Just sit with it... Embrace the mystery… hold the tension...
Have you ever mouthed one of these phrases? Of course, I have, but what do I actually mean when I say that?
The psychological machine in our head knows what it knows by comparison and competition. It’s a very basic and normal condition psychology calls “splitting.” As children it was necessary to learn to split the sensory information and images coming our way. A healthy mind learns that mom is different than dad, right is different from left, and I walk when the light turns green and I stop when it turns red and so on. Acquiring the ability to split is the necessary hardware for survival in our early years.
But… education is not the same thing as transformation.
The baseline problem to most of our racism, sexism, nationalism, and homophobia is that so many never move beyond this basic childish survival mechanism of splitting good from evil. Actually, so many of the confounding stories that pop up on my daily newsfeed let us know that our country is dominated by adults who not only fail to move beyond this basic childhood splitting of info but actually further solidify their splits by making constricting constitutions and doctrines out of their dualistic certitudes.
Are there blatantly proud racists still living in America in 2014? Did Sarah Palin really just say what she did? Do churches kick people out for not believing in a literal 7 day creation? Seriously?
This type of thinking just blows my mind! But as soon as I think I'm superior to it all, then I myself, fall into the same trap. Nobody is exempt when it comes to dualistic or split thinking.
holding the tension
Just last week as I was running Network (our coffee house for the chronically homeless) I had a difficult run-in with an intoxicated man. He was berating innocent bystanders spouting off insanely offensive words and I needed to step in and ask him to leave. He didn’t go quietly. This turned into a messy ten-minute stand off where he screamed in my face and drew back to punch me several times before he finally moved on and the disturbance settled down.
Our folks looked at me and asked, “So, how long is he out for, Ryan?” My face was beet red. Terrified. Angry. Dreaming of hateful things. I was ready to judge hard and bring down the hammer.
But I responded to them, “I need to sit with this one for awhile.”
I took a break and said some prayers mostly for myself. What I began to see is that my initial internal hatred is me processing this hard experience through the lens of old stories. When his aggression and hatred were aimed at me it unconsciously triggered old stories that remind me of my own woundedness and weakness and that's when the defense mechanisms kick in. These survival insticts are what have allowed me to keep going in life. But being blind to these unconscious defense strategies are the very barriers to transformation. When the fog of the chaos lifted and this realization sunk in I started to remember who this guy was yesterday - funny, smart, and a wildly talented sketch artist. He’s a severely wounded child of God and the reason our little ministry exist.
It was so humbling and necessary to just sit with it awhile - to be mindful of my own very real gravity toward childish split thinking. In this regard, we're all poor.
It is impossible to wrap our mind around so many of Jesus’ teachings filtered through either/or thinking. When we live through our defense mechanisms how can we possibly process things like “The rain falls on the just and the unjust” and especially “Love your enemies” ?
So many of the fairy tales we read as a child portrayed such a clear framework for good versus evil, with clear winners and losers. We've been trained that a story where everyone wins is actually quite a boring story. That's why shows like American Idol where hundreds of people lose (most in pathetic fashion) while one clear winner remains suits our nationalistic palette like apple pie.
Split thinking helps us feel like we're in control. And being in control usually means we are better than, superior to, and higher than the other. Being in control eliminates mystery and when we eliminate mystery we have officially eliminated God.
I've come to believe that it's this very phenomenon of excessive split thinking that allows a country like ours to be filled with educated and even professing christian people and yet saturated with poverty and loneliness.
Let's sit with that for awhile.
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