Leaving the Land of Resentment

How does we find our way home when we have dwelt in the far away land of resentment?    How do we escape the clutches of frozen anger and habitual bitterness–when it holds us with an iron grip?

Again, I find the words of Henri Nouwen to be of help.   He asks:

Is there a way out?   I don’t think there is–at least not on my side.  It often seems that the more I try to disentangle myself from the darkness, the darker it becomes.  I need light, but that light has to conquer my darkness, and that I cannot bring about myself.  I cannot forgive myself.  I cannot make myself feel loved.  My myself I cannot leave the land of my anger.  I cannot bring myself home nor can I create communion on my own…my true freedom I cannot fabricate for myself.  That must be given to me.  I am lost.  I must be found and brought home by the shepherd who goes out to me.

Nouwen goes on to pinpoint two habits that help position us to be found by God and brought home.  These little, faltering steps can be taken–not to make us more deserving but to acknowledge the truth.    These two habits are trust and gratitude.   Let’s begin with trust:

Without trust, I cannot let myself be found.   Trust is that deep inner conviction that the Father wants me home.  As long as I doubt that I am worth finding and put myself down as less loved than my younger brothers and sisters, I cannot be found.  I have to keep saying to myself, “God is looking for you.  He will go anywhere to find you.  He loves you, he wants you home, he cannot rest unless he has you with him.”

In other words, the same voice that claims to handle everything and know what’s best for me independently of God is the voice of self-pitying despair and inferiority.

This egocentric voice is a chronic complainer, a chronic doubter, a chronic liar, and a chronic idolater.   It scorns the freely offered, pride-humbling, love of God which is given at the bottom of our lives, and instead desperately seeks to find any other means of securing love outside of God.   It’s trying to hold onto it high elevation at all costs.   Even to our own destruction.

Then, when if fails and falls and is rejected, “king me” wallows in self-pity and seeks to drown its sorrows in empty pleasures or…more often than not…in resentment against others for supposedly failing us.

Trust, especially abandoning ourselves to God’s pro-offered love in Jesus Christ, strikes at the heart of this.   Nothing hurts more, to be vulnerable and lose all control and need a love we cannot arrange or we’ll die.   It hurts to be loved in our unloved, neglected places, in our unlovable, foul places where we need it most.

But that’s temporary.   When God’s love does break through the iron bars of distrust and failed ego-dreams, there is nothing more splendid or blissful.  We go from being wretches to being dearly loved friends.   We literally become new people in Christ.   We are home and never, ever have to leave.

Next time I will talk about gratitude, the next habit that flows out of trust and which keeps resentment at bay.

Resentment and Self-Righteousness

One of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen, wrote a book fifteen years ago about the parable of the prodigal son in the Bible.

Nouwen explores the hearts of the three main characters, the lustful younger son who runs away and comes home broke and broken; the dutiful elder brother who erupts into bitter resentment when his wayward brother is pardoned and partied; and the father who loves both boys and longs for them to fully receive his love and come inside his house.   Nouwen find echoes of each character inside his own soul.

It is the elder brother who scares me because he is so religious, outwardly obedient, and conforming.   Yet inside he is seething, resentful, and feeling cheated and deprived.   He envies the fun and frolicking of his younger brother, but is too moral to join him.   He fears and resents his father because he does not know His father’s generous heart.   He cannot understand forgiveness.   He can only compare what he gets with what his brother gets. He is just as lost as the family scoundrel, but does not know it.

Nouwen goes on to observe:

The lostness of the elder son, however, is much harder to identify. After all, he did all the right things.  He was obedient, dutiful, law-abiding, and hardworking.  People respected him, admired him, praised him, and likely considered him a model son.  Outwardly, the elder son was faultless.

But when confronted by his father’s joy at the return of his younger brother, a dark power erupts in him and boils to the surface.  Suddenly there becomes glaringly visible a resentful, proud, unkind, selfish person, on that had remained deeply hidden, even though it had been growing stronger and more powerful over the years.

