Emotional wranglers
Are you dealing with an emotional abuser?
Laban manipulated other’s emotions to get what he wanted. His victims thought there was something wrong with them. That’s the beauty of this crime.
When you manipulate people’s emotions, you do worse than break their arms. You break their spirits.
But there is no law against it, so it goes on:
At work.
In churches.
In homes.
Laban’s emotional manipulation was self-serving. Wring all you can out of everyone you can. What’s a family for, after all?
Laban, our emotional abuser of interest here, spotted Jacob’s emotional imbalance. Jacob had just had a traumatic break up with his family. Then, he fell in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel.
In his emotionally vulnerable state, Jacob leaped on Laban’s offer. Seven years as a slave so he can marry the girl? Someone got the short end of the stick on that deal.
While Jacob made Laban rich, the father-in-law-to-be kept calculating. He waited until the night of the wedding to enact another emotional change-up.
Instead of Rachel, Jacob had ended the wedding drinking party by going to bed with her not-so-fine older sister. The girls told him their father had set this up.
Jacob stormed into Laban’s favorite cafe the next morning and yelled, “How dare you?”
Laban knew Jacob’s weakness. He knew this man was still hurting from how he had tried to usurp his brother’s place in the family.
Coldly, Laban put his coffee down and looked in Jacob’s eyes. “We have a custom here, my boy, that the older one marries first.” His tone sounded sympathetic yet condescending. “Around these parts, we don’t let the younger take the place of the older.”
A knife to Jacob’s heart would not have done as much damage. Guilt flooded him, choking him, as his thoughts replayed the scene of how he had upstaged his older brother.
The abuser at this point could ask, “Why are you hitting yourself?” like a bully twisting the weaker one’s arm back to strike his own face.
Staggering from the blow, Jacob caved. Weakly, his resolve turned belly up as he asked, “What do I have to do to get Rachel?”
“Work for me another seven years.” No ordinary man would agree to such a thing. But Laban instinctively knew how to use a person’s emotions against themselves.
I’ve been Jacob, in some ways. I’ve been Laban, though I’m not smart enough to be as elaborate as he was.You don’t want to be either one.
Victims of emotional abuse can go their whole lives thinking they are the problem.
Perpetrators of this crime might go their whole lives thinking everyone else is the problem. The cure for both Laban and Jacob? Jesus, who made Himself the servant.
When He was manipulated, He did not overreact. When He met the emotionally unstable woman at Jacob’s well, He stabilized her, built hope, gave her life.
You can heal from those who hurt you.
You can heal those you have hurt.
2 Comments
Several years ago I went through the same thing and it seemed my whole world was falling apart. I asked God to change me on a daily basis so things would at least be normal in my life. I was being accused of several different things that I know I had not done yet I continued to plead with God to change me. One day it was if God said to me “Just Stop. I can use you the way I created you and for my glory if you will just let me. When I stopped letting people control my mind God began to use me to minister to other people.
Excellent. Thank you for sharing that!