By Their Fruits

For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Luke 6:43-46

Jesus Christ never minced words. When he called Herod a fox, he meant every word of it. When he called the Pharisees, Sadducees and scribes, “hypocrites,” he didn’t back up and say, “Oops, I didn’t mean that…let me find something more polite to label you!” Truth is truly never politically correct. He always said things exactly how he meant them.

My former pastor was notorious for similar statements, especially, “If He can’t say NO, you can’t say Lord!” In this case it is very fitting. He was very shoot-from-the-hip and blunt. We love him for it still to this day.

I’ve spent the evening in church last night and talking to a friend of mine who has more insight into people that is even believable at times. Things I endured in my life the past 8 years came slamming back this morning. Things talked about, conversations, body language that people used in the past, their actions, all of them started clicking together like pieces in a puzzle.

My friend thinks that Apostolic preachers are “empaths” because they are so in-tune with things around them, be it people or the Holy Ghost. She’s yet to admit that God could ever talk to a preacher, let alone a man or woman, we’re working on her. She does however believe in angelic and demonic activity!

So often I’ve forgotten things in God’s word that could have made my life a whole lot easier. Recent dealings with someone that I opened my heart to and fell in love with ended disastrously when they began to lie to me repeatedly. She said she wanted “spiritual guidance,” but Stone’s first law of spiritual leadership is “I can’t lead where you don’t follow.” I told her this repeatedly. She asked me to attend a denominational church with her that even if I’d been totally backslid would not have fed me spiritually. After 2-3 services that wasn’t working for me. She complained that I wasn’t going with her and I told her that I had a church she should attend. Four services later she had been baptized in Jesus name and filled with the Holy Ghost…unfortunately, at that point all growth stopped.

I don’t know how it is for you, I’m patient with new converts, but there comes a time with me when people do things that even non-Christians would do I begin to questions their actions, their honesty and their intentions. I’m not a judgmental person. I believe in working with everyone and meeting them at the point of their needs, hurts or trouble. Being honest with myself though, some people simply do not want help or see that they have a problem. It was the case with this young woman.

She projected the image of having it all together when we first met, even telling me that she was the kind of woman that I needed, educated, successful, stable, everything she said my ex-wives were not. However, after a few emotionally charged incidents, things changed almost like flipping a light switch and I realized I was dealing with something I had often dealt with in the past...An identical something.

She began to lie to me, first about small things. First she would tell me I said something or did something I did not do. Always an agreeable person, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt since we’d only been seeing each other and hanging out a few months. It wouldn’t be the first time I had ever told someone something then realized that the person I had told had been a previous date, or friend from church. This however quickly spiraled into something far more drastic. Soon everything I said was supposed to be “being critical” of her. I was supposed to always be “changing my story” when we would discuss past issues. These issues quickly became present issues, because no matter how often we tried to “talk things out,” she would never drop them and no amount of apologizing ever ended the matter. The next time we talked, she would bring them up again, and again, and again.

I started making it a point never to talk about previous relationships yet almost every time she would bring something up to channel the conversation back into that vein, or what I found she would deliberately misquote something said, simply to get me to correct them…then quickly tell me I was interrupting her. At one point she told me she was suicidal and wanted to kill herself. I immediately told her I wasn’t letting her out of my site and she agreed to stay with me.

She went to the barbershop and store with me that evening and she did not take off on her own, but she stared off into space like a zombie the entire time and then threw up in a bag in the car on Quantico…and I began to realize a little of what I was dealing with. Then when she went to work she vanished. A call to her command pretty much left me wondering when they did not forward the word of her threat up the command chain. Two days later she was back, telling me the person who took my call “knew her very well and knew she’d never do that,” so they didn’t notify the command. Those of you who have had military or government training in suicide awareness and training, know that this is a big no-no! You always forward suicidal threats up the chain of command.

She moved to a new apartment and first she lied to me and told me she was with an old roommate and it wasn’t costing her anything. A week later she forgot what she told me and said she was paying $2000 a month for an efficiency apartment…basically a hotel room. Other little lies followed, and being a former Marine NCO, I have great attention to detail when people talk to me. Then she lied to me about one of her friends, claiming she had never dated him. I knew it was a lie, and her friends quietly told me that she would go nuclear on them if she found out they told me...but yes they knew the guy that she claimed was just an old roommate, and they had dated. Then she later told me we weren't going to Missouri and Colorado together to meet each other's families and when I asked she  said she was traveling alone. Another lie. At this point, I figured God doesn't reveal anything unless he plans to deal with it.