Looking deeply into myself and then around me at the lives of other people, I wonder which does the more damage, lust or resentment?  There is so much resentment among the “just” and the “righteous”.  There is so much judgment, condemnation, and prejudice among the “saints”.  There is so much frozen anger among people who are so concerned about avoiding sin.   The lostness of the resentful “saint” is so hard to reach precisely because it is so closely wedded to the desire to be good and virtuous.

Something has attached itself to the underside of my virtue…Here I am faced with my true poverty.  I am totally unable to root out my resentments.  They are so deeply anchored in my soil of my inner self that pulling them out seems like self-destruction.  How to weed out these resentments without uprooting the virtues as well?

In my own journey, I have found that the voice of condemnation–the harsh, merciless, moralistic voice of my inner tyrant–is just another mask it wears.  It is NOT the voice of God.  The same thing that tempts me to do evil also feeds on self-righteousness and law-keeping.   The same fallen ego that wants to elevate itself above others with good behavior is the one that wants to indulge and sneak little sins.

The inner prosecutor that arraigns me for bad behavior is, metaphorically speaking, handing me Playboys behind his back as he speaks to the judge.

My point is there is an unbreakable link between self-righteousness and resentments.   And resentments fuel addictions.   And so self-righteous, moralistic people fall into private wickedness and are eventually outed as hypocrites.     And one of these privately indulged sins is anger.

And so we come as resentaholics, who are powerless and in bondage to our addiction.  We admit our life is unmanageable, and turn our life and our will over to a grace-giving, accepting Father in Heaven.    We realize, letting the full force of it humble us, that cherished anger is just as sinful as indulged lust, that resentment is just as wicked as sexual sin.

We give up the right to be right.   We lower our altitude all the way.   Our ego is deflated.   We are broken, and broke.    We need God to do it all for us.   We are beggars and our sin-debts, in heaven’s economy, dwarf the national debt of the USA.

We are first demoted to “mere sinner”, then we are embraced as a returning, beloved son by the generous Father we’ve been looking for our entire lives.   We are pardoned and partied.   We become “mere believers”.

We transfer full possession of our sins, and the hurts caused by the sins of others, to Him.   He bears our sins and our sorrows on the cross.  Then He transfers to us His perfect righteousness and comforting blessedness.   We are beloved, accepted, and freed from resentment.   We can now afford to be generous towards others.   Our debts have been far overpaid and our spiritual bank account is infinitely full.

How are you doing in the battle against these inner resentments?    Ready to trade in the “life owes me” creed for the “I owe God everything” friendship?

We Can Afford to Be Generous

It is hard to overcome resentment, especially the cold, hard, deeply rooted kind that has been there for years.   But there is a way out.

Resentment thrives on comparison, especially comparison between what we think we deserve and what we actually get in life.   It fills the gap between how we think we ought to be been treated with how we are treated.    Notice the words “ought” and “deserve”.

In resentment, the ego looms large.   We have this high opinion of ourselves, even a grandiose idea of our own importance.    As gods and goddesses, we expect the world to revolve around us.   We expect to be treated with deference and respect.   We expect our line to be the shortest, our lane of the freeway to go the fastest, and our lives to have the least troubles.   We expect other people to cooperate with our plans for their lives, to fit into our goals for the universe, and to take their rightful place under us and obey our commands.

And when they don’t cooperate, when our expectations are disappointed, or when they, perish the thought, refuse to bow to us and our wishes, we get angry.    When life doesn’t go our way, we get angry.   When God in heaven won’t give us what we want or think we deserve, we get angry.    We give ourselves permission to abuse, hurt, deprive, neglect other human beings.   Our hands are stained with evil.    We are not gods, but sinners masquerading as petty, tin-pot, tarnished, wannabe deities.

And that highlights this issue:   we ourselves need great, great forgiveness.    We have sinned.   In our blind pursuit of selfish agendas, we have wronged God.   We have given ourselves permission to violate the good of others.   We have very deeply hurt others in our fits of egocentric narcissism.   We are sin-a-holics drunk and high on ourselves.  And it is ugly!

