“So-and-so... she is really lazy.” “Ann does not
take good care of her children.” “Mark never
lasts more than six months in a job.” Or, “The
truth is that Jack is quite stupid.”
There are some leaders who return home from a
retreat or conference and then takes delight in
telling everybody the small failures of the
other team members during the retreat. Well,
that’s speaking against others, the very habit
of speaking wrongly about others, because there
are appropriate ways to express those concerns
privately. Circulating that kind of critical
speech does not help to solve faults or failures
- it creates a climate of gossip in the people
of God. This leads us to the next sin, which is
precisely the sin of gossip.
Gossip
Gossip always involves talking about people in a
manner that is in some way harmful. Gossip can be direct. For
example someone might say to you, “Did you
hear? Andrew is having marriage problems.” And
you respond: “Really? Tell me...”
But gossip among Christians can also be
indirect and subtle. Someone in your small
group meeting might lead out a prayer of
intercession, which goes something like this:
“Brothers, let us pray for Andrew and Lucy,
because they are having very serious problems
at home. Lord, we intercede for Lucy, because
her left eye is still black after her husband
hit her the other day. And we ask you to give
him more patience, with this kind of wife he
has. Amen.”
Damage caused by gossip: Gossip
undermines trust and soils a reputation. It
spins a web of innuendo and information that can
subject a person's name to criticism and
dishonor. We gossip whenever we talk about
people in a manner that will diminish our
hearers' trust and esteem for them, and whenever
we reveal another's personal thoughts and
affairs without their permission. When you
spread personal and private information you
prove yourself untrustworthy and disloyal. This
is particularly true if you possess information
because a friend confided in you.
Confidentiality is harmed when you repeat
something that was not intended for everbody's
ears. Gossip violates friendship by
broadcasting openly what was confided in a few
trusted ears.
If for some reason righteousness demands that we
reveal something that was confided to us, then
we must follower the higher law. If we are privy
to a murder plot, we are not obligated to keep
it secret in loyalty to our friends.
We should not ask others to promise us to keep
something we have told them confidential
(secret). If we do not trust them to use some
information wisely, we should not tell it to
them. We should not promise anyone to keep
something secret before they tell us what it is.
We may have a moral or legal responsibility to
reveal it once we know it. Nor should we promise
afterwards unless the conditions of the promise
are clearly acceptable.
Busybody
One of the worst types of gossip is the
busybody. Being a busybody is meddling in
something that is none of your business. In the
Gospel of John we see an example when Jesus had
to correct Peter for prying into the affairs of
the other apostle whom Jesus loved:
Peter
looked back, and saw that the disciple whom
Jesus loved, the same one who at the supper
had reclined next to Jesus, was following
them. When Peter saw him, he said, “Lord, what
is to be of this one?” Jesus replied, “If I
want him to stay until I come back, what is
that to you? Follow me.” And thus the saying
was passed on among the brethren, that this
disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say
that he would not die, but rather, “If I want
him to stay until I come back, what is that to
you?” (John 21:20-23)
Perhaps it
would be good if this saying would be passed on
among our brothers and sisters in Christ, so
that when someone asks what he has no reason to
know, we can answer like Jesus, “What is that to
you?”, which actually means, “This is none of
your business. Don’t be a busybody!”
Our contemporary society has the false idea that
everybody is entitled to know everything. This
is what the owners of the media proclaim, and
especially the reporters or interviewers of
newspapers and TV shows that specialize in
meddling in other people’s lives. Christ tells
us there are things that are none of our
personal business, even if we hold the highest
office in government or church. We must
differentiate between what is public and what is
private, what is merely confidential and what is
secret. Busybodies do a lot of harm in Christian
groups.
Constructive criticism
Let’s now examine another
area of speech, namely
criticism. Constructive criticism is
what people do with the intention to improve
something. However, to distinguish it from destructive
criticism, constructive criticism
must be delivered in the right place and at the
right time, and to those who can do something
about it.
