[stephenkhoo]

We meet all sorts of difficult people in our lives. We have our loved ones who are living wayward, selfish and immoral lives. Some are addicted to womanizing and gambling, some drugs or drinking, some pornography and some doing illegal business. Our children are irresponsible, unmotivated in their studies, keep on failing and yet doing nothing to redeem themselves. They continue to waste their time on the phone, internet or clowning around with their friends. What do we do with such people? They are incorrigible and we feel like giving up on them. We gave them chances repeatedly, we tried to be patient with them but they keep falling and going back to their old ways of life.

At times we have to deal with our opponents, detractors and our persecutors. They are always fighting with us. Even after explaining to them, they seem to enjoy opposing for the sake of opposing, simply because their ideas were not the ones adopted.

How do we handle such people? Most of us have short fuse. We will retaliate and fight with them. We plan and strategize how best to circumvent them or demolish their opposition. Otherwise, we take flight. We just write them off and give up on them. This is what most people do, especially when dealing with our loved ones. If they are not willing to change, and after repeated failures, we just let them be and don’t bother with them anymore. We let them rot and destroy themselves. We harden our hearts, although we know deep down we are also hurting when we see them hurting themselves. But then we feel so powerless and helpless.