So our case is desperate.   And the solution is beyond us.    We come as beggars hopelessly in debt, as career criminals with long records, as perishing, disease-ridden sickos to a holy God who brooks no defiance.    He holds all the cards.  We hold none.    All we can do is cast ourselves on His mercy and beg for an undeserved pardon from One who died on a cross to set us free.     So we surrender our life and our will over to God.

We discover God is generous.     Being rich in love, mercy, and grace, He can afford to be generous towards us and lavish us with undeserved kindness.   So He goes overboard–casting our sins into the depths of the seas and wiping out our long record and making us clean.    Instead of using words like “owe” and “deserve”, our ego is collapsed under the weight of all this undeserved love.   We begin to use words like “undeserved” and “privileged” and “thankful”.

And now, in light of our own heavy sin-record and how generously we’ve been forgiven, we begin to see the offenses of others in a new light:   as nickels and dimes and pennies.

We begin to overlook petty slights and minor faults.   We realize we can afford to be generous to a fault because we’re richly forgiven of so much more.    Even great offenders, those who have done us the worst, are seen as what we used to be ourselves:   great sinners in need of great grace.

The path away from resentment involves an acknowledgement of our own great sinfulness and powerlessness to fix ourselves.   Our petty ego is collapsed and we surrender to our loving Lord.    Then He loves us greatly and undeservedly, and our hearts melt and our wills soften.    We begin to feel fully forgiven and are filled up with gratitude and wonder.

We want others to enjoy what we are privileged to enjoy.   We can afford to be generous when they disappoint or hurt us.   We can afford to forgive them and cancel their debts.    The power of resentment is broken.    The power of redeeming love is released.

We’ve left the wrecking crew, and joined the building crew.     Instead of always trying to get something out of others, we enter relationships to give something good to others.

And this redemptive tale can become our own story of overcome resentment.    The way is open to us–why not take it?   The door is unlocked–why not open it?    Why be jailed by resentment any longer?   Why not fall backwards into the arms of Christ?

The Cancer of Resentment

The Recovery Movement learned early on there was a strong connection between addiction and resentment.  Each reinforced the other.  Addicts typically blamed everyone else, but took no responsibility whatsoever for their own hurtfulness, viciousness, or harmfulness towards others.

Then, when they attended A.A. and got sober, they were directed to take a fearless moral inventory of their own lives and to make amends to whomever they had wronged.    No excuses or delays were allowed.   It simply had to be done.

In other words, the Twelve Step movement found that people could not stay sober and, at the same time, cherish ongoing resentment in their hearts.   And they also found that admitting wrongs and asking forgiveness was a powerful force that reinforced  sobriety.    To stay sober, lists are kept short and amends are sought quickly so the build-up doesn’t happen again.

Resentment is a spiritual cancer.    We collect petty slights, and amplify them.  We keep lists and tallies of real or imagined wrongs.   We ignore our own foul, vengeful attitudes.   In fact, we justify them.   Then we pay people back double.  We justify treating the other person or people badly.   Then we tell ourselves it was OK, that they had it coming, that they deserved it–ignoring the sorrow we leave in our wake.

But instead of releasing tension and cooling down anger, vengeance and acting out resentments only deepens them.    Our unkindness bred resentments in others, and so they retaliated against us.    We then used their bad reaction against our bad actions to justify our resentment-warped view of them, and paid them back even more.   Resentment only escalates tension and handcuffs us to the object of our bitterness.  It frees no one.

This is how a feud begins and is kept going.   Relationships are cut off.   We execute the relationship and inflict the social death penalty on them, refusing to see them or speak to them ever again.    If they make the first move and grovel, we might forgive them, etc.  But don’t expect me to do it!

But we are the ones who are trapped.   Resentment becomes a way of life.  We resent God above, and everyone else around us.   We even resent ourselves and can’t forgive ourselves for the smallest of failures.    We are cut off from voices of kindness and mercy.   We are too prickly to approach.  We have a biting tongue.  We storm and rage–but nobody is listening.   For we have soured and lost all of our relationships .    Nobody knows and nobody cares.

