Personal Pathways to Healing - Introduction

Personal Pathways to Healing - Introduction

Introduction – Seven Personal Pathways to Healing

Comprehensively embracing past pain, completely dissolving anger, genuinely extending forgiveness, painstakingly acquiring faith, persistently looking inwardly, humbly receiving God’s peace and unconditionally accepting your self are seven effective pathways to personal healing and growth.

The “inward journey” includes as many pathways as the billions of persons who embark upon it.   Previously, a pastor for fourteen years and a past resident in a psychoanalytic training program, I strive to be an authentic “wounded healer” who shares sincerely and simply my personal story of progressing toward inner healing and wholeness.  As I offer thoughts on these powerful dimensions of daily living, I hasten to state that I am not recommending any full proof formula.  I detest the increasing commercialization of religion and spirituality in ecclesiastical and secular spheres.  Many pastors utilize “Christian” television to hock “the” biblical formula for living an abundant life which includes wealth, prosperity and good physical health.  For nearly fifty years, this “Gospel of Wealth and Health” hijacked American preaching as income inequality grew exponentially between rich and poor people.  Purveyors of unscientific and irresponsible diets published countless bestselling books as citizens in the United States became hopelessly obese.  Simultaneously, obesity became a primary contributing cause to heart disease, diabetes, organ failure, strokes and myriad types of cancer.  To resolve personal pain and enjoy your unique life, I suggest the foregoing seven pathways as effective, pragmatic and trustworthy methods. 

The inward journey to healing is not a linear progression.  Life’s daily complexities and mysteries contain too many unforeseen plot twists.  Sudden surprises like a spontaneous tornado erupt and destroy formulas.  Natural disasters are good symbols for unfortunate personal experiences and their contemporaneous pain.  Divorce, termination and bereavement parallel living through the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, a Japanese tsunami or Hurricane Katrina.  Responding to any catastrophe whether human, environmental or circumstantial necessitates faith, reason and supportive relationships.  Instead of traveling a direct route on an interstate highway, most people who commence the inward journey steadfastly zigzag between healing pathways.

Parenthetically, the seven strategies which I recommend hardly comprise an exhaustive list.  I encourage you to formulate techniques that work specifically and effectively for you.  Application of spiritual disciplines is as varied as our distinctive personalities.  One size does not fit all persons.  “The right way” to practice these techniques does not exist.  Admittedly, some pathways are more expeditious than others but the dividends of healing, peace and wholeness manifest for persons who commit faithfully to an inward journey.

First Personal Pathway to Healing - Comprehensively Embracing Past Pain

First Pathway to Healing - Comprehensively Embracing Past Pain

Comprehensively embracing past pain is the first pathway.  No one likes being in pain.  Most people try every possible means to avoid feeling any type of pain whether physical, mental, emotional, psychological or relational.  The multinational and multitrillion dollar pharmaceutical industry rushes to the rescue with myriad narcotics to alleviate pain and alter a person’s moods.  The entertainment industry of reality television, blockbuster movies, live concerts and social media provide daily reprieves from life’s difficulties.  Not surprisingly, celebrity comedians are household names as countless citizens use laughter to drown out the noise of their fears.  Collegiate and professional athletics have become different venues of entertainment as sports channels proliferate.  Still, drugs, sports and escapist amusements cannot vanquish deeply unconscious and longstanding pain.  To resolve substantially hurtful experiences, begin with a hard and unvarnished acceptance of them.

Current hip-hop culture utilizes two expressions that help when using this first pathway.  “Keep it one hundred.”  “Facts, facts.”  These contemporary sayings exhort listeners to resist the temptation to ignore or massage any hard details of any hurtful experience.  Decades ago, on the very popular television detective series, Dragnet, Sergeant Joe Friday weekly interrupted witnesses whom he interviewed with the request that they limit their responses to “just the facts.”  Interestingly, examining the origins and causes of painful experiences often reveals healing methods.  We rarely wish to reflect upon acts of betrayal, deceit, infidelity or physical injury by persons whom we trust.  Anger seductively feels empowering.  As bitterness and resentment naturally emerge, these formidable emotions erode any possibility of learning from hurtful and disappointing experiences.  However, accepting unvarnished facts opens doors to new living.

Honestly embracing past pain negates exaggerations and excuses.  Minimizing deep emotional wounds and glossing over bodily scars seem appropriate ways to heal.  Yet, those strategies do not provide any lasting resolution.  Assuming a victim’s complex eventuates in a debilitating depression yielding powerlessness, hopelessness and even helplessness.  Rationalizing pain might result in a crippling addiction or some other escapist behavior.  Embellishing your past with fictional polishes creates either good storytellers or pathological liars.  Enfolding factual pain into your life’s narrative becomes “the touchstone of all spiritual progress” and “the admission price to a new life.” 

Accepting your pain offers many lessons for spiritual development and personal growth.  A determination not to repeat the same mistake is the simplest one.  Additional lessons may include cultivating better personal and professional relationships in response to repeated terminations.  The need of by-pass heart surgery inevitably forces a person to practice better health and wellness.  Divorce reasonably leads to an examination of a person’s ability to commit to a covenant.  Multiple instances of unrequited love demand an intrapersonal evaluation of a regrettable pattern of choosing persons incapable of reciprocating love.  Debriefing defeat in a political election or some other failure discloses hapless mistakes and myopic approaches.  As “anger turns off the light in the mind,” it eliminates any potential lessons.  When a person fully embraces pain, he or she reaps a bountiful harvest from introspection and retrospection.

