Taming The Python

A pastor once forwarded a message sent to him by his wife to me. In the message, the wife was complaining about his lack of clearly defined boundaries as a minister of the gospel, she said he should not pick up telephone calls after 9 pm and before 9 am unless the call is from a family member, she also told him that he should not pick up calls from women unless she was around and when she is around the calls should be picked up and placed on speaker phone so that she can listen in on the calls. She said this would be the only way she could stand behind him as a wife in case there is a scandal or other issues that usually affect young ministers of the gospel, he asked me what he should do I told him to obey his wife.

 A week later, he and his wife came to see me on an urgent matter. They had been in a fight and they had exchanged serious words as a consequence I asked the wife to speak. The wife said he got a call and placed it on speaker the lady on the other end of the call was going through a marital abuse issue in which her husband had slapped her in anger, she expected her husband to tell the lady to head to the police station and report the case immediately so that her husband could be arrested and dealt with but her husband only told the lady to go to the hospital and get some treatment which her husband promised to pay for. Then her husband called the abusive husband of the lady and instead of telling him off and assuring him that the next time he lay his hand on his wife he would be arrested and jailed, her husband told him to come to his office and see him the next day. She said she felt her husband did not handle the case the right way and he was aiding and abetting the abusive guy. She said she is afraid that the way her husband refused to put his foot down on the matter might mean he endorses men abusing women physically and it will only be a matter of time before he starts slapping her around. This she said she would never take.

The second issue was also regarding a phone call, one of the staff of the husband's ministry called to ask the husband how she should handle a particular issue. The issue pertains to one of the elderly women in the church whom her husband had been supporting financially for a while because she was recuperating from an illness. Her husband had previously mentioned to her that since the lady's son had returned home from the USA, he would discontinue the financial support so that he could support some other members in need but to her chagrin, her husband told the admin to credit the woman's account with some money. She said she realised her husband was not firm in decision making and he can sometimes be too sentimental in his dealing with people. Why didn't he just tell the admin to send the woman a message that he would no longer be supporting her? To her, he acted in a spineless manner and it made her feel a bit disappointed in him and his decision-making process. 

The third issue was regarding his sentimental approach to issues he is the pastor of a church and everybody turns to him whenever they need help, he would go all out to help and support whosoever calls him regardless of how inconvenient such would make him and the family.

They have a church member who is the manager of a microfinance bank, this church member had reached out to her husband several times for spiritual support even before he became a manager, her husband supported this man financially on several occasions, she asked her husband to talk to this bank manager to help employ her younger sister who just finished her NYSC, her husband refused to do so, so she called the man with her husband's phone and put it on speaker phone so that her husband could greet the man and tell the man she was the one who wanted to ask the man for a favour. That was all she did. Her husband cut the call and told her off, that was what led to the disagreement.
 I asked the husband to speak, the husband said the case regarding the abusive husband was not that simple. The man's mother came to visit them from the village, and some members of her family came to visit while the husband was at the office The wife knew her mother-in-law was in the toilet and she locked her in for three hours until her guests left. The husband's mother had knocked and knocked and had cried herself senseless in the toilet, nobody heard her because the toilet was in her bedroom upstairs. The man's mother had her phone with her in the bathroom and she called her and desperately asked for help.
 The son rushed home from the office just as his wife's visitors were leaving he waited until the guests were gone before asking her where his mother was. The wife took the key from the table and gave it to him, he unlocked the door, saw the state his mother was in and slapped the wife out of anger.
 Of course, the wife did not mention any of that when she called to report her husband. She called and said a lot of things but he knew something must have happened for her husband to react that way so he told her to get some medical help while he followed up with the husband to know what had happened and deal with it appropriately.
The husband then went on to the second issue she mentioned, he said the second issue regarding the money he told his admin to give the elderly woman who was recuperating from an illness was not charity. The woman's son had sent him some funds in dollars for his mother, all he did was tell the admin to credit the mother the equivalent of the money he was sent in their local currency.
The third issue was to him, an abuse of his office. He had never done it and he will never do it. His wife knew this had always been his stance, he does not use his office to trade favours in any way because for him it is a question of integrity. He was shocked that his wife would be so bold as to call the man and insist that since she was the one doing the talking it was not the same thing. I told the two of them it was my fault. I wanted to teach them something but if I didn't teach it the way I did they would never understand it.

 When you are counselling or speaking to someone in need of help over the phone you can either deal with them in the flesh or by the Spirit. If two people listen to the same conversation, they cannot have the same understanding of it, if as a pastor you have been dealing with someone for some time, and you pick up your conversations from where you stopped the last time another person listening to it does not have that context and the person will have a different interpretation of the conversation.

The second lesson is the issue of insinuation of self in conversations that really had nothing to do with you. As a wife or a husband, you listen to your husband's conversation over the phone and you form an opinion or come to a conclusion based on a conversation that you had no business listening to, you forget that we deal with people as unique individuals and what applies to one does not apply to all. You then take a posture of wisdom in a matter where you lack a standing and you prove by your input that you lack discretion. Picking your partner's phone to make a call would have been impossible if the door was not opened to listening to conversations you have no business listening in, courtesy demands that when you place someone on speakerphone during a phone call, you must inform the person that you have someone else on the call. The caller on the other end believes he or she is speaking to his or her pastor in confidence, by listening in on the call, the partner is already breaching that confidentiality. This is a crime! Then I asked the wife how many of her calls her husband was listening in on. She said she had nothing interesting going on in her life which she thinks her husband should listen in on. She said she is not a pastor and therefore not exposed to temptations or scandal. I told her that excuse does not stand, you cannot take advantage of a man's office to insinuate yourself into his privacy while you keep him out of your own privacy. 
I told her if her husband starts listening in on her calls, it would change how he reacts and responds to some people in her life. He would be seeing and hearing from them in a way they would never speak or relate to him directly. I asked her if she spoke with her mother often, she said yes I asked her if her mother and husband have a good relationship. She said yes. I then asked her if she believed her mother and husband would still be on good terms if her husband started listening in on her private conversations with her mother in which her mother would not be aware her husband was on the call. She kept quiet.

 Do you agree there is a way we speak to people in their presence and a way we speak about the same people in their absence? She nodded I then asked her and her husband if they still think listening in on each other's private phone calls is a good idea. They both said it was a bad idea. Then the wife said she had a question,I asked her to go ahead. She said "How do I deal with ladies who will call him disguising they need help and he will believe them but I am a woman and I know these ladies like him and are just trying to lure him into their space" I looked at her sternly and said "Deal with your insecurity now, pray, cry and rebuke it out of your system. If you don't, you will be the one to drive yourself out of this marriage! As soon as you are gone, you will come to see that your imaginary rivals are a mirage but they would have pushed you to lose something very real" She paused and whispered "Thank you"

 PS: Insecurity is a disease. It is not love, it is not godly, it is not healthy, it is a sickness. A spouse that is so insecure that he or she wants to keep tabs on the other all the time is not worthy of love. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
 -C.S.. Lewis If you are insecure keep away from love. The love of an insecure person is the love of a python and its prey, it will strike and then gradually strangulate the prey only to swallow it while it is still alive. Nobody wants to be loved that way. If you are insecure, please, just love yourself You need it more than most.
 -GSW-