Resentment literally sickens and kills millions of people every year.   It is a luxury that nobody can afford for long.   It destroys families and churches and neighborhood and nations.   It is a form of insanity, a slow-motion form of spiritual suicide that kills everyone else around us as well.   It a prison from which few can escape and to which many return after getting out.

Most of us, if we’re honest, desperately need to  receive treatment and be detoxified from our resentments.     Next week I will attempt to lay out a proven path that has helped a recovering resentaholic like me.   There is a solution for resentment.    There is a better life on the other side of this idol.

The Tragic First Year

One year after last year’s historic election, I will devote one entry to the current state of American politics.    To those who prefer me to stick to spiritual matters, I apologize in advance.

Even though I disagree with many policies and priorities of the Obama administration, I have a level of sadness for the wasted potential and lost opportunities of this past year.    I am not angry.  I am truly sorrowful.

A year ago, people were boldly speaking about a new era of post-partisanship and of finally solving entrenched, chronic problems.    Now, the divide is worse than ever.   We are back in the business of close, partisan votes on policies that do not enjoy wide support across the spectrum.

How has this happened?   How might it have gone differently?

I think the problem really began with the “Stimulus Bill”.    We were in the midst of an “economic crisis” where “something had to be done fast”.    But instead of involving both parties in the formation of the bill, at hammering out a long-term consensus that would survive elections and be bought into by both parties, congressional leaders did things the same old way.

The vast majority of the money in this bill went towards retaining state and local government jobs, and the relief of the unemployed.    In our area, we have seen sidewalks being built where none were needed and roads being paved that didn’t really need it.    Not only has unemployment not decreased, it has grown alarmingly in this first stimulated year.

In other words, the Democratic Party took care of its core constituent groups first and foremost–the public employees, the education establishment, the unions, and the underclass.    It was misnamed, this bill.    It was really wasn’t designed so much to stimulate the economy but to limit the pain of these particular constituencies.

This outcome was a breaking of faith with the American electorate.   And this misuse of power squandered the goodwill that was very much there a year ago.    This is just as tragic as the squandering of good will on the Republican side after 9/11, when the war on terror was used for short-term political gain at the expense of the long-term consensus.

The lack of results of the stimulus bill has therefore left many people cynical, disenchanted, and absolutely opposed to spending any more money on stimulus bills that don’t stimulate.    How it came about, and how it worked out, has alienated the middle of the electorate who are now very concerned about receiving such meager results for such vast amounts of tax money.

Now there’s the health care bill that just narrowly passed the House of Representatives.    The Democratic Party’s principal goal is to provide insurance to the uninsured–whatever the cost.

Most of the rest of us just want to reduce the spiraling costs of our own health care premiums first, and without further increasing the nation’s debt load with grandiose schemes.

My advice:   Fix the hyper-inflation of heath care costs first.  Disrupt and break inflationary spiral.  Then, when this issue is resolved, the electorate might be more open to looking at creative ways to address the long-term problem of the uninsured.

Demonstrate competence and reliability when spending our tax dollars, or when crafting wise regulations that don’t create worse problems than they supposedly solve.    Start small, with solutions that would win 80%-100% super-majorities in House and Senate.  See how they play out.   Then, when credibility and competence have been established, build on that good will to do some more good from a position of proven results.

Instead, the majority party seems determined to do it all in one fell swoop right away with increasing deficits and expansive regulations and new bureaucracies.   The other party, when it recovers power, will dismantle this structure and the same polarized and polarizing cycle will happen again.

I am sad it has come to this.   Twice now, in a decade, a truly national moment has been squandered.    Twice now, a single party in control with large majorities has become tone-deaf and interprets even election losses as endorsements for their present courses of action.

First, the idols on the Right were exposed as failures.  Now the idols on the Left will just as surely disappoint and fail us.   But will we gain any insight from these events?   Will we realize that there are some problems only God can solve?   Will we admit our national life is unmanageable, and will turn our lives and our wills over to God?

Recovering from Spoiledness

Peggy Noonan, in the previous entry, asserted that America is governed by “calloused children” who don’t realize that we have limits as individuals and as a nation.