Constructive criticism, in order to be
constructive, should have the following
elements:
1) We must say exactly what it is that we are
criticizing. If you say, “Tom did not understand
the purpose of section two in the talk we had
assigned him, so we should help him next time,”
that is constructive. Even Tom will appreciate
your evaluation of his talk. But if you simply
say, “Tom’s talk was a disaster,” that is
clearly destructive criticism and Tom
will probably hate your guts and prematurely
give up his teaching career..
2) The second element of constructive criticism
is stating why something was wrong or
bad. In the preceding case, we noted how Tom did
not accomplish the objective of section two of
the talk because he missed the point.
Jesus corrected his apostles on many times but
he always explained why. (Do not run for the
first seats at table because the master may move
you to the back.) When we do not explain why
something is being criticized, we leave people
guessing and they will likely repeat the mistake
again.
3) For criticism to be constructive, it should
always contribute something towards a solution.
And if we don’t have a solution, we should say,
“I don’t know what to do in this case, but I
think we all should try to find a way to solve
it.”
Unqualified criticism is what you do with the sole
intention of noting a
failure, not trying to correct it, and it is
almost always done in the presence of people who
have nothing to do with a possible solution.
Criticizing in the proper way is necessary.
Otherwise, a Christian group will gradually evolve towards three different
kinds of groupings – those who do nothing
but criticize and become the judges of
everybody else, a few holy people who keep
trying to please the critics, and those who
simply give up.
Mockery and sarcasm
Let’s now examine the termite sin of mockery.
Mockery is very harmful, and it is made worse by
the fact that it can also be very funny, which
makes it easy for you to become popular through
it. (Oh! How witty of you...)
A sophisticated form of mockery is sarcasm. I
know at least two marriages that were destroyed
by the habit of sarcasm that developed between
husband and wife. “Oh, so you’re back from the
beauty parlor? I never would have guessed! Next
time do the wrinkles too.” Or at the movies, the
husband remarks, “Well, that’s a real woman, not
what I have at home...” This is terrible, and
unfortunately it takes place in many Christian
environments, and at a very high level. The same
can be said about the use of negative humor.
“Boy, you don’t sound like a donkey because you
are so stupid you forgot how!”
Nicknames can be very offensive too. Calling
some one “Clove,” just because he is short,
skinny, black and has a big head is
uncharitable. We should only use nicknames if
the people concerned are not offended. The key
to know this is easy – if we can call a person
directly by his nickname and he responds to it
without offense, there is no problem. We find
many nicknames in scripture: Peter (Simon), The
Sons of Thunder (James and John), The Twin
(Thomas), etc. But if we have to use a nickname
behind a person’s back, then we are in trouble.
Jokes should not offend others: We should
also consider the use we make of jokes and
practical jokes addressed at specific people. It
is true that jokes help to build a climate of
fellowship and joy. We don’t want to become too
serious, but we should not talk about love while
showing lack of charity. I am not going to say
what we can do or cannot do in the area of
jokes, but I can give a criterion – if the other person
feels offended, this means the joke was wrong
and we should apologize immediately. What we
think about it makes no difference. It’s not a
matter of saying, “You’re too easily offended.”
No one should be offended. Jokes are for all of
us to laugh and enjoy, including the person
concerned. There is no need to victimize anyone.
There should be no victims.
Vulgarity needs no comment. It must be totally
eradicated among Christians. The same must be
said about swearing and cursing.
Manipulation, intrigue,
and emotional blackmail
So, let us now move to the last category
of termite sins of the tongue, which is the
category of sins against freedom. Sins that harm
freedom are, for instance, manipulation,
intrigue, and emotional blackmail. What these
have in common is that they intend to have the
other person do my will.