First Personal Pathway to Healing - Comprehensively Embracing Past Pain - Part II

First Pathway to Healing - Comprehensively Embracing Past Pain – Part II

Because embracing pain feels like a weak response, most people refuse this first pathway of healing.  We despise weakness in people because we so greatly detest it within ourselves.  Healing ironically ensues if a person willingly and open-mindedly retrieves divine power and personal insight embedded within any catastrophe.  Whereas anger initially feels empowering, it is fundamentally toxic.  As resentment significantly increases, your anger turns inwardly.  In addition to poisoning your heart and soul, anger adversely effects your body.  It seems reasonable that bitterness and stress could contribute to cancer and other debilitating diseases.  Nevertheless, embracing pain is preferable to heartache and emotional paralysis.  Mystically and providentially, Almighty God transforms disappointment and betrayal into cathartic means of change.  Reminiscent of a refiner’s fire, these experiences burn dross and other sediments out of our character.  Elimination of latent character defects is critical for inner healing and wholeness.  Otherwise, we repeat choices and behavior that undermine our good and growth.  Welcoming opportunities for growth embedded in daily problems is the more preferable pathway to healing.

Utilizing pain is a strange and mysterious method to acquire spiritual attributes.  St. Thomas Aquinas simply defined humility as the truth.  In accepting undistorted facts of any difficult period, a person obtains greater humility which enables him or her to empathize with fellow sufferers.  Open-mindedness additionally is an invaluable spiritual quality.  Anyone recovering from past pain can glean wisdom and support from fellow sufferers of different ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds.  Willingness perfectly complements humility and open-mindedness as a person intentionally embraces painful experiences and develops empathy for all members in the human family.  Reading books and taking academic courses do not impart this knowledge.  This knowledge from the “anvils of experience” emerges within “the school of hard knocks.” As people internalizes these lessons, they relate more harmoniously with spouses, children, coworkers and friends. 

Humility offers yet another spiritual asset.  It fosters genuine reliance upon Almighty God when crises and circumstances overwhelm inner resources.  Even the toughest person will falter underneath sustained challenges.  Enduring encouragement and empowerment from longstanding friends will proves insufficient at times.  There are obstacles and afflictions which human power cannot resolve.  At such junctures in life, it is imperative to seek divine assistance.  God uses human weakness to demonstrate His power.  When Paul asks the Lord to remove a thorn in his flesh, the Lord responds, “My grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in your weakness.”  What an amazing irony!  Admission of human frailty enables a person to utilize God’s power to triumph over adversities.  Embracing incapacities and inadequacies empowers a person with divine power.  Access to God’s power is available to individuals who realize God’s sovereign willingness and ability to help them. Practically speaking, humility means relying genuinely upon God in contrast to rugged individualism.

Second Personal Pathway to Healing - Completely Dissolving Anger

Second Pathway – Completely Dissolving Anger

Anger easily seduces persons as it is more empowering than being a victim of harrowing circumstances.  The illusion of control always seems preferable to waiting patiently upon Almighty God.  Everyone seeks to determine his or her own destiny.  Anger consequentially follows as an understandable reaction to frustration and failure.  It boils in a person’s consciousness like hot lava, destroying anything in their path.  Fearing failure to obtain something he greatly desires or losing something he significantly values; anger ultimately undermines a person as it leads to regrettable decisions.  Further, anger robs people who feel it of peace, joy, happiness and other positive emotions.  Interestingly, people surrender joy in daily living when they stew in anger in response to disappointments and defeats.  Nursing anger rarely creates healing.

One of anger’s seductive qualities is its corollary perceptions.  “I will not be a victim!  I am not a victim!”  Additionally, “I will prevail over an y adversity.  You watch and see that I will be victorious.” Those fierce and penetrating emotions often mutate into more resentment and cynicism.  Internalizing these emotions eventuates possibly in clinical depression.  Externally, these formidable feelings may cause detrimental acts of rage and passion.  In extreme instances, manslaughter and murder may result.  These complicated mental and emotional phenomena feasibly explain two unresolved murders in Brentwood, California in June 1994.  These tsunami-like expressions of anger always feel preferable to humility; and the erroneous idea that this spiritual quality equates with self-effacement.  Despite countless historical and contemporary examples of anger’s detrimental consequences, most people prefer its narcotic inflation.  Not surprisingly, this emotional drunkenness fuels self-aggrandizing behavior. 

Anger is not a pathway to healing.  It often creates irreversible relational harm.  It mercilessly rages like a forest fire engulfing anything in its unforgiving path.  Like such a blazing inferno, anger never forgives.  It typically impedes a person’s ability to practice restraint of pen and tongue.  However, it does not feel as empowering when anger creates immeasurable guilt and regret following loss of self-control.  Sometimes, fury incapacitates yielding emotional and existential paralysis.  Seeing red blinds a person to the intricate colors of his or her life’s mosaic.  However invigorating anger may feel, harboring it resembles sinking in quicksand.

It is most ironic to think of vulnerability as a position of strength.  In “feeling the feelings (raw, brutal and hard),” a person garners grace and inner resilience.  The lessons, endurance and wisdom rooted within personal pain enhance character.  Further, it is odd to think that a person could win a battle or a war by simply surrendering.  A friend recently shared that he spontaneously ended his divorce conflicts by saying in a legal hearing without advance consultation with his attorney, “That’s it.  We need to end all of this.  Give her what she wants.”  In his words, “I surrendered to win.”  “My former wife’s mouth dropped wide open.  In time, “I got all of my money back.”  “Mostly, I enjoy a better relationship with my children than I would; had I continued to fight their mother.  The funny thing is that I actually have a better relationship with her too.”

Second Personal Pathway to Healing - Completely Dissolving Anger - Part II

Second Pathway – Completely Dissolving Anger – Part II

My friend’s divorce experience parallels Israel’s wilderness years.  Those decades were a very fertile time in the nation’s history, religion and literature.  Usually, desert terrain does not produce spiritual, anthropological and literary treasures.  People expect fruit of these creative pursuits in more pleasant settings and favorable times.  During the two centuries of the Pax Romana, the Empire devoted its wealth, acquisitions and resources to nation building and securing an indelible historical legacy.  Israel, however, fortifies its contribution of monotheism, law, history, theology and the sacred literature of the Hebrew Bible within the challenging context of wilderness wandering.  On a personal level, trying times afford illimitable opportunities to grow spiritually.  A person discovers what lies deeply within.  Historians characterize the years that Churchill spent out of power before his ascendancy as the Prime Minister of Great Britain during the Second World War as his “wilderness years.”  Arguably, that was the most psychologically and intra-personally fertile period in his life.  Without that catharsis, Churchill may not have gained necessary attributes to surmount the indefinable challenges of England’s greatest conflict.  Both my friend’s divorce and Churchill’s humbling years of exile reflect the necessity of embracing difficult circumstances as an effective pathway to individual healing.