These kind of leaders gain and hold power to achieve their ideological dreams, to feel like they have “done something”, to make citizens cooperate with their grand vision–whether or not they really want to or need to.

And then they shame or belittle or explain away those who either disagree or oppose this coercive vision.   Then they wonder why they are resented and can’t fathom how the people being imposed upon are so angry and would dare to vote against them.    They are offended that their motives are called into question and their goals are seen as anything but good.

Which brings up the issue of maturity vs. immaturity.

We all are prone to fits of immaturity.  I know I am.   We are all born with a propensity to folly.   I know I was.   We all have this “king me” inside of us, a tyrant called “his majesty, the baby” which can still throw temper tantrums or pout with the best of them.    I know I do.

They’re is something within us that doesn’t want to live within limits, that wants what it wants and wants it now.   And if it didn’t cause such tragedy, it would be comical that we could be so egotistical to the point of silliness.    But it does cause tragedy.   Others get deeply hurt by our self-absorbed, self-consumed, self-promoting agendas.   That’s what I’ve seen in my life.

America is thus a culture full of immaturity and immature people, whatever their birth age.    Thankfully, we can each do something about it.

Maturity begins with taking responsibility for my own immaturity, with refusing to excuse or justify my resentments and outbursts by pointing the finger at others.    Wisdom, in other words, begins when we admit we have been chronic fools and desperately need to acquire wisdom if we’re going to make it in life.  ”The beginning of wisdom is:  acquire wisdom.”

Maturity continues by acknowledging that I am not God, never have been God, and never will be God.   God is God, and “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

This fact is why all effective Twelve-Step programs begin with admitting that our lives are unmanageable, that we are enslaved to our idols, and that only God can restore us to sanity and save our lives.    We face our ego down, call its bluff when it says “I can handle this!”, and surrender control by turning our lives and our wills to the Lord.

And when God is invited to assume the throne of our souls, and pushes aside our inner tyrant, and we rest in His good control, then His control controls the habits and vices and self-destructive impulses we cannot.    This is why impulse control is another hallmark of maturity.    ”The fool’s frustration is known at once” and “he who rules his spirit is better than he who captures a city” are Proverbs which capture this idea.  All this happens under God.

We delay gratification, and labor long in the same noble direction even when the instant returns are meager and the difficulties to surmount are high.   We say “no!” to selfish impulses in order to channel our energies into the best and highest things.

Suffering, in other words, teaches us patience and perseverance and resilient hope.    Maturity is expensive.  Fools chase after instant relief from suffering at all costs, wise people leverage suffering to their lifelong and everlasting advantage by letting it form godly character within them.

Interestingly, the great British sociologist Unwin, who studied cultures all over the world throughout history, found that cultures that limited sex to marriage and delayed sexual gratification had the greatest creative outpourings and advanced the furthest.    Those cultures that allowed sexual libertarianism to run amok experienced decay, decline, and death in their creativity.     Water carves a canyon faster in limited channels than on broad plains where it dissipates its force in every direction.  So do sex and creativity and people.

Another hallmark of maturity is empathy, the ability to place ourselves in another’s shoes and see life from their perspective, and treat them with regard, compassion, and kindness.     I have been re-reading “Team of Rivals”, a biography about Abraham Lincoln, and this was this very quality that set him apart from the other politicians of his day.   The sadness that marked him was produced by all he grief and suffering of the Civil War, which he took into himself.

In other words, Lincoln through suffering learned to empathize with those who suffered–even with his defeated confederate enemies.  His ability to be magnanimous in victory touched the hearts of those around him.   Maturity is thus “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Those who lack this quality do the most damage to other people–often unthinkingly.   They are insensitive and insensible, thinking that everyone must see it their way and do it their way, or they’ll judge them to be bad and justify trampling over them.   If there is one great mistake that our present administration and congress have made, this is it!

Instead of trying to impose our ego-will upon others who are resisting us, we see life through their eyes, understand how our actions would make them feel, and then choose to be better to them than they deserve and address their fears and hurts and sorrows.