There are many forms of verbal manipulation. A
very popular one is saying something to X for Y
to understand it. The husband is praying aloud,
and he says, “Lord, I ask you that my wife would
forgive me for the things I said yesterday.” The
right thing would be for him to turn around and
address his wife instead of God and say, “Honey,
I said such and such yesterday. That was very
wrong. It will not happen again. Please forgive
me.” Let’s not ask the Lord to accomplish
through miracles what we are supposed to
accomplish through humility.
A very destructive one is accusation in the form
of a question. A wife says, “Why don’t you
take me to the movies?” If she were to say,
“Darling, take me to the movies,” I would take
her gladly even if I had seen the movie a
hundred times. But “why don’t you take me” is a
question that has no answer, because the only
real answer would be, “Well, because you have
never asked me to take you, and you are once
again expecting me to read your mind.” And by
then I am already furious, and if I answer I
might raise my voice and yell, because what I
perceived was not a question but an accusation.
So I answer, ‘You never take me anywhere’ is an
exaggeration, and your exaggerations are the
kinds of things that make me angry. And it is
also unfair, because I often take you
everywhere, and if you don’t go it’s because she
doesn’t feel like it, and I can’t stand all this
nagging anymore. As if I had nothing to do! I
come home tired from my work, and I haven’t
closed the door behind me when...” And by now
all hell has broken loose.
Or the husband comes home and his wife says
sweetly, “Where were you?” That will make him
lose his temper: That did it! He explodes,
“That’s not a question but an accusation! ‘Where
were you and where did you expect me to come
from, except the place I always usually come
from everyday? Do you think I go to many
different places? All I do is go from my home to
the office and from the office to my home, and I
can’t be a minute late because you might start
interrogating me.” That home can now be declared
a disaster area.
Accusations in the form of a question can cause
anger much more than a direct accusation,
because they are trying to cover mistrust. I
concede that in many cases they are just an
inherited habit that mustn nevertheless, be
corrected.
Emotional blackmailing is similar. The wife
wants her husband to buy something for her. He
says he can’t, and then she starts weeping, her
voice falters, and she says: “You don’t love me
any more! When we were dating you used to give
me everything.”
Another example: the husband is peacefully
reading the newspaper, because the wife in turn
had been watching the soap opera that has just
ended. So she sits next to him and says, “We
never talk!” The husband asks for just one
second to finish reading the paragraph he had
begun, but then she replies, “Sure! Your
newspaper comes first, and I’m second!”
Indifference and lack of
expressions of love
Leaving the sins of the tongue behind,
let’s consider other termite sins. The most
appropriate at this time is indifference or lack
of expressions of love.
Even though we have laughed at certain
situations where there was actual emotional
blackmailing, it is equally true that there are
also situations where the expressions of
affection, courtesy, and various signs of
attention we used to have before marriage have
now disappeared from many homes. This builds an
unbearable trap, because man and woman are able
to endure many tortures and sorrows, but they
are not able to endure the absence of affection
– long
periods of indifference, isolation and the
loneliness of two people who live in the same
house and pretend to love each other but do not
know how to show it. That’s why “verbal
affection” and other expressions of love are so
important –
a compliment, a good-morning kiss, an
anniversary gift, a weekly night devoted
exclusively for the couple to be together, no
matter how busy your schedule.
Visual affection is also important, especially
for a man. A wife whose face is white with cream
and whose hair is full of rolls that make her
look like a Martian is silently telling her
husband, ‘I care very little whether I am
attractive to you or not.’ The same goes for a
man who goes to bed smelling like Limburger
Cheese.
And of course, physical expressions of affection
are also very important, but I’m not going to
dwell on them here because you are familiar with
them.
Disorderly desire for
admiration and recognition
Every human being has a natural desire or
need for admiration and recognition. However,
the next termite sin has to do with a disorderly
desire for admiration and recognition.