In pursuit of pure gold, alchemists of centuries ago experimented with countless substances and utilized equally innumerable methods.  In their archaic approaches and superstition, these pseudo-scientists ignored of rudiments of the scientific method.  As chemistry and other branches of the natural sciences exceeded the alchemists, they began to allegorize their methods.  Carl Jung and other psychologists appropriated the practice of alchemy.  Alchemists used dissolution to refine gold, eliminating dross and other impurities.  Jung posits the necessity of dissolving anger and other patterns of consciousness that impeded a person’s good and growth.  Comprehensively embracing pain and completely dissolving anger are two complementary pathways to personal healing.

Anger is one of the most toxic emotions a person can feel.  Left unresolved anger becomes a poison that infiltrates consciousness and character.  Its residual cynicism contaminates a person’s outlook upon life.  Feelings of happiness and excitement are not possible as anger consumes those emotions.  Why be enthusiastic about anything when you are enduringly angry?  Disappointment surely emerges.  You will be angry at yourself for allowing yourself to be excited about something.  Harboring anger for any length of time erodes personal and professional relationships.  Angry people resolve that they cannot trust anyone lest they fall prey to betrayal, lies, deceit and manipulation yet again. 

Bitterness, an obvious corollary of anger, develops from nursing vivid resentments.  Sequential failure and defeat without reflection inevitably yields bitterness and fury.  To resent means to relive injurious conversations and hurtful experiences.  In the mind’s eye, you see yourself in that predicament rehearsing its insults again and again.  In the privacy of your car, you respond aloud as if you were having the original conversation.  In your imagination, you best the person with your newfound emotional and mental strength.  You say what you wish you had said.  In your Walter Smitty like rehearsal, you are not a victim; you possess internal resources to protect yourself.  In the words of John Bradshaw whose multiple books describe the process of the maturing inner child who is no longer fearful, you liberate yourself from emotional dominance.  As you have not healed from this hurtful incident, you retain your furor at your victimizer.  Moreover, you undoubtedly are angry at yourself for failing to protect yourself.  As your anger enlarges with the force of water rushing through a broken dam, it overflows into all parts of your life.

Second Personal Pathway to Healing - Completely Dissolving Anger - Part III

Second Pathway – Completely Dissolving Anger – Part III

Two distinct and potential dangers exist for people who nurture anger.  Popular periodicals and reputable medical journals report a growing consensus among physicians, health professionals and researchers that links anger to progressive heart disease, hypertension and other related illnesses.  Stress borne of indefinable anger can significantly contribute to premature death.  Hence, “de-stressing your life” is a major component of many wellness and preventive disease plans.  Anecdotally, I witnessed in graduate school the untimely deaths of a beloved professor at forty-nine years of age.  The most trivial issue infuriated him.  Molehills easily and quickly became mountains.  As someone who overvalued the opinions of others particularly his colleagues, he relegated minimal disagreements as mortal insults and wounds.  Suffering with very low self-esteem, he lacked courage to confront his oppressors.  He internalized these offenses.  This toxicity poisoned his creativity and scholarly productivity as he remained unsure of himself.  Not surprisingly, he collapsed in the middle of a tirade over the phone and never regained consciousness.  Days later, this professor died soon after the disconnection of life support machines.  Possessing a personal library exceeding eleven thousand volumes, most of which he read as any lengthy conversation with him revealed, he died without anyone truly knowing the depth and breadth of his knowledge and brilliance of his mind.  His lifelong anger robbed humankind of incredible scholarly monographs and meticulously research lectures. 

The second disadvantage to nursing incessant anger is its potent ability to erode resourcefulness.  As in the genuinely pitiful story of my late professor, anger consumes anything in its pathway.  Dead trees become ashes out of which something else can be born.  Horrifically, fawns and other wildlife lose their lives.  Within a person’s consciousness, character and psyche, anger blinds him or her to dormant ingenuity, healing opportunities and purpose.  In a previous job, I became extraordinarily angry in response to the unwillingness of the congregation to partner with me to serve needs of the surrounding community.  I lashed out at them.  I exhorted them to examine their Christian commitment and understanding of “The Great Commandment” and “The Great Commission.” I took the approach, “Full speed ahead.  Damn the torpedoes.” 

Consumed with furious righteous indignation, I was unable to see different and equally effective ways to resolve this inertia.  Establishing collaborations with not-for-profit organizations, community activists and other churches was one alternative.  Opening a charitable entity separate from the inactive one that the church already had was yet another means of serving people in need.  Simply resigning when I incontrovertibly realized that the congregation and I were not in sync as it relates to purpose and objectives in ministry.  Pursuing professional opportunities that afforded me direct options to assist and empower people in need was available.  Professionally, I erroneously assumed that my perseverance would yield acquiescence from the congregation.  When confronted with opposition, I digressed to a previous character defect of always fighting when unnecessarily provoked.  That regretful response, fueled with volcanic righteous indignation, absorbed immeasurable mental focus and energy.  The fog of anger obscured my vision of personal options to prepare for dissolving my relationship with the church.  My writing talent and abilities were growing exponentially.  Two venues to obtain a doctorate in history from adjacent universities were available; my unfortunate grandiosity borne of immaturity further veiled these possibilities.  Seeking a telecommute job outside of the local job market would have shielded my family and me from the reprehensible retribution that some congregants sought after I resigned.  Cumulatively, these and other chances to develop professionally and personally eluded me because I lived in a bubble of intense and sustained furor. 

