Facing Reality

Hurt and Anger are opposite spheres of a small world named Fear.  It is a world that masquerades as ultimate, unchangeable reality, though it is none of the three.  Much confusion arises when human suffering is not differentiated from fear.  Suffering is as real– as human– as we can get.  Fear is a magnified illusion that rarely, if ever, delivers on its promise that our obeisance to its anxious pleas for hiding and separation will protect us from more suffering. 

Suffering touches deep places of body, mind, and spirit.  Its integration into our whole being is precisely what makes us human.  Its presence offers us the opportunity to become what God intended.  This journey of becoming fully human – the trip we call life –  travels through the fields of suffering. In one form or another, suffering is life-long and never easy.

Fear is the result of being overwhelmed by the mystery and enormity of human experience and life’s transformational capacity.  It is what causes us to shrink into a translucent wisp of lesser possibilities.  We succumb because we mistakenly believe that “less” will somehow be more manageable.  In reality we are not managers at all.  When it comes to suffering, management is not an option; it is a denial.  Pain may be managed, but suffering cannot.

Hurt is an inward-turning, victimized response to suffering.  With it, we personalize the pain and seek to find a simple and quick way out, most often at the expense of others.  We often recognize our own ability to self-inflict physical injury, whether it is simple clumsiness and carelessness or more pernicious masochism. 

Emotional, spiritual, and relational injury, however, are most often blamed on others. This is where hurt comes in. When we choose to cast all blame for pain and suffering beyond ourselves (including blaming it on God), we create a lightning rod which cannot help but cause ourselves to be the ground. That is to say, abdicating all responsibility for our own pain is the surest path to never healing.

Anger is a cousin to Fear’s denial.  It is an outward explosion of Fear.  With it, we attempt to create a force-field of protection against sufferings that we have not yet examined.  It’s a smokescreen that attempts to re-focus attention away from our own vulnerability toward the actions of others, and its trigger is seldom limited to immediate words and actions.  Most often, it’s an accumulated reaction to a host of unexamined encounters.

Anger often masquerades in religious uniform. We justify it with phrases like “righteous indignation” convincing ourselves that we have a moral right and responsibility to unleash our anger, so long as it is on behalf of someone else.  The chances of our righteous indignation being justified are far greater when it is expressed on behalf of voiceless, powerless people, and far less when it is used to protect Jesus or the church from people we believe are fundamentally different from us.

Sometimes righteous indignation is a sacred exercise.  Other times it is only a risky shortcut through unknown territory. Unexamined piety’s anger chills the soul, crusting another layer of resentment between one heart and another.

I would like to tell you that I am at peace with my life’s suffering, that I never allow my pain to turn into hurt and blame, that I never project anger on those near and dear to me, and that my righteous indignation is always sacredly appropriate. But that would not be facing reality. When today’s actions and reactions are better than yesterday’s, I know that grace has triumphed. Other days, I pray for mercy.

© 2015 Todd Jenkins