Deserve

It helps me to think of the word deserve in two parts. "de" and "serve". In Spanish and French "de" means "from". So I think of deserve as "comes from serving." In other words, the way it is commonly used, you only "deserve" something if you have served someone, or done some service to someone. A cynical way of saying this might be to say you only "deserve" something if you have been someone's servant. (If we think back to the days of kings, this might not actually be too far off.)

When I think of a baby though, it doesn't make sense to say "A baby deserves food." It makes much more sense to say, "A baby needs food."

This way of looking at things also makes more sense to me throughout the rest of a person's life. A child needs food. A teenager needs food. An adult needs food. A very old person also needs food.

I don't really believe we were born to serve others, nor for them to serve us. But I do believe we were all born with a lot of innate needs. I have heard emotionally abusive parents say to their children or teen, "You don't deserve all the things your father and I do for you." They say this as a guilt trip to weaken the person, making him or her more dependent on them and easier to control. But I wonder, "does the child or teen *need* all the things the parents do?" Or, maybe do they need something else, like getting their emotional needs filled, which the parents don't do? In my experience of over 15 years of working with adolescents, I am sad to report that it is more often the latter case.

So my suggestion is that we simply avoid using the word "deserve", and instead think and talk about what we need and what others need.

As my partner Priscilla says, "The more time we spend talking about what we deserve, the less time we spend talking about what people need."

By the way, Marshall Rosenberg, founder of what he calls non-violent communication, says the word deserve is the most dangerous word in language because it helps justify violence against others.

I would say it also gives us an excuse not to feel any empathy for someone. For example, people might say "He deserves to be punished" or "He deserves to die for what he did." or "She got what she deserved."

 

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MBR: Theologian Walter Wink estimates that violence has been the social norm for about eight thousand years. That’s when a myth evolved that the world was created by a heroic, virtuous male god who defeated an evil female goddess. From that point on, we’ve had the image of the heroic good guys killing the bad guys. And that has evolved into “retributive justice,” which says that there are those who deserve to be punished and those who deserve to be rewarded. That belief has penetrated deep into most of our societies. Not every culture has been exposed to it but, unfortunately, most have.

DK: You’ve said that deserve is the most dangerous word in the language. Why?

MBR: It’s at the basis of retributive justice. For thousands of years, we’ve been operating under this system that says that people who do bad deeds are evil — indeed, that human beings are basically evil. According to this way of thinking, a few good people have evolved, and it’s up to them to be the authorities and control the others. And the way you control people, given that our nature is evil and selfish, is through a system of justice in which people who behave in a “good” manner get rewarded while those who are “evil” are made to suffer. In order to see such a system as fair, one has to believe that both sides deserve what they get.

I used to live in Texas, and when they would execute somebody there, the good Baptist students from the local college would gather outside the prison and have a party. When the word came over the loudspeaker that the convict had been killed, there was loud cheering and so forth — the same kind of cheering that went on in Palestine when they found out about the September 11 terrorist attacks. When you have a concept of justice based on good and evil, in which people deserve to suffer for what they’ve done, it makes violence enjoyable.

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Rosenberg also says the "Four D's of Disconnection" are 1. Diagnosis (judgment, analysis, criticism, comparison); 2. Denial of Responsibility; 3. Demand; 4. 'Deserve' oriented language.

EQI page on NVC and Marshall Rosenberg

The other day I was chatting with X, a 19 year old who is in the process of healing from her emotionally abusive mother. X was feeling very self-critical, even self-hatred. At one point she wrote, "I deserve to die.".

I just sent her a hug.

I have learned it doesn't help much to debate with someone when they are in that kind of black hole.

But now, a few days later, it is still bothering me. I feel a need to write about it, to warn people.

And to ask whoever reads this, why would an intelligent, caring, sensitive 19 year old girl say these words? Why would then even enter into her mind?

The fact that this young girl would say those 3 words, tells me a lot about what is wrong with society, in this case, American society in particular, but any society where they have the word "deserve" in their vocabulary.

I see more clearly why Marshall Rosenberg has said it is the most dangerous word in our language.

By the way, this 19 year old has not killed anyone. Has not robbed anyone. Has not blown up any buildings. Has not raped anyone. So why then might she, even for a moment, think that she deserves to die?

I feel relieved to say that later in the same day she realized she was not such a bad person as her mother has led her to believe.

I remember now an exercise, I think from Nathaniel Branden which went like this. It is a sentence completion exercise. It starts like this..

My mother gave me a view of myself as.....