If there is one quality the Lord continuously works on me to have, it is this kind of empathy and compassion.   It is probably the most important quality to have in leadership, and the aspect of maturity hardest to gain and easiest to lose.

How are you doing on the maturity scale?   How is your recovery from “the spoiled children syndrome” going?

Spoiled Children Syndrome?

I read this morning an op-ed column by Peggy Noonan that arrested my attention.   She claims that we are being governed by leaders who are calloused children and here is what she says:

The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending, huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business.

It is a story in two parts. The first: “They do not think they can make it better.”

I talked this week with a guy from Big Pharma, which we used to call “the drug companies” until we decided that didn’t sound menacing enough. He is middle-aged, works in a significant position, and our conversation turned to the last great recession, in the late mid- to late 1970s and early ’80s. We talked about how, in terms of numbers, that recession was in some ways worse than the one we’re experiencing now. Interest rates were over 20%, and inflation and unemployment hit double digits. America was in what might be called a functional depression, yet there was still a prevalent feeling of hope.

Here’s why. Everyone thought they could figure a way through. We knew we could find a path through the mess. In 1982 there were people saying, “If only we get rid of this guy Reagan, we can make it better!” Others said, “If we follow Reagan, he’ll squeeze out inflation and lower taxes and we’ll be America again, we’ll be acting like Americans again.” Everyone had a path through.

Now they don’t. The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can’t figure a way out. Have you heard, “If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get better”? Or, “If only we follow the Republicans, they’ll make it all work again”? I bet you haven’t, or not much.

This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I’m not sure we’re fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.

Part of the reason is that the problems—debt, spending, war—seem too big. But a larger part is that our government, from the White House through Congress and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. And in the long-term everyone—well, not those in government, but most everyone else—seems to know that won’t work. It’s not a way out. It’s not a path through.

And so the disheartenedness of the leadership class, of those in business, of those who have something. This week the New York Post carried a report that 1.5 million people had left high-tax New York state between 2000 and 2008, more than a million of them from even higher-tax New York City. They took their tax dollars with them—in 2006 alone more than $4 billion.

You know what New York, both state and city, will do to make up for the lost money. They’ll raise taxes.

I talked with an executive this week with what we still call “the insurance companies” and will no doubt soon be calling Big Insura. (Take it away, Democratic National Committee.) He was thoughtful, reflective about the big picture. He talked about all the new proposed regulations on the industry. Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress “are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area.”

The executive said of Washington: “They don’t understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who’ve said to me ‘I’m done.’” He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, “They don’t understand that if they start to tax me so that I’m paying 60%, 55%, I’ll stop.”

He felt government doesn’t understand that business in America is run by people, by human beings. Mr. Frank must believe America is populated by high-achieving robots who will obey whatever command he and his friends issue. But of course they’re human, and they can become disheartened. They can pack it in, go elsewhere, quit what used to be called the rat race and might as well be called that again since the government seems to think they’re all rats. (That would be you, Chamber of Commerce.)

***

And here is the second part of the story. While Americans feel increasingly disheartened, their leaders evince a mindless . . . one almost calls it optimism, but it is not that.

It is a curious thing that those who feel most mistily affectionate toward America, and most protective toward it, are the most aware of its vulnerabilities, the most aware that it can be harmed. They don’t see it as all-powerful, impregnable, unharmable. The loving have a sense of its limits.

When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap-and-trade, etc.—I think: Why aren’t they worried about the impact of what they’re doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?

I think I know part of the answer. It is that they’ve never seen things go dark. They came of age during the great abundance, circa 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don’t have the habit of worry. They talk about their “concerns”—they’re big on that word. But they’re not really concerned. They think America is the goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps. She laid it in grandpa’s lap.

They don’t feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—”strongest nation in the world,” “indispensable nation,” “unipolar power,” “highest standard of living”—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.

 

I spoke, on the aftermath of our last election, about the toppling of idols on the Right and how we could expect the same thing to happen on the Left.  And when all the political idols of human government and power lie powerless on the ground, where will we turn?  To whom will we look for salvation?

