To those who read my blog,
Today I am going to start with a question: When someone asks you how you are doing, what is your response?
For me, my response depends on who I am talking to. Last Saturday night I got very little sleep because of a depression related illness. So on Sunday morning, my responses varied from good to tired to terrible (but with an explanation as to why). When I answered ‘terrible’ I would add in, “but God is good”. In fact, when my pastor and I talked about it, I mentioned why I thought God was good despite my illness.
However, one of my responses was still a lie. I answered “good”. Why would I answer “good” when I know for a fact I was not “good”?
This is not something new in life lived out here in Canada. “How are you doing?” says one person.
“Oh, I’m fine” says the second in response while thinking about how they just got dumped, or they are having family issues, or they feel incredibly lonely, or whatever. The point is, we lie to people all the time about how we feel. But why?
Some may argue that it’s to not draw attention to an issue or to keep private what needs to be private. First off, you can do that without lying. I told you that one of my responses was, “tired”. That was true! Staying up until 5am meant that I was going to be tired the next day. I can answered “tired” and then remark how it was a long night without lying OR without going into details about why it was a long night. If someone were to ask for more details, I could easily respond by telling asking them to pray for me, but I shouldn’t give more details.
Second, what’s with the secrecy? Does this person hate you? If so, why does it matter if they know you’re not well? I think the worst it could do is give them some sort of satisfaction in your pain, but honestly? That’s just a terrible problem on their part and they really should look into getting some therapy. The best it can do is show that the two of you have common ground which could be the bridge that needed to be built in order for the person to overcome their hatred of you.
However, if they love you (which, by the way, I was at church so I am sure that these people do in fact love me) then don’t they deserve to know you are in pain? One of the reasons we love others is so that we can share in their pain. That may sound odd, but in reality that is one of the reasons we should be loving one another.
As I always do, I look to the example of Jesus. He surrounded Himself with friends. Yeah, sometimes He wanted to be alone, but even in those times of loneliness, He had friends nearby. In Luke 22:39 and 40, we read that Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives to pray. Now this was the time when Jesus was about to be taken in to the authorities and eventually be killed. In fact, a few verses later (Luke 22:42) Jesus asks that what is about to happen be taken away from Him.
The interesting thing about this passage is that when Jesus was praying, it says in verse 41 that He was a “stone’s throw beyond them”. My ESV study Bible tells me that the distance Jesus probably traveled was enough for Him to be alone, but close enough for Him to be overheard by His disciples. He knew that He needed to be alone, but I suspect that He also wanted His friends close by to shoulder His burden a bit. Sure, He was about to do all the heavy lifting, but perhaps having His friends close by at the time was one of the things that gave Jesus the courage to go through with what He knew He had to do. Remember, Jesus was asking His Father to take this next event away from Him. Jesus did not want it, but He was going to go through with it.
Now that last part is full of assumptions and I know that when you make assumptions… well you know the rest! However, it does show how we do need people by our side in order to go forward in this life, ESPECIALLY if we have chosen the harder road of being Christians.
I can see, though, that some people may be uncomfortable with me using those assumptions about Jesus, so I will use another example. When Saul (or Paul as he was called later on) got converted, he tried to join the disciples but they were on edge due to Saul being a former Christian killer. I don’t blame the disciples one bit for being suspicious. However, In Acts 9:27 a guy named Barnabas looked into the situation and came to the defense of Saul. If Barnabas was wrong about Saul and Saul had not in fact changed, then Barnabas was not only probably going to be killed, but so were all the other disciples. But Barnabas took the risk because he probably knew that helping people out with their problems is the right thing to do.
Not convinced? What if there was an example of a prince doing something very similar to what Barnabas did for Paul? In 1st Samuel 19:1-3, it talks about how there was an order to kill David (the same David from the story of David and Goliath) given out by the king of Israel at the time (another Saul… what’s with these guys and murders?). King Saul not only ordered his attendants, but also his own son whose name is Jonathan. Instead, Jonathan told David about the plot, had him go into hiding, and then hatched a plan to inform David about Saul’s reasons to kill David. This plan had at its core risk for both David and Jonathan. I highly doubt that Jonathan would be allowed to live if his father knew what he did for David.
The point of these three stories is this: we need to be willing to let people shoulder some of our pain. If we don’t let them shoulder our pain, we will end up not having the courage to face what we need to face, or not being able to be trusted by new associates, or maybe not even be able to live another day because of plots against us. That last one may not happen often here in Canada, but it is still worth our attention!
Here’s an example from my life: I had a professor at Bible College who had no problem being blunt and honest with me. If he saw something I was doing as sin, he would call me out on it immediately. He pushed me into situations that I found uncomfortable, and called bull crap on me whenever I have a “holier than thou” attitude about sin.
I ended up going to this professor more often than anyone else for advice on how to act righteously. In my mind, I almost had no choice. This guy was not willing to let me do things the easy way just because I had it rough and because of that, I have probably disappointed him multiple times. But he took the risk and he was honest with me, which in turn pushed me to be honest with a lot of people around me. I once told him that I was successful at one of my churches, then he turned to me and said, “Oh yeah? Then why haven’t you asked the elders there for healing prayer for your depression?” He was right! I didn’t take that risk with my elders! In fact, I only took that risk with the pastor. I knew from that point on that I would need to be honest with my pastors, elders, and friends within a given church even at the worst of times! If you turn to James 5 and read it, you’ll see that one of the conditions for healing prayer is a confession of sins. Confessing sins is an embarrassing thing, especially sexual-related ones as there is a lot of shame and guilt attached to sexual sin. However, I am now able to confess a lot of those sins (and a lot of everything else) to my elders because this professor shouldered some of my burden and was brutally honest with me!
So here is the take-away. Be honest with people. If they love you, they will help you when things aren’t good. If they don’t love you, the worst of it is that they’ll think less of you and maybe pass that information along to other people. It doesn’t matter, though, because you’ll never be able to grow if someone doesn’t know what’s going on with you because they may be able to help you in ways that you can never imagine!
This is only the first part. There’s more to this story than just what I have written. In fact, there’s a guy we’ve all been lying to that deserves the truth a lot more and I’ll be talking about that, next time!
In the meantime, may the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost bless and keep you this week, and I hope what I have said helps you out ^_^
-Joshua
No comments:
Post a Comment