24 – CONSTELLATION- CTW-2022-E

CHALLENGED TO WIN by Gregory Fernandez

Chapter 24 – CONSTELLATION OF FACTORS

As we saw in the previous chapter, many factors deluge a person. Some thoughts are good, while others are bad.   Words like un-lovingness, meanness and cruelty are not nice words.   We want to recoil from them.   We do not like them appearing in marriage books ­ and rightly so. However, when looking for the surprises that cause the marriage to break up, we, unfortunately, find that such factors as meanness, un-lovingness, and cruelty exert their sphere of influence and are directly or indirectly responsible for making things go out of hand.   No matter how we feel about such words, it is better to face what there is to confront and examine it, as we have studied so many other topics in this book.

We are trying to understand what drives good people to irrational (and often) unkind behaviour that sometimes leads to severe (and occasionally) irreparable damage.   We are trying to throw light on some of the surprises about the bad behaviour of people who usually are quiet and good-natured. Finally, we are trying to understand how people change their lifelong yardstick of good behaviour ­ “What” makes them do wrong?

We are also trying to understand what makes these people revert to normal behaviour after reconciliation.   We are trying to understand how this un-lovingness, meanness and cruel behaviour “happened” and “how it disappears.” It is almost like turning a switch ON or OFF. If this is the case, the next question would be “Who or What” turns the selector ON or OFF.

We all like to believe those bad things and destructive temptations only happen to other people, not us.   But in all fairness to ourselves, we must be clever enough to be aware that the same elements of temptations that befell others can befall us.   We have to be honest and humble enough to see that.   We must be mindful that we are against a cunning and resourceful foe.   We must know that factors like PRIDE have toppled good people from high positions.   The first sin that took place was pride; some angels succumbed to pride, and immediately, hell was created.   These once heavenly angels became devils.

LUKE 10:18, 

18 “AND HE (JESUS) SAID TO THEM, I SAW SATAN FALL LIKE LIGHTENING FROM HEAVEN.” Luke 10:18, 

 

EPHESIANS 6:12, 

The words of the Bible puts it very clear to us:

12 “WE DO NOT WRESTLE AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD, BUT AGAINST PRINCIPALITIES, AGAINST POWERS, AGAINST THE RULERS OF DARKNESS OF THIS AGE, AGAINST SPIRITUAL HOSTS OF WICKEDNESS IN HEAVENLY PLACES.”   

 

It is for this reason that the Bible tells us:

EPHESIANS 6:11

11 “PUT ON THE WHOLE ARMOUR OF GOD, THAT YOU MAY BE ABLE TO STAND AGAINST THE WILES OF THE DEVIL.”   

We must pray to God all the time.   In this way, we do all we can to keep all the devil’s wiles out of our life.   We have to pray that we do not face the misfortune of guilt and remorse of conscience.

These wiles gripped many unfortunate people. Without knowing it, they become brutes to their spouses, driving them to tension, distress, unhappiness, and despair, doing everything they can to damage themselves, their families, and their property.   As mentioned in the last chapter, many tactics employed were within the framework of legally accepted norms and opinions.   Many of them had a fair amount of sophistication tactics that could be labelled as “ONE’S RIGHTS” ­ and all this strife while the partner was suffering the wrongs. “Contest” became the battle cry.   These sly and sophisticated wiles cloud, distract and distort people’s attempts to love their spouse.   These wiles are so vicious that they can drive the other person to accidents, disabilities, death or even suicide.   The goal of these wiles is “Destruction.”

When a person does something destructive, it is not ‘love’ that drove the person to it, nor is it the lack of ‘love’ (passive).   The active and deliberate acts of cruelty caused the other person to such drastic actions.   Marriage is not beyond the effects of wrongdoings.   Because of misdeeds and wrong-happenings, PRAYER is essential.

We find that very clever, knowledgeable, skilful, well-placed individuals have turned to discouragement, quitting their job, drinking or shifting to some other vice.   Most were not inclined to vices, nor were they feeble-minded or weak-willed to take any sins up.   To a milder extent, these actions were their “Signing-Off”, their way of “Giving-Up.” They probably did not dare to do more drastic things to others, so they turned inwards.    Whether one’s efforts are inwards or outwards, the net result is destruction.

 

People, who are very well acquainted with the couple in marital difficulty, will see the deterioration in both partners.   Both suffer.   But what surprises the friends is the blindness and lack of feeling that grips the victim and drives them, despite hardship and fears to keep being unloving, mean, or downright cruel.

 

If we look at the chemistry of such behaviour, we find FEELINGS on one side.   These feelings stem from ego, hurt, resentment, spite, anger, malice, etc. On the other side, we see DRASTIC ACTION.   The catalyst that moves negative feelings into drastic action is CRUELTY.    This catalyst works regardless of whether emotion and activity belong to two different persons in the same person.

