I've observed in my work that people who have the most difficult time dealing with the realities of life and difficulties in relationships are those who have been overindulged as children.  Persons who have suffered severe abuse (physical, mental, sexual) as children often seem to be able to come to healthier places in their lives more readily than persons who were overindulged as children by parents they could manipulate to give them what they wanted.  I think that's because if children learn young that they can get their own way when they shouldn't have it and the message is reinforced as they get older, they develop the idea that they are entitled to what they want and find it very difficult to accept limits, which a lot of life is about!

Often we are working in some way to make our lives easier and more comfortable, avoiding pain if we can, apparently believing that immediate comfort (physical, emotional, spiritual) leads to happiness.  A man was sharing in a meeting recently how he went to the doctor with some pain in his abdomen and one of the first things the doctor wanted to do was give him some pain medicine.  He refused it, believing that the pain was a symptom of something wrong and that whatever is wrong should be discovered and attended to.  He said to the rest of us, "Somehow people seem to have gotten the idea that pain is bad." 

Isn't that too bad, that the way God made us to tell that something is wrong we treat as a problem to be eliminated, if at all possible?  Now, get it straight, I am not saying that using pain relievers is wrong - I think it's great that they are available and that there is legitimate use for them. 

It's when we adopt the attitude that we shouldn't have to hurt and learn from our pain that it gets to be a problem.  Rather than seeing it as an indicator that something is wrong (physically, emotionally, spiritually) and using it to uncover the real source of the problem we may make our goal symptom relief only, thereby short-circuiting the path to maturity.  Subtly the belief creeps in that our world owes it to us to cooperate with our plans to have a "better", more pain-free life.

Obviously one ot the reasons why this country is in so much economic pain right now is because we were living as though we deserved more than what we had, more than enough, more than what we could afford. We developed attitudes of entitlement - the idea that we deserved more from our world then what it could afford to give.  We were believing that more is better and that we should have it, if not today, tomorrow.  Not everyone was believing this, of course, and this is a good example where many suffer as a result of the greed of many other people.

But the stories abound of how people are rising to the challenge, being creative, thrifty, generous, and helpful to one another.  It's because of the hardship that this is happening, not because it is easy or comfortable.  This hardship will bear a lot of good fruit, character-wise, in a lot of people. 

Unfortunately, the idea that people do not need to be responsible for the consequences of their choices because someone else will pay for them may also take deeper root in people, making them weaker and more dependent.

Fortunately we get to decide which kind of persons we will be.  Just today I got an email that says in bold print: "Get Your Share of the 400 Billion Dollar Bailout"  How's that for fostering an attitude of entitlement!   I have one little problem: how am I going to figure out what my fair share is?  :) 

"God, temptations abound to take the easy way out in life.  You sure don't seem to be eliminating those!  Almost like you are testing us so we can see what we believe and how strongly we believe it.  Help me to take the hard way when it is necessary, and guard my heart from the attitude that the world owes me something. Instead help me to have the attitude of learning from my hardships so that I have something good to give to the world.  Amen"