Foregoing healing resolutions to anger is more destructive.  Retaining anger within one’s mind, heart and character eventually corrodes a person’s being.  A residual thirst for punishment of victimizers harms its bearer more greatly than its object.  Refining crude oil into gasoline provides a vivid image of how to transform psychic energy of crass anger into purpose and personal fulfillment.  The distillation of gases and liquids which are separated and further refined into gasoline is the means of employment, commerce, education, transportation and recreation. Similarly, transformation of anger refines character defects and psychic incapacities thereby enabling a person to experience the life that he or she imagines.  Relinquishment of rightful punishment of perpetrators and greater acquisition of spiritual balance distills psychic energy that fuels happiness, joy and freedom.

Third Personal Pathway to Healing - Genuinely Extending Forgiveness

Third Pathway – Genuinely Extending Forgiveness

Genuinely extending forgiveness is a third pathway.  Pardon equates with forgiveness; just as a governor pardons a prisoner’s crime erases the action.  Genuine forgiveness releases a victimizer from any justifiable punishment or guilt.  Necessarily, forgiveness is a personal and selfish act. A victim liberates herself or himself.  An insatiable thirst for revenge inevitably causes enduring resentment; perpetually imprisoning the victim as she or he relives the experience with each vivid remembrance.  Forgiveness stops these unproductive and continually hurtful replays.  It further prevents victims from lingering in emotional and existential paralysis. 

Refusal to forgive impedes healing.  Victims are stuck developmentally at the same time and place of their victimization.  A broken heart that fails to heal cannot open itself to genuine love.  The horrifying occasion of physical assault may make someone feel unsafe anywhere outside of his or her home.  Repeated terminations due to the machinations of jealous enemies could lead to bitterness and cynicism eventually rendering a person unemployable.  A car accident resulting in substantial injuries possibly prevents someone from ever feeling safe to drive again.  Relatives of victims of heinous crimes may forever refuse to believe in justice if the perpetrators receive acquittals.  Victims, in proactively choosing to forgive, liberate themselves from harsh and residual emotions.  Ironically, if they doggedly devote themselves to justice, they imprison themselves to an interminable quest without any guarantees.  Should they fail to receive their desired outcomes, they potentially lapse into bitterness and depression.  Forgiveness enables their healing and equips them with resilience to find a “new normal” in life.  

“To err is human; to forgive is divine.”  Those immortal Shakespearian words are as appropriate within the global village of the twenty-first century as they originally were in Elizabethan England.  The first half of the sentence succinctly captures a complex behavioral trait upon which neuroscientists, psychobiologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts widely concur; “hurt people hurt people.”  We are products of our pasts, family relationships and formative, childhood and adolescent years.  Not surprising, broken and underdeveloped people relate to other people with considerable incapacities.  Debatably, some persons are not totally responsible for the harm and pain they inflict upon other people.  Given their intrapersonal and psychic brokenness, society could not expect them to conduct themselves as reasonably as someone who has not suffered similar emotional and psychological trauma. 

Unequivocally, I believe in the necessity of law, order and judicial due process in human affairs.  I detest the way some defense attorneys abuse the branches of mental health and sciences to obtain acquittals for deservingly guilty persons.  This legal strategy creates understandable cynicism amongst millions of law abiding, gainfully employed and tax paying American citizens.  Nevertheless, it is levelheaded for victims to extend gracious consideration to their victimizers.  Victims as sons and daughters of God reflect God’s unmerited favor toward other children of God who have not matured spiritually.  Theologians and Bible scholars defines grace as a providential act in which humans demonstrate divine love, unmerited favor and generous compassion toward other people to enable them to be the best children of which they are capable.  Forgiveness is the surest means of showing God’s love without expecting anything in return.  Practically speaking, forgiveness means relinquishing adjudication of any offenses to God acknowledging that He is best prepared to mete out punishment.  Forgiveness heals victimizers of their brokenness and restores them as children of God.

Three acts of genuine forgiveness reflect the foregoing spiritual virtues.  First, a few years ago, the Amish people in Pennsylvania vividly and majestically showed citizens in the global village what forgiveness is.  Following the multiple murder of several of their children in one of their schools by a mentally deranged man, the Amish people announced that they immediately forgave that man recognizing his mental defects.  Remarkably, they invited his parents and family members to the funeral of the undeservedly slaughtered Amish children.  The Amish believed that all of them could grieve together.  This inimitable example of forgiveness remains indelibly in the consciousness of American citizens when they consider the spiritual attribute of forgiveness. 

Third Personal Pathway to Healing - Genuinely Extending Forgiveness - Part II

Third Pathway – Genuinely Extending Forgiveness – Part II

Second, in New York nearly two decades ago, a permanently wheelchair bound victim appeared at a sentencing hearing of a young man who dropped a brick from a highway overpass onto her windshield.  Upon impact, she immediately loss control of her vehicle and suffered substantive injuries resulting in her paralysis.  Fortunately, this woman survived the life-threatening accident of that fateful day.  An adolescent at the time with an undeveloped brain and incomplete cognitive and emotional maturity, this young man and his friends inexplicably concluded dropping rocks from that perch above a well-traveled and fast-paced interstate highway would be fun.  Their extremely warped idea of fun severely limited this woman’s life.  Thankfully, their regrettable and dastardly deed did not end her life and the lives of other motorists and passengers within the vicinity.  Providentially, it created another seminal lesson of forgiveness for future generations. 

This woman asked the judge to impose a lenient and merciful sentence upon the young man.  She said, “Young man, you did an awful and very bad thing.  Many people wish to punish you harshly.  However, I choose not to give up on you.  I still believe that you can and will make something of your life.  That’s why I am asking the judge to be merciful upon you.”  News reports of this encounter between victim and victimizer at the sentencing hearing recorded the startling fact that there was not a dry eye in the courtroom.  Including the judge who was known to be unrelenting, everyone present was moved to tears as they witnessed such an incredible demonstration of forgiveness.  Whereas we can never know that young man’s destiny will be, we do know that his victim’s genuine forgiveness enables him to achieve a future redemptive purpose.  This deed of forgiveness brilliantly depicts the freedom a victim experiences when he or she releases the right to demand recompense.  Rather than retributive justice, this woman chose a restorative and redemptive.

