Rejection

By Ray Smith & Roy Wadrom

Children can be rejected by an “in your face” rejection, as when parents outright tell a child that they were not wanted or not planned for, or, there is the more common way of subtle rejection when parents reject their children unintentionally.

An illustration of the latter was seen when my three year old son was taken to the hospital by his mother accompanied by a male friend of ours to have a head wound stitched. When the doctor put on a magnifying mask to fine stitch the wound, the little fellow kicked up a fuss. The doctor told my wife and the male friend (who my son thought was me) to leave the room. My son saw the only two people in his world that he trusted walk out and leave him with strangers. In his heart he said, “Who can I trust now?” It is interesting, that the same scenario was repeated in my life at the same age.

If children are never rejected by their parents they will never be rejected by anyone, because they know where they belong and to whom they belong and with that knowledge are secure in their identity.

Children get their identity from their father. When rejected by their parents they are cut off from their identity. Those children are now under a death curse [The foundation of protection is missing, things have turned to custard, the person either becomes a workaholic or they become depressed, because the reason to live is missing] and belong nowhere, although they are not particularly aware of the fact. The children may then judge their parents for rejecting them and are bound or caught by that judgement.

The only way children can survive rejection, is to rebel. The rebellion is that they wrest away the initiative from their parents rejection by saying, “you have rejected me, but now I am rejecting you.”

The rejected children, by being rejected, have now been “put down or let down” by the only people they know and trust in their world.

From the point of rejection it will not matter how much they are loved by their parents, how much money they are given by their parents or how much the parents or anyone else does for them . . . . . they still have to rebel to survive.

So . . . is there a way out?? Yes . . . there is a way out. There is always a way out! For there to be healing in the parent/child relationship one of the parties has to take the initiative, to make the first move as it were, whether they consider themselves guilty or not, at fault, or not.

The child could make the first move by repenting for judging their parents for the rejection. By lifting their judgement off the parents by an act of their will, and setting the parents free to continue to reject them, they would be set free to move on in their life.

It will be likely that parents will also end up judging their children for their rebellion. Therefore, if or when a child repents and lifts their judgement off their parents, the next eye contact will be felt by both parties . . . though may not be understood.

Parents can repent for rejecting a child. They should go to them and apologise for rejecting them and ask the childs forgiveness. Then they can lift their judgement off the child by an act of their will for anything that may have been done or said by the child to the parents . . . and . . . set the child free to continue to rebel.

I know of a child who is the middle child of three. The child grew up with the knowledge that they were a mistake and were not planed and therefore not wanted. I encouraged this child to repent for judging Mum & Dad and to lift their judgement off them and set them free to continue to reject them.

The challenge was taken up and I led the person through a prayer of repentance and the lifting of their judgement off their Mum & Dad.

Unbeknownst to me, this person decided to call their Mum & Dad on their way home. The result was that a whole new relationship has formed, because the parents have no rebellion to react to in their child.

It must be remembered, that neither party can control the response of the other after dealing with their side of the issues. In other words, you might go with the very best of intentions, but the response may not be what you were expecting. Go with no expectations, expectations can disappoint!

When someone has a judgement against someone or something, that judgement permeates every fibre of their body. It is detectable through eye contact. Once judgement has been lifted off the judged person, the next time there is eye contact between the two people concerned, there will be no rebellion between the two!

If we have no judgement in our hearts toward anyone they cannot rebel against us. Judgement rebels against judgement. It is not only the rejection that is so bad, but also the judgement that it can lead to on both sides!

When we become born again, we should not experience rejection again, because we are dead and Christ is alive in us. We then know who we are because of whom we belong to!

Nothing regarding rejection should need to be dealt with after salvation if the person truly repented at the point of salvation. If they have not, they will be confronted with the rejection issue sometime after salvation. At that point they have a choice. Go to the Tree of Life and through repentance the control is broken, or go to the other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and be locked back into the old nature again and nail Christ back on the cross. It’s all a work of grace.

Please see the Graphic – the Two Trees