We
read this scripture—well, a portion of this scripture—at Philip Dow’s funeral
last Sunday, which is quite a coincidence if you believe in such things. And,
no, I didn’t pick or even suggest the scripture for the funeral; it was
selected by the Dow family on their own having no idea we would have it this
following Sunday, which presents me with what might look like quite the
challenge: Namely, preaching the same scripture at a very tough funeral and
then at a light-hearted, fourth of July weekend, Sunday-service for the
approximately seventeen people who show up on Sunday, the 3rd of
July.
This might
seem difficult, but, as with most really deep scriptural words, it didn’t
really turn out that way for me, because Paul’s greeting to the church at
Corinth in his second letter to that church (which we now call 2 Corinthians)
is simply about being honest with ourselves about where we stand, and this is
something that should happen at funerals and on Sunday morning and on Mondays
and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and so on and so forth. We need to be honest. More
honest than we are.
Most of
the time when the subject of consolation comes up we imagine ourselves
consoling before we imagine our need to be consoled. I can’t tell you how many
people I visit who are really sick or dying or facing some extreme misfortune
and yet what do they say, again and again: “Well, other people have it much
worse!” It’s like watching the Twins play baseball and saying, “Well, the ’62
Mets had it worse.” It’s strange comfort that things can, in fact, be worse.
Instead, we need to own our emotions, to be honest. I mean, you can acknowledge
that other people have had it rough, too, but that only tends to deflect from
what you’re going through. Own the sucky-ness of it. I don’t want to watch the
Twins play terrible baseball—well, maybe there’s that really cynical, troll
part of me that does enjoy it when they are really, truly awful, but for the
most part, no, I want to see good baseball, not bad baseball. And so it is that
you are in need of consolation regardless of the comparisons you make with
other people.
We need to
own our need of a Savior, because sucking it up and downplaying our brokenness
inevitably leads to worse problems down the road. Then, when the crap hits the
fan all the pent up emotion comes out in precisely the moment when nobody is in
any position to deal with it. Be honest about your feelings now. It’s no badge
of honor to hold in your pain until it overwhelms you. Actually, it’s selfish.
We tend to
think that it’s men who do this. It is something men are probably worse at, I
think, but everybody does it to some degree. We’re actually pretty
uncomfortable with people sharing their emotions—I mean, why is she so angry? Why is he crying? It’s
counter-cultural to share how we really feel about a thing in this part of the
world. Now, I’m not saying we need to change who we are and be open about
everything all the time; I’m simply saying that we are way too far off in
left-field on this one. We retreat way too far into ourselves and hide behind
walls of stoicism because we are afraid to be known. When we really need to be
addressing our problems by being open to who we really are we too often shut
ourselves out to the world. Many of life’s problems can be solved simply by
knowing yourself, knowing what wounds you carry and also what wounds are
scarred over, knowing when you need a helping hand and when you can handle it
yourself.
Paul
writes to Corinth from a place of honesty because Paul has been confronted with
his mortality in Asia, and he realized that God is the only thing he can trust
in. He realized through his life experience that this shame that runs deep in
us—this discomfort with vulnerability—is a kind of sin; it’s a way of
minimizing God’s work in us, trusting in our own strength rather than God’s. Most
importantly, he realized it’s a lie, because there is no picking up ourselves
by our own bootstraps; there is no internal strength that is good enough to
save us or offer us real consolation. If we realize this, if we look deep
enough inside ourselves to see our actual vulnerability, then we can console
one another with a promise that is not dependent on us having it all together,
because none of us have it all together. Paul starts there because it is the
only honest place to start.
We don’t
have it all together. Stop pretending. Start consoling.
This feels
like weakness; it sounds like weakness, because it is! The problem is we’ve
been taught that a person can fix his weakness by being strong when this
particular weakness is unfixable. You are vulnerable—like it or not. Strength is
only a virtue when it’s built on a foundation that understands our
vulnerability. Strength doesn’t save us; it’s just trying to be the best humans
we can be in a broken world. But strength without consolation is foolish
because it is dishonest.
This
matters, and I’ll tell you why: We are killing ourselves with the pretension
that we are strong. Our inability to admit we are weak is killing us. And not
only literally but, in some almost as crucial sense, our relationships are
stressed and sometimes overcome by a lack of honesty about ourselves. Nearly
every couple I counsel prior to marriage fails the portion of the inventory
dedicated to marriage expectations. Now some of this is a product of youth and,
of course, I tell couples that there is no passing and failing—it’s just an
inventory, not a test—but let’s be honest: They stink at it. I stunk at it when
Kate and I did the same inventory. But the reason I say nearly every couple fails at marriage expectations is because there
are couples that have a certain trait who do
seem to understand marriage expectations better. This trait they share? They’ve
been divorced. It turns out that it doesn’t matter if a couple has been
cohabitating or not, whether they’ve been together for a long-time or a short
one, whether they are open and honest in other areas of their life or closed
off altogether; all that seems to matter when it comes to marriage expectations
is whether a couple has been divorced or not. Divorce changes a person’s
expectations.
That
sounds pretty terribly unromantic, as if the only way to be realistic is to
have a marriage fall apart, but it’s the same thing that I see at funerals and
other traumatic moments in a person’s life—when the façade of having it all
together falls away and we can’t make up a story that we’re doing alright then
we have nothing left to fall back on but what is truly real. Couples who have
been divorced and come to terms with their own guilt, people who have been
addicted and now attend AA or Al-Anon, others who have come through depression
or anxiety or self-hurt and who stand on the far side of it; these are the ones
capable of speaking the truth about themselves; that, ultimately, being
vulnerable enough to admit who I am—in all my faults—is the only way to
successfully cope with adversity. And if you’re lucky enough to not have any of
those problems—a divorce or an addiction or a mental illness—then in some ways
you are less prepared when traumatic pain and loss hit you.
Being honest
with yourself is also the way to be exceptional at most things in life. The
best in the world at any given endeavor tend to be the ones who are most
brutally honest with themselves, who push themselves because they understand
that they still have faults to rectify. I remember listening to Peter Svidler,
one of the top chess players in the world, talk about his own play and
describing it in almost medical terminology, going through his limitations one
by one for quite some time. If a person didn’t know who was speaking they might
assume this guy was an amateur with all his faults, not a world championship
contender, but what he was really doing was being completely objective about
his flaws. We’re not used to people being completely objective. We’re used to putting
makeup over our flaws, being scared of our vulnerability, and showing the world
our best face. The Apostle Paul begs us to do something different. Admit our
flaws, be open with our vulnerability, and show the world who we really
are—warts and all.
This is
the path to a deeper relationship with other human beings, and it is most
certainly the path to a deeper relationship with God, because God wants a
relationship with you as you really are; not as you pretend to be. Underneath your
scars, and even your open wounds, is the real you—the only you there will ever
be. Consolation is available to the real
you—not the you with lipstick on who has it all figured out. The only
question is whether you care to have it or whether you value your appearance
more than your actual well-being. That is what salvation is after all—well-being,
taken to its fullest measure. God gives salvation—well-being—to the real you.
Maybe that’s reason enough to figure out who that is, to admit it, and to
discover the freedom of being actually, truly known, inside and out.
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