Dealing With Difficult Relatives During the Holidays

Loving others the way God loves you can be a challenge anytime, but during the holidays the difficulty is intensified because some family members rub you the wrong way. There are two kinds of people in the world: Christians and non-Christians. Within these two people groups are those you prefer to hang with and those you had rather not spend your time.

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Being a Christian does not automatically put you in the preferred people group or make you an acceptable friend. And when it comes to picking your team of close friends, it is possible for some family members, even if they profess Christ, to not be on your side. This predicament can be a tolerable uncomfortableness for most of the year, but when the holidays roll around, it is challenging.

Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful, so we are told. The challenge is the holidays are a time when people, who do not ordinarily hang together, come together in an “expected” spirit of love and gratitude for each other.

I talk to a lot of individuals, and it never fails how during the holiday season the topic of dealing with those you do not care for is discussed. Some people look at the holidays with partial dread because of the seemingly unresolvable relational conflict within their family. Extended family get-togethers are not always inspiring events.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are two of those extended family contexts where you do not have much choice as to who shows up at your door. Inevitably there will be at least one person in these situations where you have to wear your fake smile while treading the waters of superficiality.

Take Uncle Biff. Please

Uncle Biff is that guy. Honest and enjoyable conversations are hard to have with him. Each get-together with Biff is a mental challenge as you wrestle through the moral merits of being friendly.

To be honest with Biff is to invite conflict and controversy. To ignore the over-stuffed elephants romping around the room is a call to suppress your real thoughts about Uncle Biff.

Then there is that momentary thought about being honest with him. But your sinful temptations trumps sound reason because you want to give Biff a piece of your mind. It is in those moments when my daughter says,

Zip-it, lock-it, and put it in your pocket.

So you choose the “zip it, lock it approach” as your annual default. You bite your tongue while resisting the temptation to sin in your heart. Down deep you know it makes more sense to say nothing rather than to say something that could lead to protracted and unresolved splits in the family tree.

The Irreducible Minimum

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all (Romans 12:16-18).

The Bible urges us to seek to be at peace with everyone. The resistant retort is usually something along these lines:

It says if possible, and I do not think this is possible. You have never met my Uncle Biff.

It is true that I have not met your Uncle Biff, but I do know that when I am in those moments of potential conflict, I have to bring myself back to the stabilizing truths of the gospel.

The gospel breaks through the fog in my mind and the stubbornness of my heart. It is a beacon showing the way to a blind seaman. The gospel brings relational difficulty down to the irreducible minimum.

The irreducible minimum is the fact that Uncle Biff is no more and no less of a sinner than I am. We all have this one thing in common: We were equally guilty before God and were ultimately unable to better our condition apart from His grace.

It is only because of the unmerited favor of God that any of us stand a chance of being saved from ourselves. It is that truth that must impact and rivet our hearts. If we are not rightly affected by the gospel, we will not be able to enter any relational context redemptively.

To the degree which God’s gospel is piercing and affecting your heart will be the extent to which you will respond in a Christlike way to the Uncle Biff in your life.

Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little (Luke 7:47).

What Is Your Goal For Biff?

Are you out to prove a point?
Are you more interested in winning an argument?
Is your desire to withhold your love from him because of how he has treated you?
What is your goal with the family member who annoys you?

If you are affected rightly by the gospel and are thinking correctly about the gospel, you will be obedient to the gospel. Your obedience is how the Lord will partner with you to help Uncle Biff change.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:27).

The Christian’s goal for all people is for them to love God and to love others above all else. God mysteriously partners with us, allowing us to be ministers of reconciliation so others can know Him.

Someday Biff will stand before God. He will have to give an account of his life. Will you be a minister of reconciliation, cooperating with God to change his heart?

We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others (2 Corinthians 5:10-11).

Are you ready to help Biff? The point of the gospel coming into your life was not to give you all of your dreams or to meet all of your expectations. Salvation was not granted to you so you could relax, but so you could get busy sharing Christ with others (Philippians 1:29).

