How To Deal With Horrible Humans

After a live radio interview where most callers were supportive, one angry voice spewed out and suddenly that one comment became louder than all the encouragement. 

Why does criticism stick so deeply, and why do we replay the negative while forgetting the good? In this episode, we unpack the mental health reality of negativity, rejection, and learning to live from our identity in Christ instead of the approval of others. We explore why our hearts are often drawn toward the one thing that steals our peace, and how encouragement, forgiveness, and wisdom help us respond differently. 

Through Romans 12:19 and Luke 6:27-31, we look at Jesus’ call to love our enemies, bless those who hurt us, and break free from bitterness — while recognising that forgiveness doesn’t mean ignoring boundaries or staying in harmful situations. If you’re navigating criticism, hurt, or the challenge of letting go, this episode is for you

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Transcript

Welcome And A Rough Radio Call

Dave Quak 0:00

Well, welcome to Sunburn Souls. On this show, we speak about life, faith, mental well-being, and all other kinds of things. My name's Dave Quack, I'm your host, and today we're gonna talk about something that's very fresh because I have had a weird day. See, earlier today I'd been invited to speak on an awesome Christian radio station called Vision Christian Media, Vision Radio. It's awesome. Shout out to the Vision crew. They've been really generous to Sunburnt Souls from the start. They were the first to play the Sunburnt Souls one-minute kind of motivational clips and stuff. So they've been amazing and I love the team there. And so they asked if I could get on and share a little bit, a little bit about what we spoke about last week on the podcast, about retreats and the benefits for our mental well-being and all of that. And I was excited. And on the whole, we had a good chat. But as part of the like discussion, because it went for an hour, part of the discussion, they opened up the phone lines and allowed the public to sort of ring in and give their opinions. And there was a really encouraged one, and there was a really nice one. And then in amongst 10 really good ones, there was one lady who was just like super critical of me. And I don't even know what I did to offend her. She was really mean. It would it was actually so much that I was like, is this normal? And so we went through the rest of the episode and whatever. But then I got home and realized that I was really rattled. And it makes me mad that I was rattled. It bothers me that I'm still bothered by one, you know, one person's comments when 10 other people were awesome and we had a great discussion with them. And it was just this like one angry lady. And why is it that one angry lady can overcome the voice of nine other awesome people? And maybe you've had this yourself. Maybe you're a teacher and 29 of your students' parents love you. But then there's that one that always comes in and chips little hand grenades into your world, and just their existence makes your life just a little bit more difficult. Or maybe you've got a client because you're in business, and whenever you interact with them, it's just like a game of one-upmanship. Like they always have to say something to try to cut you down or make your life kind of worse, or you know, for them to feel a little bit superior. Or maybe you go to playgroup with all the mums, and there's that one mum who thinks she's the best mum out of all the mums. And her very existence makes you feel a little defeated. I think all of us, depending on our different spheres, can feel certain ways because of the influence of certain people. And

Why One Critic Feels Louder

Dave Quak 2:33

in a perfect world, it wouldn't bother us because we know intrinsically that if we have the love of the Father and that God calls us son and daughter and that he loves us, you know, and dotes on us and has sent Jesus to bring us into relationship with him, that that is all that should matter. Like we know theologically and anecdotally and probably experientially and sometimes that that's how it's supposed to work. But the reality is sometimes it doesn't work that way. Sometimes the critic gets under our skin. Sometimes the one negative voice is louder than the ten positive voices. And I don't know about you, but I want to be set free from that. So why don't we explore the why? Like, why does it happen? Why does one voice scream louder than 10 or 100 other voices? And