Third, on an occasion within my pastoral work, I was present for a group therapy session in which a rape victim shared about achieving forgiveness toward her rapist.  Unbeknownst to her, she arrived at a meeting and found him there.  Albeit an emotional outburst would have been understandable, she remained calm and did not escalate the situation.  She began to pray, meditate and reflect upon her violation and perpetrator.  She looked across the room and saw a very sick, wounded, broken and frightened man whose reprehensible crime conceivably emerged from his internal brokenness.  She characterized him as a “sick and broke child of God.”  Furthermore, she spoke of her need and obligation to forgive him notwithstanding his crimes.  Her intentions and words fulfill New Testament teachings that anyone seeking divine forgiveness must reciprocate it.  Still, I marvel when I recall its authenticity.  Her faith and spirituality will forever challenge me and everyone else in that room to practice forgiveness.  Her unparalleled example of forgiveness additionally reflects its power as a passageway to healing.

Love is the basis of forgiveness.  The Gospel evangelists posit that Almighty God sacrificially gives “His One and Only Begotten Son” as an unparalleled gift of forgiveness.  His atonement of humankind’s sin demonstrates God’s faithful love for and reconciliation with humanity.  The Johannine evangelist states these endlessly quoted words, “For God so loved the world that He gave His One and Only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) The gift of Christ is an act of love and not punishment.  God in Christ overrides humankind’s disobedience.  Out of His covenantal and loyal love, hesed, God sends His Son to forgive, heal and reconcile.

“God is love.”  It stands to reason that anyone who knows God experientially and relationally knows His love.  This knowledge is evident when a disciple shares God’s love as circumstances, challenges and crises demand.  As God responds to the crisis of unrepentant and unrelenting human sin with love and forgiveness, anyone who knows His love willingly shares it.  Practically speaking, a pastor in the heartland of the United States learned of his wife’s longstanding affair.  He inadvertently discovered evidence on social media.  She had posted a picture of a recent formal dinner that she attended with her lover.  This clergyperson’s close colleagues admonished him to search deeply within his heart of hearts to ascertain whether he still has a mustard seed’s worth of genuine love for his wife.  If he possesses this inexplicable and undeserving love for her, then he possesses an authentic understanding of God’s love in Christ.  His ego would not allow him to forgive her; he simply did not possess the willpower to do so.  His imaginations of her untoward actions compel him to exact punishment to appease his severely wounded ego.  Nevertheless, were he to love and forgive her, he would demonstrate his understanding of Christ’s redemptive and transformative love. 

Third Personal Pathway to Healing - Genuinely Extending Forgiveness - Part III

Third Pathway – Genuinely Extending Forgiveness – Part III

In a major city of Western state, a layperson learned of his wife’s infidelity.  While he worked, she stayed home and supervised a home improvement project.  Among other factors, resentment from an extended drought in their physical intimacy culminated in her affair with the handyman.  The narcissism of her dual drug addiction and alcoholism coerced her to divulge her indiscretions with a rather arrogant attitude.  Demoralized by the events that contributed to this existential nightmare, he sought pastoral counseling.  A lifelong churchgoer who faithfully attended Sunday School, this man knew his biblical and legal rights; he clearly possessed obvious and reasonable grounds for divorce.  However, he began the session with his pastor by affirming his love for his wife.  He expressed his recognition of his viable grounds for dissolving his marriage.  Overriding this impulse, his genuine love for her impeded any hasty decisions.  He and his pastor agreed that this man’s heart would lead him to the decision that was most appropriate and holistic for him, his wife and their family. 

Knowledge of his wife’s addiction, alcoholism and infidelity led to his loss of an opportunity for promotion to an Olympian position in his profession.  A blessing of this type occurs once in a lifetime.  Still, he did not divorce his wife because he truly loved her and hoped his affection would redeem her transgressions.  Like the prophet, Hosea, this man earnestly believed the combination of God’s love and his wholehearted affection would buy his wife back from the slave auction of promiscuity and betrayal.  His love for his wife extended to his stepdaughter whom he adopted.  Though the marriage eventually failed due to his wife’s refusal to get any help for her incapacities, he fulfilled his fatherly obligations by ensuring her daughter’s graduation from an exclusive private high school and later form college.  Had he not understood the new “Law of love,” he would have abandoned this important role in his stepdaughter’s life.  As God’s mystery and grace would unfold in this man’s life, he received another opportunity to advance professionally.  Graciously and humbly, he received this redemptive chance and did not harbor any resentment or bitterness toward his former wife.  His stepdaughter does not think of him as anyone other than her father.  These enduring and eternal blessings emerged in his life as an outgrowth of his authentic love for God, his former wife and their children.  Love equipped and motivated this man to forgive.

Forgiveness equates with pardon, the comprehensive expungement of the original offense.  Simply stated, the offended party relinquishes due rights to punishment and retribution.  Whether infidelity, betrayal or violation of a covenantal agreement, understanding God’s love enables forgiveness.  One additional example illustrates this spiritual maxim.  Darwin and Diane once shared what they believed was a blissful and wonderful marriage.  As time passed with the rearing of their children, purchasing a house, advancing professionally and acquiring dream cars, the monotony of marital obligations eroded their joy.  It was no longer fun to be married.  Alcoholism entered the drama of their lives as a means of rekindling the embers of their hearts and emotions.  Darwin’s crossed the indivisible line and lapse irretrievably in alcoholism.  Essentially, he carried on an affair with drinking until it terminated his marriage.  Diane responded to the necessary dissolution of their marriage with furor and unrelenting bitterness which grew with the passage of each day.  After nearly two decades of separation, Darwin learns of Diane’s terminal diagnosis of cancer. In those twenty years, silently and individually, Darwin and Diane forgave each other as they both still loved each other.  His love and forgiveness enabled him to quit his job thereby freeing him to be her primary caretaker.  In the year preceding her death, he assisted her in pursuing a treatment regimen.  He took her to doctor’s appointments, filled prescriptions, bore expenses as his finances allowed and sat with her as she increasingly accepted her physical demise and forthcoming expiration.  He walked with her as she approached the threshold of eternity with full faith and confidence of an afterlife.  This miracle of forgiveness, compassion and graciousness emerged out of his love for God and ability to love his former wife notwithstanding their turbulent and hurtful separation.