The gospel is a rugged cross that must be modeled and taught to needy men and women. The gospel is the message in your heart that He wants you to carry to those who need to hear it, like Uncle Biff. If our gospel cannot transcend our differences, we have no gospel worth discussing.

Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).

I do not know if Biff will change this year, next year, or any year. He may transform. Biff may come to Christ. He may become born again. I do not know. But that is not the central question for our consideration. You are not called to change people. You are invited to model and share the gospel to those who need its power.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20).

Picture Worth a Thousand Words

I suspect most of us will have at least one opportunity this holiday season to present the gospel to an extended family member. One of the most effective ways you can display the gospel is by modeling it.

Do you want others to be affected by Christ?
Do you want others to see and experience the power of the gospel?
Do you want others to know and experience what you know on a daily basis?

If these are your goals for your friends, you are on the right track. And if so, let us press the point a bit more as you think about how God responds to you:

How did the Father respond to you when you were in your sin?
How does the Father respond to you when you sin now?

The answer is kindness, and that is how the Father always responds to you. Kindness is core to who He is and how He motivates you to change. This idea is your call to those who trouble your soul.

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Note the word while in the text above. Look at it. When was God kind to you? It was while you were sinning. He did not love you after you got your act together. He loved you while you were living in sin. Maybe Biff needs that kind of loving attitude from you.

Reacquaint Yourself With the Gospel

Let those thoughts settle in your mind over the next few days. Ask the Father to remind you how He responds to you each time you sin. It was His kindness that led to your repentance. He patiently persevered through many years of your rebellion.

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance (Romans 2:4)?

It is not wise to presume on the riches of God: the riches of His kindness, the riches of His forbearance, or the riches of His patience. We should not take these things for granted because it is those things that will lead anyone to change.

If we forget God’s methods of change–kindness, forbearance, patience, we will soon begin to presume against His grace, and those marvelous things will only be impotent reminders of our past. And Biff will not experience any of them through you. Will Biff change this year? I do not know.

The better question to ask is, “Will I model the kindness of the gospel to him rather than obscuring the cross by my self-righteous attitude toward him?”

How can you serve Biff?
How can you surprise him with grace–the thing he does not deserve or merit?
How can you respond in grace, in a similar manner in which the Lord has responded to you?

I appeal to you to begin praying for your Uncle Biff today; asking the Lord to give you opportunities to model the gospel to him during your time together.

How to Have Genuine Thanksgiving

One of the most influential verses in the Bible, as it pertains to how to relate to difficult people, is found in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.

I give thanks to my God always for you (1 Corinthians 1:4).

Some of the most divisive, challenging, and angry people in Paul’s life was the Corinthians. They did not like him and did many things to discredit his apostleship and the vision he was trying to build in the church.

I think it would be accurate to say some of the Corinthians hated Paul. Even so, Paul was unwavering in his affection and his attitude toward those undeserving people. We see this in 1 Corinthians 1:4 as Paul gives us a peek into his prayer life.

Paul was free and untethered from the slanderous and manipulating behavior of the Corinthians. His freedom led him to his closet, where he got down on his knees and genuinely offered thanksgiving to God for the people who were hurting him.

Perhaps your heart has not been changed by the gospel like Paul’s heart. Maybe you have some work to do with God before you engage Biff. If so, let me suggest you go to your closet and begin praying to God like the Apostle Paul.

Ask Him to give you the grace He gave Paul. Ask Him to help you pray for the mean, disappointing, and challenging people in your life. My prayer for all of us this Thanksgiving and Christmas is,

To be able to pursue God genuinely,
While appropriating His grace upon you,
Which releases you to be a minister of reconciliation toward those who need what you have been given.

I hope the Uncle Biff in your life will be surprised by the gospel as he perceives it working in you as you practically model it before him. May your gospel-motivated attitude and behavior lead to a much needed redemptive conversation.