The Forbidden Tree In Our Minds

Dave Quak 3:27

I think part of it actually comes all the way back to the garden. It comes back to the fall of mankind where we were in a hundred percent community with God, communion with God, and then that was fractured because of our decisions. And what I love about the garden is that God takes Adam and Eve there, and he says, You can eat from all of these plants and all of this produce. It's all yours. Everything, drink, run around naked, have fun. Just don't eat from this one tree. Just this one tree. You can have everything else, but the one tree is forbidden. And I feel like that's a little bit the same in our thought life. So we can have everything else. We can have encouragement from friends, we can have delight in the word of God, we can receive prophetic gifts from God, we can be walking in the Spirit of God, and then like that one tree that's forbidden, we just focus in on what's going to do us harm. We focus in on the negativity and we focus in on the words of the one. And instead of engaging in all that we can receive, we look at the one thing we shouldn't receive. And I feel like it's like that with our words. If someone's negative words are over you and you're focusing on that instead of all the goodness, you're forgetting about what God says about you, and you're forgetting about what your loved ones say about you. Critics just chime in and chuck a hand grenade of hate. But the love of God is just so much bigger and the care of your family is so much bigger. You got friends who would take that person to task. You got people in your back corner who would look out for you. And so we've got to focus on all of them instead of focusing on the hand grenade from the person who should just keep their mouth shut. People will have your back. A crazy thing happened in this interview this morning where after that really negative lady came on, all of the calls after that were so generous towards me. They're like, Dave, thank you so much for what we're doing. One lady got on and she didn't even share. She said, Hi, my name's whatever it was. I'd like to pray for Dave. And she just launches into a prayer. And this other guy talked about how retreats bless him. And so God saw the attack from this critical person and brought a counter-attack through the people of God. That's got twofold application. If you're struggling with the negative words from somebody, look for the words of encouragement from the people of God. And then if you're a person of God, if you're someone in a faith community and you see someone else who's being bombarded with negativity, be the person who becomes the agent of reconciliation for them. Your words can heal them. Your words can pull them out of darkness. Your words can change the way they think. And instead of looking at the tree that they shouldn't touch, maybe they'll partake in all that has been provided instead. So that first thing is to look where you focus and make sure you're focusing on the right things, eh?

Training Your Heart Like Jess

Dave Quak 6:32

And then secondly, a bit of encouragement. This is like learned behavior that can become true in your life. And even if you feel really far from that right now, you can practice and train and curate your mind and your thinking and the way you respond to things that people who are critical no longer have the grip on you that they may currently have. I am both blessed and challenged, but mostly blessed, to be married to someone who does not get affected by the criticism of people. It's quite astounding. I've been married to Jess for 22 or 23 years, and I can honestly say that she walks in freedom from this. And it's not her doing, it's a work of the spirit, but I can still remember uh it was a long time ago now, when I was a youth pastor, but we had one of our youth leaders be extremely rude to Jess one night. And Jess and I were the youth pastors at that time, and it took all my self-control not to go off at him, and you know, she in the moment was like, Dave, just let it be. And I stewed on this for a a week and then another week, and then about three weeks later, I'm like, Hey, Jess, how's this guy doing that to you? And she looked at me with a genuine blank face, as if she had no idea what I was talking about. And she didn't. His rude remarks and his disrespect and his unsanctified way of going about life, I thought she would be holding on to it like I was. And she had no idea what I was talking about. The crazy thing is, in a week or two, she saw him again and treated him as if nothing had happened because in her mind there was a race. And that's one positive thing. If you find yourself latching on to the negativity of others or the, you know, the harsh words of others, or you don't find like you're very equipped to handle criticism, it is something you can learn. And it's terrible that you have to learn that. I mean, how good would it be if people just, you know, were regulated and emotionally intelligent and their actions didn't affect us? That would be awesome. But the the reality is because people are people and people are fallible, this is something that we're always going to have to grow in. And the reason it's so potent is that when someone hurts us, right, we are immediately in our mind and in our bodies trying to make sense of it. You know, we're asking, why'd they do that? I mean, why do they hate on me? Why do they even care about me? Are they evil? Like, do they do this to other people? Are they petty? You know, we're trying to create a narrative that makes sense. But the crazy thing is, that narrative will never satisfy if you're a gospel-believing Christian, because at the end of the day, unfortunately, this is a verse I wish didn't exist. But Luke