It is a little painful for me to even type those words, knowing X as well as I do. I know that it will also be painful for her, even physically painful for her to read those words, and then even more painful to to begin to answer. But I believe that she will learn from the pain, and then move on, and use it to help others, especially other teens who are not legally able to choose a safe place to live.

Why We Don’t “Deserve It”

Author: Shea Oakley


People often talk about the prospect of those whom they love or respect receiving something good in their lives in terms of them “deserving it”. This is a regular part of the congratulatory vernacular of most people today, including many Christians. Unfortunately it does not reflect spiritual truth. Strictly speaking, none who have walked the Earth since Adam and Eve’s fall “deserve” anything good happening to them.

The idea that people do owes more to hyper-individualism and the pride that it too often engenders. In a secular culture where “self-esteem” is most often derived from man rather than God, the use of such phraseology is to be expected and should not be particularly shocking. What is a bit surprising is how often believers jump on the “deserve it” bandwagon when a blessing from God is bestowed on someone or some group.

Devout and biblically-informed Christians in earlier eras of the Church generally had no such illusions about blessings. Rather than exclaiming how deserving the recipient was, they were far more apt to praise God for His mercy and grace when something good happened to anyone. Christians of the past knew that no sinner, even a redeemed one, had earned blessing in and of themselves. They recognized that in a Christian context, the very idea was oxymoronic. So should we.

I understand that telling someone whom we regard highly that they “deserve” a good job or spouse or a nice home comes very naturally to us and is our way of expressing personal regard and respect. But it does not do the recipient any good. It certainly does not help them to understand the grace of God and it may well hinder such an understanding. How can they grasp the idea of “unmerited favor” when we are telling them that such favor is merited by their actions? In our good intentions, we are only giving them reason for pride and an accompanying sense of entitlement.

You might object that when someone does a good job they at least deserve accolades for doing it. This may be true, but keep this in mind: no one has the power to do good in and of himself, no one. Every good thing we do in this life is made possible by God. Such things may come through common grace (in the case of unbelievers) or sanctifying grace (in the case of Christians) but, either way, they come from God not us.

I am not trying to make a case for making someone feel rotten when something nice happens to them. I am simply saying that it is untrue to say that anyone is intrinsically deserving of good. When that nice thing happens, we would do better to say something like “Praise God for blessing you with that job (wife, home, etc.). I’m so happy that He did this thing for you because I love you and it is wonderful to see how much He loves you too.”

To shift from “I’m happy for you, you deserve it” to “I’m happy for you, praise God for His love” may not come easily for those of us who have taken in the colloquialisms of the world without even being consciously aware of it. Indeed I must confess that I have been among those who have said “you deserve it”, but I say it less and less as time goes on and I get a better idea of how little good I deserve and how much good I am given by God anyway.

Part of the sanctification of postmodern, Western Christians is a gradual rejection of things that postmodern, Western culture tells us are justified in favor of things the Justifier would have us adopt as His children. Giving up the phrase “you deserve it” may not seem like a very important part of that process, and it may not be, but it is a part of it nonetheless.

© Shea Oakley. All Rights Reserved.

Converted from Atheism in 1990, Shea Oakley has written over 350 articles for electronic and print publications since 2002, including Disciple Magazine (and Pulpit Helps Magazine), The Christian Herald, The Christian Post, Christian Network and Crosshome.com. In 2003 he graduated from Alliance Theological Seminary with a Certificate of Theological Studies. Shea and his wife Kathleen make their home in West Milford, New Jersey.

I recently read an article by Liv Schumann that was talking about nostalgia. It started with "You deserve to be happy."

I really don't know just what this expression means. So I left this comment...

I feel a little sad when I read this. I feel understanding of Liv's intentions behind writing it. At the same time I feel confused by what she means by the word "deserve". I have thought about this word a lot and decided to stop using it.

I'd like to offer Liv and everyone else who reads this my page on that word

http://eqi.org/p3/deserve.htm

And I feel sad that when I searched the article I only found the word "feel" once. I did not fithe words pain nor need or needs.

I have found it helps me to feel my pain, identify my unmet emotional needs.

It also helps to share my pain. I am often in a lot of pain so I need a lot of empathy.

I have lost a lot of people from my life. I constantly meet them and lose them. Partly because I travel. Partly because I feel too much pain from not getting what I need in the relationship or friendship.

I have written to Liv, btw. I hope she will reply and we can talk about all of this and we can share our ideas for new articles. :)

Teen prisoners