Contempt is the feeling of disdain for anything considered disgusting, vile, or worthless. When you are contemptuous, you are showing how much you despise the person. You are willing to do things that harm them. You treat them as if they are inferior to you and worthless as a person. You use your words to shame and ridicule. You scorn them with degrading looks. As a result, you dishonor them.

If a relationship isn’t built on mutual respect and dignity regardless of the person’s actions, then it isn’t going to be healthy. I wish I could say that intimate and familial relationships don’t have contempt because of the importance of the relationship, but it isn’t true. In fact, it is the opposite. We often have the most contempt for those closest to us. This is because the people closest to us have the ability to evoke strong emotions, since their actions directly affect us.

Contempt destroys relationships. A relationship needs to be built on mutual respect and dignity. When you are contemptuous, you project a superiority that says you are better than the other person. You forfeit the opportunity to work from a platform of respect for each other as individuals.

Sometimes, we are contemptuous in an attempt to get someone we care about to make different choices. We so dislike what they are doing and believe so strongly that we have a better solution that we get angry and push them as hard as we can. In the process, we become arrogant and superior and communicate the message that they are inept, incapable, and worthless.

Every person is worthy of God’s love. Jesus died for each of us while we were sinning and separated from God. No one deserves contempt. Jesus went to the people whom the self-righteous Pharisees and Sadducees treated with disdain. He reached out to them by treating them with kind regard and respect. His treatment drew them toward him by showing them that they could choose something better for themselves. He showed them that they had worth even though their actions weren’t always the best. When you treat someone with respect, they get a glimpse of what they could feel about themselves if they made different choices, and they become more likely to change.

By Karla Downing

Relationship Devotional Prayer

 
God,

Help me to recognize any attitude of contempt I might have toward someone. Give me the ability to reach out in a way that communicates that person’s worth regardless of what they are doing rather than treating them with disdain.

Relationship Devotional Challenge

• Learn to recognize a contemptuous attitude, and purpose to treat the person with respect and dignity instead.

Scripture Meditation

 
John 8:1-11

“Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ ‘No one, sir,’ she said. ‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.'” (NIV)