Forgiveness Over Revenge

Dave Quak 9:26

23, verse 34, um, is an example where Jesus is at the hands of critics. I mean, they they're physically assaulting him, they're verbally assaulting him, and he ends up hanging on a cross. And then he says in Luke 23, forgive them father, for they don't know what they're doing. And and once again, unfortunately, I mean, I know it's fortunate, I know it's good to obey the Bible for sure, but this is hard, is that we're then expected to kind of do the same. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you need to stay in abusive relationships and allow people to walk all over you or any of that. Man, don't mishear me. We have rights for sure. But when it comes to someone who's just a random throwing pot shots who won't hold us physically captive in an abusive marriage or something like that, there is a level of extending forgiveness that not only sets them free, but it sets us free as well. If I'm being completely honest, when I had that interview and that lady was mean to me earlier, what I wanted to do was play a clip of it on this podcast so we could laugh at her together. Now, is that like a godly thing to do? Of course not. But why would I think like that? Why? It's because I'm hurt. Right? Something in me was hurt and I wanted to react and I wanted to respond, and I wanted her to feel the same pain that I'm feeling too. But once again, that's not the gospel. We have been called to a higher level of living as Christians. We're called to extend grace. We're called to extend forgiveness. And when someone's angry, we're called to show them love even when we want to show revenge. I got a friend who, you know, wanted to get back at someone and she really wanted to get dog poo and wipe it underneath the handle of their car. Now, it's hilarious, and it would have been funny if we could watch it with binoculars from afar. But that's how we all feel. We all feel something, whether it's a physical like desire for revenge or to hide or to attack, because we all react in different ways when we're hurt. Sometimes we want to get revenge, sometimes we want to cry, sometimes we want to retreat, but we want to do something. And in the desire to do something, we're missing something that could really transform your soul. Right? So in in Romans 12 19, Paul says, Do not take revenge, my dear friends. It's not a rebuke, it's a like comforting statement because he says, My dear friends, he says, Don't take revenge. And we want to take revenge. When people hurt us, we want to take revenge. But this verse says, Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath. Now, I don't know how you want to interpret that, but I'm like, well, if anything's coming their way, and God wants to appropriate that, then he can, and I'm gonna trust him to do that. I don't know exactly what to do in this scenario. I know what I want to do. I want to kidnap their dog. I want to let all their tires down in their car every day for a year. I want to order weird magazines to their house so their spouse thinks they've gone crazy. Like there's an endless reservoir of things that would be fun to do to someone who hurts us. But the gospel says, Don't take revenge, my gear, my dear friends. Leave room for God's wrath, for it's written, it's mine to avenge, and I will repay, says the Lord. So if you ever get desire for revenge, and if you ever get those thoughts rolling that you might consider intrusive, don't do it, eh? It sounds so satisfying, but in practice it's just not. I heard of one lady who got cheated on and she snuck into her husband's office, and before the days of mobile phones, so everything's analog and corded, she sliced through all the phone lines going into the office, and there was like four or five phone lines. But because it was with a razor blade, it disturbed the um connection enough that it didn't work any longer, but also made it really, really hard for the technicians to find it, and it cost a lot of money and cost a lot of business because she was hurt. Now there's part of me, especially the worldly part of me, that's like, go girl, you go and get that revenge. But the Bible doesn't give us permission. It would be cool if it did. If you can find a verse that gives us permission to go and exact justice, send it my way. But it's actually the antithesis of the gospel, and even more so, it's the opposite to what will bring you freedom. See, we think when we're threatened or when we're attacked or if someone's cruel to us or mean to us, that taking action would actually be satisfying, but it's the opposite of satisfaction because we're putting ourselves in God's position and he only can sit in his position. See, if you've got something real going on with God, you're gonna have your validation come from him directly. And then at the same time, when someone comes against you, you need to trust that he's gonna have your back and that he'll take care of you in in all situations.

