great books begin like this...

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Or like this: 

"A number of years ago, over a period of eighteen months, I had an experience that can best be described as transference related to infantile separation anxiety and depression..."

Call me a sucker for books on pastoral care and counseling, but I've just begun to read Sheep in Wolves' Clothing: How Unseen Need Destroys Friendship & Community And What to Do About It" by Valerie J. McIntyre and I'm loving it so far. It's a first-person account of someone who at first believed herself to be in conflict with a close friend and ministry colleague, but then discovered that the source of her terrible feelings towards that person started deep in her own past. What makes this book even better is how much insight McIntyre has regarding the spiritual components of her own battle: how past issues like growing up with a seriously depressed mother are related to the sin in her own life. I have yet to read more than 20 pages of this book, but I'm already thinking of recommending it to a number of people. 

I mention this book here because "transference" (that is: thinking you've got a problem with someone else, even feeling intense hatred towards them, when in fact the things that you're feeling are mainly due to your own issues and insecurities/fears) is something that occurs so often at one level or another in the Body of Christ. The church is, after all, a collection of meaningful and hopefully life changing relationships. And so the door is open for transference to happen, and it does so often with people in authority (they become mommy/daddy substitutes, they become the object of irrational hatred and/or love), but it also throughout the rest of the church. 

So besides recommending this book, I'd also suggest asking yourself a question: who do you have strong feelings towards right now, whether good or bad? If you can think of anyone, then it would be a great idea to take a minute and ask God if there's more than meets the eye in that relationship. Ask him, as David does in Psalm 139, to try you and know your thoughts, and see if there is any grievous way in you. 

One bonus tidbit from the book that describes how powerful transference can be: McIntyre mentions spending a summer during college serving at a homeless shelter and recognizing that many of the people that she served there had someone in their life that was the object of their hatred and blame, someone that took on almost larger than life status to them as they transferred their own issues onto that person. Many of them were in the state that they were in due to their inability to confront and become free from their own issues.