Some years ago, I found myself working crazy hard, making what felt like near blood sacrifices in all my relationships and responsibilities but getting little appreciation or reward for my effort. After a long season of feeling underappreciated a subtle attitude of entitlement crept in. This entitlement was a significant factor in the worst failure of my life.
I believed a lie.
I got to thinking,
“After all I’ve done here, surely
I deserve better treatment than this!’
Someone once said:
“More suffering comes into the world
by people taking offense than by those giving offense.”
This kind of offense creates a high degree of anger and unhappiness in the world. And that’s what happened to me.
Without realizing it, I was keeping a subconscious ledger, calculating all the ways I had “given at the office,” served God above and beyond the call of duty, giving up valuable time, energy- whatever, for all the causes and commitments in my life.
If you had asked me, “Are you doing all this for the reward?” I’d have said, “Certainly not.” But I do think I just naturally expected that, after awhile, all that effort would pay off in a currency that somehow made me happier.
My intent was to give and serve people out of my love for God, what I’ve come to see is -part of that serving was about my love for me, what I wanted and thought I deserved.
Every expectation is a resentment waiting to happen.
The parable Jesus teaches in Matthew 20:1-16 has had a lot to teach me about this. There was an owner of a vineyard who hired workers throughout the course of the day – at 6 am; 9 am; noon; 3 pm; 6 pm. He promised to pay each of them a fair wage.
But at the end of the day, the owner had the foreman pay each worker the same wage regardless of how long they worked. Those that worked the whole day went nuts protesting, “…we have born the burden of the day… in the day’s heat.” But the owner just said, “Are you envious because I’m generous?”
This part of the gospel infuriates us- what a rip off! … unless we are the ones that get hired at the end of the day!
There have been multiple times in my life when I felt I had born the burden of the day, in the heat of the day, in my marriage, family, church and extra-local ministry and I just wasn’t getting a fair enough return.
I remember feeling that after all my sacrifice, including for Jesus, my life should be getting easier, but it seemed to get harder. The challenges (some out of my control, some clearly generated by me) just seemed to get bigger and take more out of me.
I felt the older I got the more suffering I experienced. I felt I had a right to less suffering and when this didn’t happen I think I lost hope that this equation would ever balance fair. Eventually, this left me vulnerable to the enemy’s illegitimate offers to even the scale another way.
All of this was the trap of entitlement.
When we allow ourselves to feel entitled over a long period of time, we get bitter. We won’t admit that. We might call it frustration or disappointment. But if we feel bitter long enough it poisons the water table of our heart, and, ultimately, it can destroy a significant part of our life.
So, how do we move from entitlement to acceptance and contentment?
There seem to be 2 primary paths:
- Experience everything that comes your way as an undeserved gift
We had nothing to do with when or how we got here. It’s an outright miracle that we are here at all.
We were born from grace and are sustained by grace each day. Someone Else, not us, dreamed us up… designed us from the bottom-up… then had us delivered from one world into this world, breathing life into us.
We had nothing to do with things like our frame; heritage; intelligence; gifts and abilities; relational capacity. And not only that, but we were totally dependent upon others for many years since we couldn’t survive on our own.
Anything I get to experience: the vital air I breathe, the ability to see or enjoy being on the water; to feel the love of my wife and my family; the ability to birth an idea; the circumstances that fall into place allowing me some opportune connection, etc… When I really stop and think about it, almost everything I experience in my life is not something I worked for. It’s all undeserved gift.
“It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.”
Germany Kent
Our mindset has to shift if we want to rid ourselves of entitlement.
Unfortunately,
most of us will have to experience
something deeply painful,
in order for this shift to happen.
- Experience profound pain, loss or failure
It’s only when the rug has been pulled out from under us and we’re lying on our backs on the floor that we finally become open to deep change. Until then we will find countless ways to rationalize our resentment and our claim on entitlement.
Then, at least once in our life, we have to experience a deep gut level, undeserved love, where we don’t merit it… are totally unworthy of it, but somehow get it anyway. This is what has happened to me.
These days I’m living even more open-handed, seeking to participate with God by not fixating on that ledger sheet or thinking about what I deserve or have a right to.
When we can stop checking the fairness meter we can move from the world of debts owed –the land of rewards and merits- to the scandalous place of grace, where all we need is always free.
- Do you ever get the feeling that you deserve something more, better or bigger?
- What do you do when resentment or entitlement begins to creep in?
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