Parenthetically, an authentic apology from an offender could be a source of tremendous healing for many victims.  An admission of guilt and assumption of responsibility for hurtful deeds by a perpetrator dignifies the humanity of the person he or she injures.  Countless wounded adult children secretly and silently cherish the notion that one day their parents will apologize for many demeaning words and hurtful deeds.  Complete forgiveness would magically and instantaneously appear were they to say simply, “I’m genuinely sorry for what I said and did to you when you were growing up.”  Abandoned and neglected children could heal from their pain and enjoy better personal and professional relationships if someone would acknowledge how extensively they have been hurt.  However, most parents are not sufficiently self-reflective to examine any failures or mistakes in parenting.  Usually, they respond defensively, “Given who I was at the time, I did the best that I could with what I had.”  This dismissive attitude pours salt into an open wound.  However, receipt of an apology is not a prerequisite to forgiveness.  In most instances, injured parties will not receive apologies.  They still must extend forgiveness to liberate themselves from imprisonment as victims.

Fourth Personal Pathway to Healing - Painstakingly Acquiring Faith

Fourth Pathway – Painstakingly Acquiring Faith

Beyond extolling the spiritual virtues of embracing pain, defusing anger, accepting life’s daily and hard realities and sincerely offering forgiveness, the previous sketches of human relationships demonstrates the often-painstaking means by which most people acquire genuine faith.  An author posits, “The spiritual life is not a theory.”  Faith emerges through direct experience.  Usually and inexplicably, these encounters often are rather difficult.  Well-reasoned analyses and meticulously polished hypotheses are powerless to yield practically applicable faith.  Effective faith empowers a disciple to respond proactively to new challenges, unforeseen tragedies and daily mysteries.  Anyone living through such occurrences obtains experiential lenses of faith.  Pragmatically, disciples develop in faith as they encounter God in painstaking events.  Rather than within an ornate seminar classroom sitting at an oak table in the hallowed halls of academe or listening intently during an interesting Sunday School lesson in a multibillion-dollar church edifice, disciples attain faith in least expected places.  Surviving a multicar collision on an interstate road is one site of faith.  As a fellow patient, a disciple may impart faith to a previous unbeliever who suffers through diagnosis, major surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. 

The experiential furnace of affliction forges genuine faith within a person’s mind, heart and soul.  An unjust termination and an extended period of unemployment creates new lenses of trust and hope in God.  With amazing grace, God supplies financial and material resources as you tediously and wearily spend hours on the Internet completing job applications.  Somehow, each month you can pay bills on time.  You do not miss any meals though your waistline could afford to forego a few of them.   As a spouse and companion to your beloved as he or she endures awesome anguish of a substantial health challenge, in sober moments, you feel absolute peace and gratitude.  As months and years elapse, you are profoundly thankful for your maturity that enables you to love faithfully and responsibly.  Character forms during adversity and other difficult experiences.  It rarely emerges from reading a textbook or listening to a lecture.  Beyond affectionate words and romantic gifts, we demonstrate our love as we willingly shoulder responsibilities and accountability.  We love as we apply our words and principles in daily living.  Our conduct in hard times inevitably grants spouses and friends new insight about God’s love. 

Once, the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith.  He does not respond with a flawless philosophical or theological proposition.  Moreover, Jesus does not offer a pithy maxim easily recalled with assonance or alliteration.  Instead, He leads them through a very difficult experience so that they may see the power of Almighty God.  Similarly, to know that we truly can rely upon God, we embrace adversarial situations and life’s spontaneous tests as pathways to genuine faith and personal healing.  I hasten to add that I am not advocating spiritual masochism.  In many religious circles, dwelling upon redemptive pain and suffering is fashionable. Some clergypersons insist suffering is inherent to being a Christian disciple.  Lay persons in testimony services appear to practice one-upmanship as they seek superiority in detailing their and tribulations.  This emotional self-flagellation hardly equates with faith.  On the contrary, faith evolves as disciples discern God’s presence and apply His guidance within daily living. 

Jacob’s wrestling match with God starkly demonstrates perplexing circumstances in which genuine faith emerges. On the eve of his reunion with his brother, Esau, whom Jacob exploited twice, Jacob fights with God.  Jacob demands that God blesses him.  Self-centered fear and unbridled entitlement fuel Jacob’s strength in this encounter.  He panics as he realizes that only God can protect Jacob from Esau’s lingering wrath and thirst for retribution.  Jacob dreads the possibility of losing his entire family especially Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin.  Notwithstanding his current wealth, Jacob wants more!  Interestingly, Jacob does not consider his role in creating the imminent danger that awaits him. 

“Without faith it is impossible to please God.  Anyone who comes to Him must believe that He is and that He diligently rewards those persons who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6) That often-recited verse demands unconditional belief in Him in exchange for His faithful blessings.  A spiritual journey rarely proceeds smoothly along a linear progression.  The road is not always finely paved; it runs through rather tough terrain.  What happens when a person feels God has forsaken him or her?  If you are subject to life’s randomness, why pray for divine favor and unmerited grace?  Is anything good that occurs in life attributable to God’s kindness, oversight and faithfulness?  God appears incapable of surmounting trouble and evil.  He frequently permits faithful disciples to experience natural disasters, injustice and other hurtful events. 

