Being Complacent is Being Complicit With Sin
Do you find yourself exasperated by your spouse’s words or behavior?
Does your child’s behavior frustrate you?
Do you have a sibling or friend who always seems to need help?
Are you still trying to earn the respect or love of a parent?
And, in any of these situations, are you feeling lost as to what else to do? Maybe it feels as though, no matter what you do, nothing changes, so your default at this point is to just try to acquiesce or to give up trying at all.
But here’s the problem: when you acquiesce or are complacent with sin, that makes you complicit in it. Here’s what I mean: when you do nothing in response to someone’s sin against you or others, the message you are sending is that you approve of it. “The standard you walk by is the standard you accept” (David Morrison). And you will get what you tolerate.
Martin Luther King Jr. put it this way: “The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict…[an individual] who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
Paulo Freire said it like this: “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”
Elie Wiesel noted: “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Desmond Tutu commented: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
And “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” (author unknown).
In other words, you are sharing in the sins of others when you allow it. Let me be clear: this doesn’t mean you should necessarily be an activist and start standing up for everything that is wrong. What it does mean is that for you, in your personal life, you need to be discerning about how you allow yourself to be treated, because you will get what you tolerate and reap what you sow. If you tolerate someone’s sin because you think it’s respectful to be quiet, or you try to talk to someone about their sin but do nothing when they continue in it, or you say or do nothing because you don’t want to deal with the repercussions of calling it out or fleeing from it, then you are going to continue to experience that person’s sin against you. And it may destroy you. Proverbs 22:3 and Proverbs 27:12 (yes, the Bible says it twice!) says: “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.”
This applies to many relationships. If your spouse has rules and double standards regarding those rules, expecting you to obey them while justifying why they themselves don’t have to, and you just continue to try to respect those rules, then you are approving of both the rules and the behavior of your spouse. Even if you try to talk to your spouse about the apparent double standard and get your spouse to understand that they are expecting things from you that they don’t expect of themselves, if all you do is talk and nothing changes then you are not demonstrating your disapproval. Rather, you are just talking about it but doing nothing about it, thereby being complicit in it.
Another example: if your teenager gives you an attitude, is disrespectful toward you, or doesn’t obey the house rules, when you talk to them, get angry with them, yell at them, even attempt discipline like grounding them or taking away privileges, if those things don’t work and your teen continues to be blatantly defiant and you don’t continue to up the ante in terms of enforcing the rules (assuming your rules are reasonable and not double standards as in the example above), then your standards are pointless. If your standards can’t be enforced and you resort to ineffective methods or complacency, then you are participating in their sin.
1 Timothy 5:22 says “do not share in the sins of others.”
Proverbs 13:24 says “Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.” (Please note that a rod is the tool of a shepherd and is not used to batter the sheep but, rather, to guide and direct them one way or the other).
And there are some who “pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality” (Jude 1:4).
Friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, grace is for those who receive it with thankfulness, not for those who take it as permission to sin. Do not be complacent with sin. If you are complacent with sin, it makes you complicit in it.
What should you do about sin?
Matthew 18:15 says “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.” What this means is that, if you have someone in your life who is receptive to feedback and acknowledges when they have sinned against you, then bringing it to them is enough.
However, for some, they don’t want to hear it. They will turn it back on you, tell you you’re too sensitive, blame you for it, or tell you to take the log out of your own eye first or cast the stone only when you are without sin. These and other tactics are only mechanisms to be able to avoid accountability for their sin, and they aren’t deterred by you pointing out their sin.
So if talking to them doesn’t work….. and let me pause here to tell you what I mean by “doesn’t work” because some people find satisfaction in talking and being able to share their concerns and then they feel better and so, for them, it “feels” like it worked. Others, when they talk to someone about their sin, get a response that seems cooperative, so they get the sense that it worked, and so they don’t pay attention to the actual results - they don’t watch to see if the behavior is changed, they just assume that since the person acted cooperative that their behavior will demonstrate that as well - but it often doesn’t - the feigned cooperation was there to get the confronting person to stop confronting.
