Living between sorrow and joy

I was talking to a friend the other day and the realization struck me regarding the choices so often we make just because we live between the “lands” of joy and sorrow. The aggravating reality is that we are stuck, really stuck in the “land in between.” Because of that reality, I make a myriad of choices about how I am going to live my life, conduct my relationships, and structure my values. For most of us, the tension of living here is often intolerable so we choose substitutes for joy — addictions of whatever variety whether they be actual substances or activities or relationships and interestingly enough sometimes we choose substitutes for sorrow (which sounds really crazy) — the way we often sabotage the good in our lives because of the conclusions we make about ourselves. No matter which way you cut it, living in this land in between and living with the reality of who we are as humans (limited and vulnerable) tempts me into a stubborn commitment to control everything and everyone to deny/distort/dilute the state or should I say the predicament, in which I find myself. There is a tension we all feel, for some philosophers like Viktor Frankl or Rollo May, they describe this tension as an existential anxiety. An anxiety associated just with the fact that I exist. I rarely identify it that way (of course… I don’t spend my days just contemplating my existence, do you?), but it is nonetheless compelling to consider. It is out of this anxiety that great acts of creativity, self-sacrifice, and profound connection with others are born. It is also out of this anxiety or tension that I find myself working overtime to determine certain outcomes to the way a situation in my life should be, and then doing whatever is necessary to make sure it happens. Then, when it doesn’t I blame God because He didn’t “come through” for me. Of course, depending on who one is, I might blame myself and just give up because “I just can’t doing anything right.” Or, if I’m on the other end of the continuum of the previous statement, I might conclude, “Everyone is against me, including God.” But, I can see the rapid vacillations between these two poles.

I think there is a secret to living that I’m just beginning to embrace — not figure out because if I figured it out then I wouldn’t need faith in God or others to walk with me. Let me take a bunny trail here to say that this “figuring it out” stuff is the stuff of which an entire lifetime can be consumed. It has within it an awful assumption that whatever I am doing or living can be figured out. It would be a little like saying that I can see an entire landscape through a keyhole! Okay, bunny trail ended. The secret to living fully, and faithfully is not working to avoid trials and tribulations — they are going to come no matter what. The secret to living is to increasingly learning to “lean into” my existence as a human, and leveraging my anxiety. Let me illustrate it this way. I remember when I went to Night Market in Chiang Mai Thailand for the first time. One of my missionary friends gave me a “heads up” about the pickpockets that roamed the market, and if you weren’t careful you would walk out the market after the night was over without your wallet. By giving me that warning, I was increasingly on my guard and vigilant about who was around me (of course being the dumb American I didn’t know “who” I was looking for), and the situations I might be heading into that would make me vulnerable to being pickpocketed. That’s what a measure of anxiety does, right? It heightens our sensitivities to “see” what’s going on around us. And, that’s what is available to us if we were to just learn to live in this tension. The problem is that we define this tension as abnormal. Yet, as you can see, this tension is the very state that plugs us into the fulness of being human and having eyes to see God on the move. Why? Because our senses are heightened to look for movement. Of course, there is one problem. In order to live in this “place” we must choose to lose some measure of our sense of control. Enter …. faith. Of course, it isn’t control over us — self-control is a good thing. It’s just the commitment to “lose” our sense of control of the world around us. Ultimately, it is out of our control. Ultimately. But, we can live in the happy delusion of “I’ve got it all under control.” Most of our journey is a journey into the truth of trust. It’s what we do with that choice that lays out the landscape for the journey that we have ahead of us. Living in the land in between is where all our decisions are made. It’s the place of incredible discovery and hope, or a place of incredible doom and despair. Gotta go… more to come!

An ill-timed truth

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and having a number conversations about this issue as it relates to connecting in someone’s life. I guess the way to get into this is to say, “there is truth, and then there is Truth.” That is a conundrum of our time when it comes to talking what about is true. We have drunk deeply of the draught of the modern-day pablum, “What’s true for you isn’t necessarily true for me.” Of course, we never define our words in that statement. What is truth? Now, that’s an age-old question! Even Pontius Pilate posed that question when he was looking Truth (the embodiment of God’s word in Jesus) in the face (John 18:37-38)! But, I just haven’t been satisfied with the answers I have attempted (or others)to craft an answer to that question. This is what I have come up with at the present time.