This coming week I will look at the “spoiled children” syndrome at work in our souls and how we can examine our lives to if we are part of this problem.   I hope we will see if the markers of personal maturity are there…or absent.

Vicarious Pseudo-Lives

It’s Halloween season and the merchants of entertainment have served up their usual mix of slasher flicks to celebrate the season.  But I think something deeper is at work than tasteless, pandering mediocrity.

In my last entry, I explained a process whereby a fearful person, under God’s care, can be de-feared and freed to enjoy more and more of life without fear.    Since giving over control to God rubs many people the wrong way, a cheaper alternative is available.    Instead of facing and resolving our own fears, we watch horror movies.

Every piece of literature–both visual and literary–works by getting people to identify with a protagonist (the main character).   Through this fictional person, we do things we would never normally do.   This kind of life, one that’s lived through another, is called vicarious living.

In other words, regular people can, through this persona, have sex with beautiful partners or commit acts of heroic violence against villains or face horror and death and live to tell about it.     They wouldn’t dare do these things themselves, but they can anonymously and safely do it through the character they watch or read about.

We see this vicarious pseudo-living at work in soap operas, action shows, social networks, computer avatars, video games and all manner of television shows and movies and books.

But in reality, those who do this actually do nothing but sit and stare for hours and hours.   Their marriages are no better.   Their relationships with their children are unchanged.   Their jobs are just as boring.   Their fears are still unresolved.  The realities of their lives haven’t changed, but they have the illusion of having done something actual.

The problem with vicarious pseudo-living is twofold:

First, it degrades us as we, through the character, participate and mentally do the immoral, grotesque, or violent actions.   We become more numb, desensitized, and coarsened as people.   We lose our power to be shocked, and to blush, at things that really should shock and embarrass us.    We become insensible, and insensitive.

Second, we get used to doing these actions vicariously and are therefore far more likely to do them in real life.   Interestingly, studies have found that teen girls who watch a lot of TV shows with normative casual sex going on are far more likely to be sexually active themselves at a far younger age.  Young men who play a lot of highly violent video games as teens are trained just as effectively as real soldiers to shoot with deadly accuracy real guns.

And this vicarious process of desensitization, boredom, and hunger for newer, more exotic thrills is going on all around us.    Real, normal life just isn’t enough.   And, worse, our energy to make something of ourselves and the fire that burns within is doused.    We stop having real life adventures and noble pursuits are pushed aside by ignoble fluff.

A spirit of slumber and sleep is upon our land.   We are being tranquilized and anesthetized slowly, slowly, slowly to death.    More and more of us are living vicarious pseudo-lives instead of putting all of our heart, soul, mind and strength into actually living our own.

Where will it end?

The Process of Being De-feared

How does one who is afraid grow less and less afraid?

I thought about this question because fear is the natural human state, and those who are gripped by anxiety need our compassion rather than our scorn.   Few people desire to be afraid, and many are gripped by strong fear reactions they cannot stop once these reactions are triggered.

My own life story is one marked by great fear.   I didn’t enjoy much emotional security growing up.   I struggled with elevators, with floating on water, and with new situations.    And, if you have read this blog, you’re aware that I was kidnapped and molested at age twelve.   My fear level reached such heights that I stayed indoors for many months afterwards, and engaged in rituals whenever I heard a car coming down the street.

The process of being de-feared didn’t happen all at once.    A big step happened when I entrusted myself into the care of Another and accepted the redeeming love of Christ.   I freely chose to lose control and accept the offered mercy.  Instead of being my own father, my own lord, my own boss, and having the impossible task of running the universe and creating a safe bubble for myself, I could rest in His care.   He was on the throne, and I gladly resigned from the pressure and the dread of trying to do His job for Him.

Under His good care, I noticed a pattern.  Instead of helping me avoid the situations and people I was most afraid of, He took me right into them.   His plan was to tack my sailboat into the storm instead of letting the storm winds of fear drive me wherever they wanted to.     And when I didn’t perish, but emerged on the other side of the storm not only intact, but stronger and wiser, a little fear fell away from me.