None of this was what I expected of a new convert who has just received the Holy Ghost, and although I know God doesn’t make us robots when we come to him, I’m pretty sure we all have a conscience. The thing about it is when I confronted her about the lies, she got angry and said she couldn’t believe I would call her a liar! No apology. No remorse. No repentance…nothing, but anger that I would even accuse her of something so obvious. I spoke to my parents about it and they told me to watch her eyes and body language, knowing I had been married to a woman in Florida who was mentally and emotionally ill. I didn’t realize back then just how ill until after I got out of the situation and met a friend of mine who worked as a therapist with mentally ill patients.

Over dinner one Sunday afternoon (long dinner…I think we were there for 6 hours) we talked and Karin wanted to know all about my past. She tells me she never really turns off, she’s always diagnosing people. I told her everything that I had been through and pretty much left out no major details and when I finished she told me, “Les, they were borderlines. Every single relationship you have been in has been with a borderline.” She told me she was diagnosing me the entire time we ate dinner and talked and it was actually interesting. I learned a lot about myself and my exs!

I had no idea what she meant by “borderline” then, but since then I have learned a lot. That was nearly a year ago. At that time she told me she wanted to know what about these kinds of women attracted me or what it was about me that attracted them. Finally she told me that female borderlines (borderline personality disorder) are attracted to strong male role models, successful, mature, protective, loving, affectionate…a daddy figure. They keep weak, spineless men around as their close friends, because they can manipulate them easily, but they want a strong daddy figure in their life too...as long as they don't get too close.

I figured her male friend who was drummed out of the Navy for being overweight and unable to hack it in even Navy PT, and unable to get or keep a job while he mooched off of her for the few years they were roommates...probably fit the weak-minded male roll Karin told me about that BPs tend to keep around them...and she told me that because I was too much of a Marine and wasn't willing to be manipulated she had bitten off more than she could chew and was running before her house of cards tumbled down...now that I had talked to several of her friends and family members about the BPD disorder. All her projections of a "perfect" life she tried to project to others was tumbling down around her. She told me the panic she was experiencing was normal when I told her about her calling and making the accusation about her mail being rerouted.


Karin likened a Borderline's closest friends to week-minded drones, basically people without two brain-cells to rub together, or easily influenced. They like to portray their selves as powerful people, but it's all just a facade. They desire power, but never really obtain it. It's just smoke and mirrors, thus the reason for them bailing the first time a BP get's near someone who knows what they really are. Karin told me that they won't get help or seek help from man or from God...unless something traumatic happens to them and they suffer a great loss. Whether an injury, losing a family member they've known for a long time, or a nervous breakdown, something has to force them to get help. They will not seek it of their own accord while they can still try to maintain their smoke and mirror projection of being in total control of their lives. That's sad.

BPs, like Sharon, have a "God complex" that makes them have to be in control of everything...and Sharon had already admitted to me that she had anger issues and was rebellious and had to always be in control of her situations. They perceive admitting they have a problem or seeking help, or even asking God to heal them as a weakness. Sadly, that's the only way they can be healed. I think that if they could focus their drive for control at throwing their need at the feet of Christ he would heal them instantaneously.

Karin told me that borderlines (75% are female) were traumatized in their childhood, usually between 3-9 years old, by sexual or physical abuse or abandonment. Something in them shuts off and they turn off their emotions. Unlike an adult who endures a traumatic experience, our emotions are mature and we learn to only close out people who are strangers or have harmed us, not those we love. We don’t blame others for something someone else did to us. Borderlines can’t do that. Once turned off as a child, their emotions never grow beyond the age they were at when they were traumatized. I’d been told this same thing by Norris, a counselor in Florida I talked to about my ex-wife. Molested at 9 and physically, emotionally and mentally abused, she had snapped and even as an adult she could not control her rages, often physically assaulting her kids, my kids, and me.

With the current girlfriend, I asked Karin about the lying and she told me they can’t help their selves. “Borderlines do that, Les. That’s all they know.” I can’t even give an exhaustive list of all the behaviors I’ve witnessed, but constant false accusations, mind games, lies, manipulations, belittling, ignoring other people’s feelings, are all tools of the trade for borderlines. Lies are the least of their deck of cards.

