The Essential Difference Between the Message and the Messenger

One of the most valuable lessons in protecting your peace is learning to separate the wisdom from the source.

In life, we often encounter powerful truths, profound advice, or insightful observations delivered by people whose actions, character, or treatment of us fall short.

When this happens, we face a choice: Do we reject the entire message because we dislike the person speaking it, or do we wisely extract the helpful idea and leave the flawed messenger behind?

Survival and Spiritual Truth

For some of us, this distinction was a necessity long before it was a spiritual lesson. Growing up around drug addicts and sex offenders forced me to know the difference between people who were safe and people who were dangerous. It was a matter of survival to see the behavior and not just the person.

But becoming Christian taught me an equally important truth: that everyone is the same. Not the same in their actions or their safety level, but the same in their inherent humanity and need for grace.

This journey from necessary discernment for survival to spiritual equality through faith, is the foundation of truly healthy boundaries.

How to Use This Separation to Protect Your Energy:

Stop Internalizing the Hypocrisy: When someone who attacks you posts about “peace,” the urge is to focus on the infuriating contradiction. Don’t. That just gives them space in your mind. Instead, accept that they understand the theory but fail at the practice. Their inconsistency is their problem, not yours.
Wisely Extract the Value: If an antagonist shares a genuinely insightful idea, practice emotional neutrality. Acknowledge that the idea is good (The Message), then immediately dismiss the person who said it (The Messenger). You are not endorsing them; you are simply being smart enough to take a useful tool, even if it’s handed to you by someone you dislike.
Validate Your Own Experience: If you see someone with a troubled past post about “healing,” remember that their words do not negate your pain. Your memory of their actions is real, and no amount of eloquent prose from them changes the facts of your history.

Your growth does not depend on the integrity of others.

Hold onto the wisdom you find, but release the flawed people who deliver it. Your job is to protect your peace and use every insight, no matter where it comes from, to heal and move forward.

You deserve to be well, even if the people around you are still unwell.