Luke 6 And Loving Enemies

Dave Quak 14:35

I want you to get your Bible open. I want you to stop the podcast for a second and get your Bible open at Luke 6, verse 27. Okay, Luke 6, verse 27. I'm gonna read it out, but it'd be cool if you could read it along. Unless you're driving in the car, then just listen because I don't want you to crash. But Luke 6, 27 to 31 is a passage of the Bible you're gonna wish didn't exist. Because when I'm hurt, this is not my default switch. This is something I have to choose to do. And it says, But to you who are listening, I say. Okay, so that's the start of the verse. Are you listening? To you who are listening, I say Love your enemies. Isn't that intense? Like the desire to hate your enemies comes bubbling strong from within us. But the gospel's calling us here to love our enemies. You know, and then it elaborates on what that might look like. It says, Do good to those who hate you. What? Do good to those who hate me, but I want to exact revenge and I want to go and make their life terrible, and I want to sign them up to the Jehovah's Witness list and the Mormon list. So people come to their house every 15 minutes, every weekend, trying to convert them. I mean, within me, I want to get revenge, but God doesn't permit it. And if you did get revenge, you'd laugh for a few minutes, but it wouldn't satisfy your soul. As much as you don't want to hear it, you've got to do good to those who hate you. It says, bless those who curse you. What? Bless those who curse me? Like people who cuss me out, people who slander my name, people who, you know, talk about me behind my back or wish ill of me. Bless them. Yep. Sadly, yep. That's what the Bible says. Bless those who curse you. Here's the next one that I find real hard. Pray for those who mistreat you. Pray for those who mistreat you. I've got to be honest, when I'm praying for someone who's just mistreated me, my prayers are more like, God, can you bring a meteor out of heaven and direct it to their doorstep? And we all want that revenge, but when we pray for those who mistreat us, something breaks in the spiritual realm. You've got to understand that there's some transaction that happens in the heavenly realm that you can't see, but it is powerful. The words of that person are broken, the actions of that person are broken. When you pray for someone who mistreats you, you start focusing more on God's blessing for them than your hate for them. And their actions towards you get diminished because you start realizing that they're just another broken person. And when they're acting out of that brokenness, they're gonna do broken things. And so the actions coming your way are probably not even personal to you. They're personal to them in that there's something inside their life that is broken and miserable and it's overflowing, and they need your prayer. And they don't need your hate because that'll make it a miserable life even more miserable. They need our love, they need our care, they need us to reach out and say, Man, God is for you. See, all of this doesn't work unless God is God. None of this works if you've got a behavior modification system for your faith instead of a personal relationship with an intervening God. You need to have a God who will step in on your behalf when you can't do the heavy lifting. And this entire topic is all about God needing to do the heavy lifting when we don't have the strength to do it, when we don't have the desire to do it, where it would be easier to exact our wrath, we instead pray for God's love to be dispersed. The verse goes on with other things we probably don't want to hear, but it says if someone, verse 29, if someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other one also. Now there's a lot of contextual stuff going on here from the first century, and people are always debating whether or not this is physical or metaphorical or whatever. I don't know, but what I do know is the principles there. And if you're slapped on the cheek, physically or metaphorically, and you turn the other cheek, that person is going to encounter what it looks like to see the gospel. Now you might not enjoy that process, but people are looking for God, even people who are against you, and they need to see a God who takes a punishment and continues returning with love. I mean, that's the cross. Jesus took the punishment and returned it with love. And so when I see takes a slap and shows the other cheek, that's what I see. I see the love of Jesus, one that isn't afraid of pain in order to show love. I mean, that's a hard verse. But imagine if you could live this out. Like imagine if you were set free from people's insults, physical, metaphorical, whatever, if you were set free and you you could just return it with love, you would be a powerful human being. Hopefully you haven't left because the verse is pretty hectic. It continues on. So if someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. How hectic's that? So if they ask you for something, go the extra mile and be generous. Okay, old mean lady this morning, if she rang back later and asked for a favor from me, I'm not sure how much I'd double down and give her a double favor. That's not the natural thing within my heart to do. That's not what comes out of my spirit. But what God's trying to teach us through this passage is that, yeah, because the things that come out of us aren't always good for us, we've got a higher calling. So if someone does come to you and asks for your coat, which was like their livelihood, it was what kept them warm. Um, one thing I found crazy when I went to Israel is that it's actually really cold around December. I always saw the kids' Bibles where everyone's just sitting around in their loincloths and swimming in the Red Sea and whatever else. Man, we went and it's the coldest I've been. There was snow, it was freezing. So if someone takes your coat, the thing keeping you warm, don't withhold your shirt from them. In other words, if someone demands something off you, don't be scared to go the extra mile. We get scared to go the extra mile because we're afraid of what it'll mean for us. But one thing we might have to shift in our thinking is what that might mean for them. Your generosity on the back of their stupidity could be the very thing that turns them around to the gospel. I still hope you're here, because there's a few more hard verses, but they're epic. Our verse 30 says, Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, don't demand it back. See the spirit of generosity here? Like it can only come from the power of the Holy Spirit. If you hold on to the mean words and the poor actions and the yuckiness of other humans, you're going to be stuck in your own cycle. But this is saying give to everyone who asks. Okay, so imagine Angry Pants this morning. I know I've got to stop calling her Angry Lady because she she probably has a name. I'll call her Gertrude. Okay, oh Gertie. Imagine straight after that encounter, Gertie comes up and says, Dave, can I have this off you? You know, and and and I've got a choice in that moment to bless or not. And then it says in that verse, don't demand it back. In other words, give, but don't just say, okay, I'm giving now now. You bless me back. You bless me back because I already blessed you. No, it's an unconditional giving where you bless and you give and you allow God to do what he's going to do with that person, and you don't demand it back because you trust God to have his way in the situation. And so you just sort of like are able to let it go. And then lastly, verse 31. Hold on to yourself if you're not ready for the ultimate hard verse in this scenario. Verse 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. See, I don't know what was going on in the life of Gertrude this morning. Maybe she had a hard day. Maybe she's recently lost a loved one. I don't know what's going on. But if in my frailty and weakness and meanness or whatever's going on, if I hurt somebody else, I would want them to extend forgiveness to me. And so if I want them to forgive me, then I need to extend forgiveness to them. And I don't even need to uh wait for them to ask. I can do that in advance. That's the end of the craziest, craziest passage. But the point of this passage and the entire discussion is to make you realize that when you hold unforgiveness against somebody