What I saw was I had unconsciously erected a life built on “never going there again” and “never feeling that way again”.    Self-protection was my unspoken motto, and self-protection was really a mask for unresolved fears.

Every time I felt like my body was out of control, and/or an abusive person had control and was threatening me, and/or I was confined and couldn’t escape the situation, and when I followed as He led me to keep on trusting and keep on going and not take up control and not run away, my reactions lost their power.

The result:  It took more to make me afraid, and my fear reaction was slowed down.   The dots were being connected between current fearful situations and parallels to past horrible events–and I could see it and choose to not go there emotionally.   Fear became more of a choice, less of a knee-jerk reaction.

Bravery is not the absence of fear, it’s acknowledging the fear and doing the hard, right, and courageous thing anyway.    And on the other side of that dreaded event, I find myself still alive and usually unscathed.    And that’s when the fears begin to lose their power.  And when people who specialize in making others afraid lose their power over me as well.

Many of us want the feelings of fear to go away before we take that God-directed next step of faith.   But I have found the fear only goes away afterwards, not before.     And when I experience this process fifty times, there’s a lot less fear.  And when I experience it five-hundred times, there’s usually no fear left and I don’t struggle anymore with that situation.

So if you are a worrier and full of anxiety, don’t despair.  If God can help one as bad off as me, He can surely help you!    The key is giving up the illusion of control, and allowing One infinitely wiser and higher and greater to love you and guide you and care for you.

It’s allowing Him to use current events to take you back to those “much afraid” places in your soul, and, with His arms around you, learning that He has gone to all the trouble of arranging this re-enactment so He love you exactly where you need it the most.

The Peril of Losing Our Heads

I sometimes get the impression that far too many of us allow the media do our thinking and our feeling for us.   Take the swine flu, for instance.

Between 300 and 400 people have died of the swine flu in the United States so far.    And between 20, 000 and 40,000 people die of the ordinary flu EVERY YEAR in the United States.   But, somehow, the first is a crisis and the second is just a part of life.   The first causes panic and the second never gets a headline.

And here’s another one:   EACH YEAR, drunk drivers kill about the same number of people as soldiers who died in the whole Vietnam War.    And in all the years of fighting in Afghanistan, we’ve lost 800 people.   Which gets the most headlines?   Which condition bothers people more?

We’ll close schools and cancel events for the swine flu.   But not for the regular flu.   We’ll have debates in Congress about the Afghan War, but there’s no debates about drunk drivers.    I hate to say it, but we Americans are being led around by the nose by voices that awaken fear and use fear to advance their agendas.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s the folly of fear.   Reliable studies have proven over and over that 95% of what people worry about will NEVER happen!    It’s a time-waster and a joy-killer, and it clutters the mind and crowds the soul.

Note this:  whoever can make you afraid controls you.   Whoever causes you to panic and stampede with the crowd is the puppeteer, and you become their marionette when you let them.   But the person who refuses to quake and who remains calm and who simply cannot be threatened into cooperation–that person and only that person is truly free!

Now I’m going to say something to my Christian readers:

We have every reason to be the least afraid people on earth.

First of all, the worst that can happen in this life, dying, immediately places us in heaven.  ”For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain”.  (Phil. 1:21)   We are therefore invincible.

Second of all, the second worst thing that can happen, persecution and suffering, only makes us stronger and rewards our cause more.   “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond comparison.” (2 Cor. 4:17)   “And even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.  And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled.” (1 Peter 3:14)

Consider these assertions, “God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.” (2 Tim. 1:7).   “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fear is not perfected in love.” (1 John 4:18).   “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

What if, instead of worrying about whether this thing or that thing is going to happen to us, instead of being consumed with self-protection and obsessed with self-preservation, we focused on being as dangerous as we possibly can be to the kingdom of darkness.   What if we turned off our televisions and shut our newspapers and did some real good for real people for the cause of Christ.

In times of panic, the cool heads and people who stay focused on actively doing the good that everyone else is too afraid to do will gain something:  credibility.    As Martin Luther’s hymn reminds us:

Let goods and kindred go,  this mortal life also.

The body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still

His kingdom is forever.