The Physics of Relationships

Believe it or not, relationships are like physics. There are certain laws God’s woven into the fabric of the universe, certain principles at work whether we realize it or not, whether we believe in them or not.

Gravity can be a tremendous blessing or a terrible curse. If you jump off your house, you’ll find it’s a curse that brings you pain and a sudden stop. But if used correctly, like an airplane does, it can be a tremendous blessing, allowing us to travel huge distances in relatively little time. And gravity is always operating, whether we decide to believe in it or not.

God’s laws of relationships are the same way. He set them up to bring us tremendous blessing, but if we attempt to disregard them, they will bring us terrible pain. Here are the four basic laws of relationships:

1) Honor your parents (Deuteronomy 5:16 and Ephesians 6:2). This one is so important, it made the Ten Commandments. The currency in the Kingdom of God is honoring. Basically, in whatever area you honor your parents in, it will go well with you. That’s a promise from God. And in whatever area you do not honor your parents in, it will not go well with you.

2) You reap what you sow (Galatians 6:7). Even the secular world has figured this one out. Ever heard the phrase, “what goes around, comes around”? You can get whatever you want from relationships. Give to the other what you want, and the byproduct is it’ll come back to you.

3) Don’t judge or you’ll be judged (Matthew 7:1). This is talking about judging people, not actions. We get into trouble when we judge another person instead of (or in addition to) their actions. The other person is not the evil they did to us.

4) We become what we judge (Romans 2:1). When we judge another person, we condemn ourselves to do the same thing. Ever say, “I’ll never be like my parents and do that.” Guess what happens? We find ourselves doing the exact same thing, because we judged them for doing it.

We’ll talk about each of these in more detail in the next several posts. But what do you think? Do you have any doubts about any of these? (#4 was originally hard for me to accept.) Or have you seen these in operation? Tell us in the comments. And if you think this post would help somebody else, please share it.