BPD splitting is one of their main characteristics of borderlines. It’s a switch between idealizing and demonizing others. In other words they either hate or love you, and can’t seem to accept anything in between as “normal.” It’s the whole “I hate you, don’t leave me,” reaction. That combined with mood swings tend to undermine relationships with friends, family and co-workers. Untreated, the symptoms worsen. Below are other listed symptoms from psychcentral.com. They want to rename the disorder to Emotionally unstable personality disorder. Either way, the results are the same. Parents (of both sexes) were typically reported to have withdrawn from the child emotionally, and to have treated the child inconsistently. Sad, I know.

• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
• A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
• Identity disturbance, such as a significant and persistent unstable self-image or sense of self
• Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
• Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
• Emotional instability due to significant reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
• Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
• Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms  from http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/symptoms-of-borderline-personality-disorder/

I mentioned in a previous blog of being called yesterday and being accused of rerouting her mail from another state back to Virginia. I was taken completely aback by the ludicrous allegations until I realized she actually meant it!

I’m generally sensitive to people’s needs, but having been married before to a borderline, I know they have no remorse whatsoever. Like King Saul, they can turn on the tears one minute and try to pin you to the wall with a javelin the next. There is no consideration to the consequences of their actions. They do not care who they hurt. Emotionally they are so detached that you can sit and tell them that what they are doing is hurting you and they will give not a single acknowledgement to what you said or what they are doing…then walk away and continue doing it!  I’m shocked to my core when I see a person professing Christianity blatantly do things that violate God’s word with impunity but if you look into the Word of God you see why.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Romans 1:18-20

And when you see how they do not want to even consider that their actions are against the scriptures, you see why they are the way they are.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:280-32

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was. 2 Timothy 3:1-9

Without natural affection…that flabbergasts me. When I look and see that Paul in the word of God almost 2000 years ago knew that the world in the last days was going to be a royal mess, it blows my mind. The word of God is so transparent. Having dealt with 4-5 borderlines in my life I still find the drama and lack of emotions among them totally amazing. I remember how empty sounding the threats were now, the suicidal statements sounded hollow. It wasn’t until I talked to Karin that I realized that generally they weren’t suicidal…although without treatment they can end up that way.

I’d spent weeks reading relationship books like, Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, Bringing Out The Best In Your Wife, by H. Norman Wright, and The Five Love Languages, by Dr. Gary Chapman. In addition to my daily Bible reading, I’ve been a very busy man trying to “learn what I wasn’t doing right” in my communication with women…until Karin told me bluntly, “Les, you aren’t the problem. You communicate fine.”

I felt like I wasted months, even years of my life, right then. I’d wasted my time trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t want to communicate beyond a superficial level…because communication builds knowledge and knowledge is power…and borderlines will never allow you any power. To know them is to know that they have problems, and that to them is the chance to destroy them or hurt them. They will not leave their self vulnerable and that’s what love does! They won’t allow it. For almost 5 months I beat my head against that wall. They won’t let anyone know they aren’t perfect and topple their long maintained house of cards. To them emotions mean pain and they can’t and won’t allow their selves that vulnerability.

In this case, no matter how beautiful, gentle and tender of an image this girl presented, I had to realize it was all a façade. Borderlines learn how to hide their disorder. They will go to any lengths to keep anyone from not only finding out that they are borderline, but to keep you from telling anyone they know about it or forcing them to get treatment or help.

I know this from personal experience. The first time I tried this in Florida 7 years ago the woman physically assaulted me, attacked my girls and then filed false charges against me to try and get me put in prison for something she did. She lied to our pastor continuously for 3 years, turning on the tears to get him to back away from the truth of the situation and manipulate him…then she’d come home and beat me and the kids brutally.

Later on after a “time of repentance” she attacked the kids again and that was the last straw. At the direction of an Army chaplain at my unit and my local pastor, I turned her in to Florida DCF. Two days later she filed for divorce and other than in court I never saw her again. Her father called me a few days later and apologized to me, saying his daughter was broken irreparably before he met her at 15 years old. He told me if he had known me before hand he would have warned me not to marry her. It had been 18 years since he had seen her and he’d never even met his grandchildren!

Regardless of the issues, disorders, or past trauma, Christians have the responsibility to obey the word of God. Lying, deceit, abusive behavior is not condoned by the word of God. Christ spoke specifically of this to John in Revelation stating no one who does those things will ever enter heaven.

And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. Revelations 22:10-16

I will continue praying and fasting that something will break in their lives and that God will grant them a chance to come to repentance. Ultimately the choice is theirs.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9