I’m referring to a person who will not do any
Christian service if the reward does not include
an applause or a medal. Some Christians are very
willing to serve as leaders in a conference or
retreat, because that is very visible and will
make them popular and admired; but they may not
be as willing to do the easier service of
participating in an intercession team for the
same event, because that is silent and no one
will ever know about it. I remember someone who
never served again in a retreat, because no one
told him at the evaluation meeting how
tremendous his talk had been. I can also
remember someone who was so easily offended that
he left because leader so-and-so did not greet
him at a meeting by mere neglect. I’m also
referring to those who follow every funny idea
or trend because of a concern for belonging and
a need for being accepted. The idea might have
been against his principles, but avoiding
rejection was more important.
Normally these people are also deeply concerned
for not hurting other people’s feelings. This is
the father who allows his daughter to go around
half naked, even if he disagrees, because she
could feel bad or leave the home if he says
something. Or he does not want to hurt the
feelings of his son who is asking him to buy a
new car for him, even though he does not need it
and his father does not have enough money, and a
car will only be an encouragement for laziness
or vice. But the father will not say no, because
this could build a distance between him and his
son. He would rather be loved than be respected.
And he ends up being manipulated.
Irresponsibility
Another serious termite sin is irresponsibility.
Such is the case of a Christian leader who has
to give a talk at a retreat, and just two
minutes before he discovers he had left the
outlines at home. Or a team member who calls the
retreat leader just the day before the retreat,
saying he will not be able to attend because it
is his sister’s birthday.
A Christian leader has to be someone you can
trust, somebody you can count with. He must be
someone who knows how to say no, but when he
says yes we know he will do what he promised.
One form and cause of irresponsibility is
disorder. This person has no order in his
priorities, or in his money, or in his
commitments, or in his schedule. He says yes to
everything, and his heart is so big that he
would like to do everything and be everywhere.
But that’s impossible. This type of leader can
be divided in two categories: 1) Those who die
of a heart attack, and 2) Those who are so
irresponsible that they give others a heart
attack.
Conclusion
I hope my mirror has helped you detect some
termite sins, and others as well that I haven't
mentioned.
We as Christians know that the door to the
transformation of the world is the integral,
progressive conversion of each one of us to full
maturity in Christ. We will not transform the
world unless men and women are transformed in
Christ, and that means we ourselves have to
first change before we can help others change as
well. And we have begun to see that the areas we
need to change in are not those terrible things
we one day left at the feet of Christ, but a
large number of small things, of termite sins
that are so small that we wouldn’t even be able
to see them without someone else showing them to
us, but which are actually destroying us.
If we were able to leave behind those difficult
things, would it be so difficult now to leave
behind something small, out of love for the Lord
and for his people? To eradicate termites from
our house, it was first necessary to see them
and to admit that they were there. In order to
be consistent, that’s exactly what we need first
of all –
to see them, to see ourselves and to
accept, honestly and humbly, whatever we
discover inside.
I have not intended to offend anyone. If this
helps, I am the first one to confess that if I
know so much about termite sins it is because
the vast majority of them I found inside myself.
If there is someone who throughout this talk has
only rejoiced in the faults of others, and said,
“This is X. That’s Y. That’s the perfect
portrait of Z,” then with all respect I will
have to remind him of the words of the Lord:
Brother, or sister, why do you look at the speck
in your neighbor’s eye and do not see the log in
yours? First take out the log in your eyes, and
then you will see better the speck in the other
person’s eyes.
Let's take out the log in our own eyes. After we
do so, our eyes will be clean enough for us to
take a positive look at our own Christian group
or community.
> See
related articles
by Carlos
Mantica
This
article is adapted from the book, From
Egghead to Birdhood (hatch or rot as a
Christian), (c) copyright 2001 Carlos
Mantica. Used with permission.
Carlos
Mantica is a founder of The
City of God community (La
Cuidad de Dios) in Managua,
Nicaragua, and a founding leader
of the Sword
of the Spirit. He served as
president of the Sword of the
Spirit between 1991 and 1995.
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