Unforgiveness Steals Your Joy

Dave Quak 24:10

else, even when they deserve it, and when you're affected by the words or actions or deeds of somebody else, you know, even though there's a hundred good ones and you focus on the one, when you do that, you're mainly hurting yourself. Like you really are. Your joy is being stolen. Your fragrance to the world is being stolen. You've been designed to rub up against people and draw them closer to God and enjoy community and life and you know, connect to the people of God and bless them and eat and all of those things, if we hold bitterness and if we hold unforgiveness and anger and hate in our hearts, a lot of those things are tainted and we don't get to experience the fullness of life. Now, as we start to wind up, I do have to say again that if you're in a domestic violence situation or if you're being abused,

Boundaries When Harm Is Real

Dave Quak 25:06

or if there's things happening in your world like sexual abuse or anything like that, you need to go speak to somebody. Hey, you need to speak to your pastor, you need to go to the GP. If necessary, you need to call the police because you're not called to be abused in the name of being generous with your forgiveness. And if you don't know the lines or the difference or where it all belongs, start with your GP and go from there. So thanks for tuning into Sunburned Souls. As I said, I'm Dave Quack, and I always like to end the podcast with prayer. If you're wondering why they've been

Feedback Request And Closing Prayer

Dave Quak 25:40

solo episodes lately, I really feel that for between six and eight weeks we'll do solo episodes just with me pulling apart a topic. I'm just doing it to kind of run a bit of a test case because I often get feedback that people like it. I'm sure soon people will start, you know, really wanting to hear the uh interviews again. But if you've got any feedback and you could send me a message on Facebook or even an email through to the uh website portal, that would be amazing. But I want to pray. I want to pray for the people in your world and mine who can be set free when these principles apply. So, Lord God, we just want to pray for all the Gertrudes in our life, the people that throw hand grenades and bring angst and make anxiety. Lord God, we pray that they'll have an amazing encounter with the King of Kings that will soften their hearts and cause them to bring words of life and change the way they think about things. Lord God, for all of us, for whatever different circumstance we're in in our life, Lord God, we know full well that it only makes sense in light of the gospel. So would you come and bless people who are listening, Lord God? Would you let your Holy Spirit rest on all of us? When we're holding unforgiveness to others, may we extend it. And when we're the ones who are at the moment feeling the battle, that will welcome you into the battle. We praise you and thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.