There are two “sets” of truth in which we function, live, and operate. There is the Truth of reality as it is. These are the facts that we mostly can all agree upon when pressed to simply agree that this reality exists. This “kind” of truth is an uninterpreted truth (or reality). It has no valence one way or another, neither good nor bad. It just is, and most of the time, we can generally agree upon it. Gravity, for example, is one of those “truths” or realities. It doesn’t negotiate. It just is. It is up to us to adjust and adapt to it. That is the way this kind of truth is. Take it or leave it, but disregard it at your own risk! So, we can establish that kind of reality or truth without much discussion or debate. It’s only when we get into the business of adding value (e.g., good or bad, negative or positive, judgmental or accepting) that we begin to debate, and by extension of this debate, move away from one another by drawing lines in the sand.

There is also a Truth that is equally as incontrovertible but is in the spiritual realm. One can simply start with the uncaused Cause — God. He is truth, and defines truth for us if we are willing to accept it — a little like if we are “willing” to accept gravity without necessarily the profound consequences of disregarding gravity (like jumping off a building). The consequences are just as profound when we disregard the truth that God has laid out for us in His Word, and while it is not life-threatening, it is spiritually life-threatening. This truth of God is what we spend a lot of our time trying to understand and apply in our lives. It is the “stuff” of teaching in the church (some), and even in the teachings of Jesus.

It is this Truth that I’m talking about when I speak of “ill-timed” truth. There is the truth of my life and experiences that is true for me. There is also a “truth” that stands apart from my life and experiences that would be the Truth I was speaking of above. So, to put it in other words, there is a relational/experiential truth that I know and live, and there is a truth that is reality and the “truth” of God. This is where the rub appears in terms of how we interact with one another. When we are with each other, and we are aware of the other person’s need for direction or support, our tendency is to pull out the big “T” truth. It’s the propositional truth that we generally use to teach, direct, or admonish someone to change. Yet, this propositional truth when it is ill-timed (I’ll define this in a minute), is worse than abusing the person I’m attempting to support and encourage. Worse yet, an ill-timed Truth is like a bludgeon to people receiving it, and places them in a difficult position. If they say something about how badly it hurts them to hear such words, our temptation is to fall back and say, “well, it’s the truth!” On the other hand, if they say nothing and take what is being offered into themselves, generally they end up assuming or concluding that there is something so fatally flawed about them because they can’t make that truth matter. What happens, then, is they are only confirmed in the conclusion that they are hopelessly condemned to living life on this plane of shame and shadow. After all, if they were “better” people, they would be able to appropriate this Truth, and their lives would be improved. The end result is greater isolation and disconnection facilitated by the very people who are trying to connect with them!

I don’t know, call me a crazy idealist, but we have got to find a way to change this in how we relate to each other. The problem, as I see it, is figuring out how to deny myself and my agenda to get the “problem” fixed, and learning to walk with one another in the relational/experiential truth (small “t” truth?) in which we are all immersed. There is a time to speak “the truth in love” as Paul challenges us to do in his letter to the Ephesians, but usually it is far later than we usually think. I think it hinges on just how much we trust God in the interactions we have with one another. Is He really moving? Or, do I have to do something, or say something profound, to make sure that He moves and the person with whom I’m speaking changes in the desired direction?

Now, let me highlight something here. When I asked the question, “Is He really moving?,” our big T response would be… of course! God’s always moving! But, on the small “t” plane on which I live, there are more times than I’m willing to admit that I simply don’t see Him moving at all. As a matter of fact, because I don’t see anything, I assume that He has abandoned me to this abyss we call life. And this is where, we must meet if we are to truly participate in this redemptive journey we are on. When I am tempted to speak the big “T” truth too soon, I stand apart from my fellow traveler and speak propositional truth that is not contextualized to the journey we share. On the other hand, when I walk and talk about the small “t” truths in which we are immersed, and interject how this might be connected to the big “T” truths of God and the reality in which we swim, then the power of the big “T” explodes in the reality in which I live, and with another traveler, I can actually begin to implement it as I walk. The key is the dialogue in which God resides rather than the destination to which we are headed. God is a God of dialogue. That is the stuff of which community is made. He would have never sent Christ into our small “t” world if that weren’t true. He desired a relationship, a dialogue with us. That should be our purpose with one another as well. It’s in that dialogue, living in the space between us, that we will meet and see God. It is a risky place to be, but it is also with this risk we find the profoundness of trust and the level of connection for which we all long.