Ironically, people pray fervently and earnestly for His favor, guidance and help.  Sometimes, their situations worsen as they pray more diligently.  In Psalm 22, the Psalter proactively asks, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  As He is dying on the cross, Jesus of Nazareth recites these same words.  Some biblical scholars posit that Jesus recited the psalm in its entirety.  Notwithstanding that Jesus was the “Perfect God-Man,” He hung the cross feeling utterly forsaken by His Heavenly Father who allows the crucifixion.  Honestly, many disciples utter the same words as they inexplicably face uncertain days and circumstances. How are they to have faith in God when He appears absent, silent and indifferent?

Asking the foregoing questions within most congregations yields responses reminiscent of Job’s friends.  There is general condemnation for asking these questions.  Also, there is the notion that anyone with these questions has hidden sin.  Other stalwart believers begin to yell, “Just have faith!  It is not our place to question God or meddle in His business.”  There is the question, “What is the alternative to faith?”  These replies create a machine gun dialogue.  It is hard to listen to someone who fails to listen. Should these insightful interrogatory replies fall short in gaining submission, then Job’s friends pound someone struggling in faith with popular church clichés.  “He doesn’t put any more on you than what He feels you can bear.”  “He may not come when you want Him to but He is always on time.”  “Any setback is setup for a comeback!”  Most regrettably, I could continue for another two pages detailing inane and sophomoric clichés that permeate public religious discourse.  Still, wrestling with God is a bewildering reality for many Christians of good faith.

Fourth Personal Pathway to Healing - Painstakingly Acquiring Faith - Part II

Fourth Pathway – Painstakingly Acquiring Faith – Part II

Understandably, these emotions mature into full blown bitterness and depression.  Where is God? What is the purpose of practicing spiritual disciplines when they seem to lack any determining significance?  Why go to church and listen to a sermon that is the verbal equivalent of warmed-up breakfast biscuits?  Attempts at meditation equates with replaying a high definition DVD of the multiple offenses you continue to experience.  Prayer is silent stuttering as fluent words do not flow coherently.  Seeking spiritual direction and pastoral counseling appear worthless as clergypersons deputize themselves to defend God regardless of the difficulty of your circumstances.  They do not listen to your narrative; they even try to talk you out of your feelings.  Doing good deeds and attending to the well-being of vulnerable citizens seems hollow as cynicism corrodes commitment.  Depression undermines self-care relating to physical exercise, healthy sleep patterns, encouraging conversations with family and friends, regularly taking medications and other wellness protocols.  Isolation naturally ensues as people who have not had your experience cannot relate.  Disturbingly, they presume to have the perfect answers.  They arrogantly accuse disciples having a difficult time with being materialistic as they drive away in a brand-new luxury car.  Suggestive of Job’s friends, these well-intentioned spiritual brothers and sisters underestimate the depth and breadth of your agony.  Despite the length, complexity and contradictions of your trials, they feel the need to defend God’s character and perfection at any cost.  Their unwillingness to entertain any inconsistencies that reflect poorly upon God compounds your pain.

Having faith does not mean a disciple does not ask hard questions.  How does someone who faithfully serves God but experiences seemingly limitless suffering respond faithfully?  Being faithful does not demand blind allegiance.  It further does not emasculate reason, science and technology.  The increasing disregard for an intellectually respectable faith in American preaching, Bible study and Christian education explains the decline in church attendance by millennials and others.  Some studies posit that as many as fifty-nine percent (59%) of “Generation X” and millennials who grew up in a church going family cease any affiliation with a local church as they become adults.  I attest anecdotally this mass exodus out of the church irreversibly results from globalization borne of science, technology and demographical shifts in religious pluralism.  While being committed to ancestral faith traditions, people can learn significant spiritual lessons from people of other religious identities and practices.  Resolving adversities in daily living by asking difficult questions and considering spiritual resources of other traditions do not equate with faithlessness. 

Utilizing faith as a pathway to personal healing requires living through “the dark night of the soul.”  Biblical examples include Jacob, the Hebrew prophets, Job, Jesus of Nazareth and Paul.  Jacob wrestles with God all night long.  Jacob’s wholehearted fear of retribution at the hands of his murderously angry brother, Esau, forced Jacob to demand God’s blessing and favor.  This dramatic fight enabled Jacob to learn about God’s character.  Heretofore, Jacob had been rather self-reliant.  His tendency to scheme and deceive leads Jacob to believe that he does not really need the God of his fathers, Jacob barely escapes Esau’s vengeful thirst.  His uncle, Laban, also falls prey to Jacob’s duplicity.  Self-reliant, Jacob weathers Laban’s trickery switching Rachel for Leah at the first marriage.  Possessing acute business acumen, Jacob departs with countless agrarian wealth.  His ability to snatch victory out of the closing jaws of defeat seals his self-reliance; he only asks for God’s help if he really needs it.  Powerless to guarantee the physical safety and survival of his family, Jacob wrestles with God.  All night, Jacob fluctuates between his will and God’s providential presence.  Jacob perseveres through this “dark night of the soul” insisting that he will not let go of God until God blesses Jacob.  The tumultuous period of fighting with God is necessary to his assumption of his purpose and destiny.