When that happens, the talking didn’t work. It didn’t produce a change in behavior. So when you talk to someone about their behavior, you don’t want to assume that just because you talked and you feel better that anything has changed. You also don’t want to give the other person too much credit by assuming that just because they appeared cooperative that they actually have any intention of changing. Many people wait far too long to discover this dynamic - sometimes years and years - 10 years, 20 years, 30 years - way too long. [Are you trying to pursue your spouse the way God pursues us? Read my article on that]
When talking works, you not only get someone who understands your perspective, but that person demonstrates a sincere repentance and intention to change AND THEN also demonstrates changed behavior in that they stop doing what they had been doing AND they do things differently. Consistently. Over a long period of time. Such that you have all but forgotten that they ever engaged in the wrong behavior that you’d talked to them about.
Pay attention to the results of your discussions. Just because a discussion would change YOU doesn’t mean that it changes EVERYBODY. Just because you have a willingness to accept feedback from others and allow that feedback to mould you doesn’t mean that others are the same way you are. And the likelihood that your spouse is not the same way you are (especially if you are reading this article) is very good, because people who are very open to feedback and personal growth often end up with a spouse who has no capacity for feedback or personal growth. Let this serve as a warning to those for whom it is not too late - do not marry until you have spent a significant amount of time alone (not finding your identity in anyone else) and have no needs that others can meet. A hungry person will settle for trash to eat. Don’t pursue a relationship when hungry.
But, back to what happens if talking doesn’t work. If you can’t deter their sin, escape it. Those really are your only two options. When talking to someone doesn’t work, your next step is to take some reasonable, logical, natural action to put some teeth behind your words, to demonstrate that you weren’t just saying it and that you have every intention to put your values into action. With a teenager, that might be separating them from whatever it is that you believe is being a bad influence on them (their friends, their phone, etc). For a spouse who has a double standard, it might mean that you stop trying to adhere to the rules that your spouse sets.
What if it doesn’t work?
At this point if you are trying to work with someone who is not interested in a cooperative relationship, you will get a lot of pushback. Your teenager’s behavior will get more rebellious. Your spouse will get upset. Your instinct might be to just back down at this point - either giving up in exasperation or trying the same things (talking) over and over again and expecting different results. Having someone get upset with you is uncomfortable. You don’t like conflict. And you don’t know what the next step is. But you have to keep going. If you don’t, you become complacent and complicit in their sin.
Don’t go back to what you’ve already tried if it’s not working. Don’t keep talking. Don’t keep trying to manipulate someone through emotion by crying, sulking, yelling, etc. That’s not even appropriate. Think about the logical result of their behavior. If you were looking at the situation from the outside, what would you see happening? Would you see a spouse who is rejecting the other’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions? Would you see a teenager who is out of control? The spouse needs to be given the freedom to continue to choose their path away from the relationship. And the teenager needs help getting their life back under control.
What’s the message behind the behavior?
The message behind a person’s behavior is important, too. What message is their behavior sending? A rebellious teenager might be sending the message “I feel out of control in my life and I don’t know how to manage it well.” They need an adult to help them learn healthy ways to get control (and it’s not by overpowering others or being rebellious but, rather, it’s by building good relationships with those who can be trusted). An obstinate spouse might be sending the message “I’m not in this for you, I’m in it for me.” They need to be allowed to experience the separation that results from selfishness. Don’t try to force them to make a relationship work that they have no intention of making work.
As the steps you take to manage your response to their behavior get more and more uncomfortable for you, elicit the help of others who have been through it. Find a codependency support group. Reach out to a person who has had to set firm boundaries with a spouse or teenager. Get my guide to healthy conflict or my boundary-setting guide. You don’t know what you don’t know, so lean on those who do. There are others who have been through what you’re going through.
Calling out sin is hard. It’s easier to be complacent. Sometimes it even feels “holier” to be complacent. But in the end it leads to death. Proverbs 1:32 says “the complacency of fools will destroy them.” And I know that’s not what you want. You want to see your spouse happy and loving well. You want to see your teenager doing things that lead to a successful life. But they won’t get there by having someone in their life who is complicit with their behavior. You can’t change them, but you can change you to be sure that you are sending the right message not only to them but to yourself as well. And when you realize that change begins with you, you find that……..
Hope isn’t found in our situation changing; it’s found in our situation….
Need help avoiding complacency?
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