 

To summarize:

  • On one side, there are FEELINGS
  • On the far end, there are DRASTIC ACTION
  • The CATALYST that moves negative feelings into drastic action is CRUELTY.

 

The reason why these factors cause us to be surprised is

(1)        Because we think we are not so bad, these negative influences cannot affect us.

 

(2)        These negative influences of un-lovingness, meanness, and cruelty, especially cruelty, do not operate as single entities.   They need “A CONSTELLATION OF FACTORS” to function.   Fortunately for most of us, the constellation of factors is always incomplete, so we seldom get bad.   Maybe we would reach a stage of un-lovingness and no more.   We should be thankful to God that we encounter missing items that make an incomplete ‘constellation of factors’ which saves us.   But even this shallow level causes enough surprises and disharmony in marriage.

 

What is this CONSTELLATION OF FACTORS?

 

CONSTELLATION OF FACTORS is challenging to itemize because it differs from person to person and from one situation to another.   Maybe an illustration will help to bring it out.   For this purpose, we will forget marriage for a while and look at an extreme situation where the constellation of factors makes cruelty thrive.   For this, we can look at the history books.   We find that good, modern, civilized, prosperous, religious, practising nations suddenly find themselves locked into the grip of war.   Somehow, a dictator comes into being, and many like-minded but vicious people get drawn to him.   Then more and more like-minded people get attracted to them.   All are ready to help and support the dictator’s flagitious ambitions.   Under this umbrella of duty and authority, they give full vent to use the situation to uphold cruelty in the name of duty and even pursue their crimes.

 

The Second World War gave a sad but highly eye-opening insight into the mechanics of mass cruelty.   I mention the Second World War because comparatively more has been documented about it than any other historical war.   The statistics and the variety of coverage of the Second World War have been unparalleled.   We are not trying to see the war but as a generalized case history of war criminals.   We are trying to see the relationship between the cruelty of some individuals.

We are surprised that most of these people behaved seemingly ordinary ways before the war.   They followed the expected standards of behaviour and decency.   At least they conformed to acceptable standards.   Many did not have marked or pronounced a way of ‘showing off or being ‘bullies’.   Many had wives and children, which they brought up according to their religious and traditional customs.

 

Their behaviour changed when:

  • War was brewing,
  • AND there was a dictator,
  • AND an invitation to join
  • AND uniforms
  • AND guns
  • AND authority to do wrong things
  • AND a piece of paper to condone crimes in the name of duty, then something turned these seemingly ordinary people into brutes.

 

These possibilities completed the constellation of factors that allowed cruelty to push compassion away and take control.

 

Surprisingly, these very same people who were noted for their ferociousness and brutality on the war front transformed into good people when they returned home.   Imagine these cruel people whose blood, murder and rape transformed into good personalities when they came home to their families and towns.    They transformed into kind husbands, loving fathers, and helpful neighbours.

 

It was like, at home, they were Good People, but once they went to their military duties, they became brutes.

 

Funny as it may sound:  For these people to change into cruel behaviour was their uniform. Their uniform was their passport to change personalities. Their uniform became the reason to do bad things in the name of DUTY or JOB. After the war, many wives and mothers could not agree that their husbands or sons were ever capable of wrongdoing.

Their uniform was one of the factors that unlocked THE CONSTELLATION OF FACTORS that possessed them and converted them into brutes.

 

Please note: Equally surprising was that once the leave or vacation was over and they were back in uniform with their buddies on some ‘away from their home field’, they reverted to being brutes.   They switched from Good to Bad and vice versa merely because of the environment and company.   Strange as it may sound, the uniform had a brutalizing effect.   The uniform gave them a sense of legality and invincibility.   The uniform and brutalizing effect seems to be the case if we observe the history of many nations and ages.   Some tropical countries of yesteryears did not wear too many clothes because it was too hot.   Even these people found a way to create this illusion of legality and invincibility by wearing masks.   With the cover, they behaved like brutes; without it, they reverted to normal behaviour.

 

The only logical explanation is that the constellation of factors was not complete in addition to giving a good image of themselves in their hometown.   The same behaviour of returning to normal was seen after the war.   There is always an element of trying to show others in the hometown that they are good and the need to try and hide one’s war crimes.   Despite the cover-up and deceptive manoeuvres, something was not complete in the constellation of factors; that is why they did not carry on their inhuman behaviour.   One specific missing factor could have been the absence of an evil leader.

 

We should be aware that these people succumbed to some form of evil. That evil is still around.   We should not brush this aside with a statement, “Only certain people are prone to such things, and that is because they are that way.” It is nice to believe that.   But is that the complete explanation? Or is that only a part of the explanation? All babies (and even these evil people) were pure and innocent when they were babies. But, something in the course of their life influenced them wrongly.

 

The key people responsible for such crimes were not merely trying to get a little land for cultivation or plundering to increase their material possessions.   There came a time when these people had more wealth than they could ever use.   Many had more than sufficient power.   Many did not have the health to eat ordinary food.   Most suffered tremendously, and medicines were the only thing to keep them alive.   Yet, despite all these good and bad points, they still carried on their relentless obsessions with wounding their fellow human beings.   Even impending defeat, disgrace and death could not make them stop being cruel.   Cruelty is the grip evil exerted on them.   A criminologist once explained that, at first, these people hated crime, but when they remained long enough in it, they became accustomed to it and endured it.   If they reminded in contact with it even longer, they finally embrace it and become influenced by it.   In a way, this is precisely the same psychological pattern with people and drinking habits; smoking, gambling, lusting in their minds and any other vice.   They depend on it, crave it, and know it is wrong, yet they cannot free themselves from it.

 

We have seen how gripping these factors are through the above citation of a war situation.   Now let us turn back to the marriage situation.   On one side, we see the evils of war aimed at nations’ cruelty and mass destruction. But, on the other hand, IN MARRIAGE, THE SAME EVIL STRIVES TO BREAK UP THE SMALLEST CELL OF THE NATION, ­ THE FAMILY.   The methods may not be so spectacular, but they could be highly tailor-made to attempt to break the tri-union relationship between God-husband and wife.   The dynamics are:

 

  1. To cause misery to the partner, drive the partner to drinks, mental pressure, sin, break down, divorce, and separation forces them to do anything or drive them away.

 

  1. People lose faith in God through discouragement. Unfortunately, DISCOURAGEMENT is one of the evil force’s best-used tools.

 

  1. Drive the victim to self-despair and destruction. At first, the route is via guilt, remorse of conscience; later, the course shifts to bring a malicious, sadistic, ironic realization that ‘everything done – was done to one’s God-given best ‘friend’, the spouse.   It is this realization that hurts one terribly.   To rub salt further into the wound is the even harsher realization that the wrongdoings can be irreversible incidents.   What Judas faced when his Lord died was the realization of irreversibility.   And he could not bear it.   A partner could also fall into such an irreversible situation, which eats them up. SO, WHEN JESUS’ DISCIPLES ASKED HIM HOW TO PRAY, ONE OF THE SENTENCES HE TAUGHT THEM TO SAY WAS “…   AND DELIVER US FROM ALL EVIL…”

 

THIS WHOLE CHAPTER IS WRITTEN WITH ONLY ONE MOTIVE ­ TO INTRODUCE TO THE READERS—WHY WE SHOULD PRAY.

 

REMEMBER, IN ADDITION TO PRAYING FOR YOURSELF AND YOUR MARRIAGE.   YOU CAN ALSO LIFT YOUR PARTNER IN PRAYER TO THE LORD.     INTERCESSORY PRAYERS COME TO GOD EVEN MORE DIRECTLY BECAUSE WHEN WE PRAY FOR ANOTHER, WE ACT LIKE CHRIST.   GOD HAS A SPECIAL SOFT CORNER FOR SUCH PRAYERS.

 

THE STEP BEYOND PRAYING FOR YOUR NEEDS IS TO PRAY FOR THE MILLIONS WHO HAVE THE SAME TRIALS AS YOU HAVE. But, BY DOING SO, YOU ARE MULTIPLYING YOUR INTERCESSION FOR COUNTLESS OTHER PEOPLE. YOUR PRAYER EFFORT IS BRINGING GOD’S BLESSING TO MULTITUDES OF PEOPLE, IN ALL DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, TO PEOPLE AND COUNTRIES WHOM YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW.

—

This book and the surprises we examine concern seemingly good people brought up well, educated, and well-off.   Many think they are too intelligent to stoop to bad behaviour.   Something is lying to them that this kind of un-worthy thing can only happen to others, like the weak-willed, the stupid, the ignorant, people of other races or cultures or countries. So Jesus called the author, and the source of this is the devil.   Jesus calls the devil the father of lies.

 

JOHN 8:44

44 “HE WAS A MURDERER FROM THE BEGINNING, AND DOES NOT STAND IN THE TRUTH, BECAUSE THERE IS NO TRUTH IN HIM.   WHEN HE SPEAKS A LIE, HE SPEAKS FROM HIS OWN RESOURCES, FOR HE IS A LIAR AND THE FATHER OF IT.”  

 

Jesus is God; he does not need to strengthen his position in our eyes by ‘mud-slinging’ anyone.   He does this to warn us about evil and rampant deception.   None of us is too tough or sophisticated to fight the devil’s temptations.   We need God’s help.   Prayer is the method to link man’s finite mind with God’s infinite strength.

 

God Bless you.