The Hebrew prophets, specifically Daniel, Isaiah and Jeremiah, suffer immense emotional turmoil as they announce the Word of God to Israel.  Daniel proclaims the Lord’s will as an anti-Semitic decree threatens to eliminate the people of Israel.  Steadfastly refusing to adhere to the king’s edict, Daniel lands in the lion’s den.  Conceivably, Daniel questions God’s permission of this dastardly deed.  As he wades through doubt, bewilderment and anger, Daniel lives through “the dark night of the soul.”  Additionally, Isaiah and Jeremiah encounter similar hardships including recalcitrant kings and inexplicable rejection by their own people.  They endure myriad adversities as they remain faithful to God’s call.  Unflatteringly labelled “the crying prophet,” Jeremiah’s eloquent laments endure for persons living in “the dark night of the soul.”  Biblical scholars and commentators describe Isaiah’s writings as “immortal and divine.”  He proclaims God’s faithful presence and steadfast grace during the exilic period, Israel’s collective experience of horror in which the Hebrew people were scattered by the Babylonians and risked colossal loss of their history, religion and literature.  The latter chapters of the book of Isaiah, forty to sixty-six (40 to 66), offer new hope with each reading.  Nevertheless, the prophets’ willingness to withstand the furnace of affliction enables them to acquire a refined and precious faith.  Its incalculable worth is most evident in its relevance to countless generations of believers.

Fourth Personal Pathway to Healing - Painstakingly Acquiring Faith - Part III

Fourth Pathway – Painstakingly Acquiring Faith – Part III

Job’s rants against God’s injustice for forty-one chapters; he triumphantly dismisses his supposed friends whose inane circular reasoning deepen his torment.  Job did nothing wrong!  As an inexplicable test of his faith, God permits untold wretchedness in Job’s life as he loses his ten children, all financial and material wealth and even his health as boils consume his body.  As he lives through this daily misery, Job understandably and forthrightly questions Almighty God.  How could God allow such an adverse turn of events in Job’s life given Job’s piety, integrity and faithfulness?  Beyond the examples of the patriarchs and prophets, the book of Job depicts a very personal and permissible struggle of someone who genuinely has faith in God.  Job’s character endures as a powerful example to any people of good faith who feel similarly mistreated by God.  Whether a unique Job-like experience or extended period of “dark night of the soul,” this rite of passage is a non-negotiable milestone in anyone’s personal journey of faith.

A gut level question arises when considering Job’s predicament.  Does God have to humiliate a disciple to prepare him or her for a significant task?  Is a life replete with sequentially painful, disappointing and corrosive events the only means of appreciating God’s faithfulness?  An affirmative answer to those questions equates with the logic of insisting that one must be a victim of a car accident to know that it is physically injurious, possibly fatal, legally detrimental and financially damaging.  Job asks, “Where is God as my life wastes away?”  You may ask, “How could Almighty God bless me with multiple talents and endowments but fails to offer me any venues?”  Life can begin to feel as if you are the butt of an unbelievably cruel joke by day and living within an unending nightmare.  From abandonment to poverty to struggling to obtain a formal education to divorce to termination to failed ministry are not a string of pearls.  Rather they are different versions of Hercules’ unending punishment of carrying the weight of the world.  How does a disciple feel joy though he perpetually and daily carries bags of cement?  Consequentially, Job justifiably and boldly asks Almighty God, “Do you have eyes of flesh?  Do you see as a mortal does?” (Job 10:4)

The Johannine evangelist portrays a very human Jesus.  Concerned for the crowd’s hunger after a long day of listening to spiritual teachings in a remote place, Jesus commandeers a little lad’s lunch and performs the miracle of feeding five thousand men not counting women and children.  Encountering a lame man who had suffered with paralysis for thirty-eight years at the pool of Siloam, Jesus shows compassion and heals the man with the stark admonition that he ceases sinning.  Jesus buffers Mary Magdalene from Pharisaical judgment and condemnation.  Before demonstrating the power of God by calling forth Lazarus from the tomb and resurrecting him, Jesus shows a very human side.  Spurned by the frank criticisms of Mary and Martha about His delay in hastening to Bethany upon learning about Lazarus’ near fatal illness, Jesus stands near the tomb and weeps.  Fully God and fully human, Jesus of Nazareth stands among a grieving group of people and cries just as they cry.  In the Garden of Gethsemane on the night on which Judas betrays Him, Jesus becomes exceedingly sorrowful even to the point of death.  With brilliant literary flourish, the Gospel writers describe Jesus sweat as being like drops of blood.  His agony compels Him thrice to petition the Heavenly Father to remove the bitter cup of crucifixion.  Following His final meal with His disciples, this scene is one of the most luminous illustrations of someone undergoing “the dark night of the soul.”  As He receives empowerment of the Holy Spirit, Jesus rises and perseveres through the horrific events that soon follow.

A man with an intense intellect and equal formidable intention to convert the entire Gentile world to faith in Jesus Christ, Paul traverses whatever terrain, weather and conditions he encounters to accomplish his grand missionary ideals.  He details fights with wild beasts, death plots, famine, shipwreck and other harsh situations in his letters to the churches.  Paul resolves these hardships are worthwhile and pale in comparison to the overarching objective of sharing Christ’s love with people who remain unaware of it.  Not surprisingly, Paul lapses into depression after a while (2 Corinthians 1:8-11).  He despairs to the point of death; in fact, he believes that he had been given a death sentence.  Considering Paul’s intention to atone for his misguided missions of eradicating new disciples of Christ as Jewish heretics, he is bewildered that God permits such hardships. 

Mysticism is a component of Christian and spiritual experience in which a disciple or pilgrim embraces hardship and mystery as a means of achieving individual union with God.  St. John of the Cross wrote the prevailing book, The Dark Night of the Soul, the predominant characterization of the spiritual crisis necessary to find God.  Countless volumes collect dust on library shelves throughout the world that record this intimate rite of passage of anyone who genuinely desires to divest from materialism.  Oneness with God necessitates transcending earthly limitations that entangle a person’s mind and soul.  Hence, Jesus of Nazareth exhorts His followers, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:25-34) Rather than being an unjust punishment, “the dark night of the soul” propels a disciple’s toward complete communion with God. 

Two biblical passages illustrate this process.  The prophets allude to God’s use of refiner’s fire to burn dross away from gold, silver and other precious metals to increase their wealth.  To eradicate dross, the refiner heats his oven to temperatures that would singe eyebrows within seconds of opening the door.  He knows the dross has been burned away when he can see a clear image of himself in the metal.  Likewise, God permits trials to determine which disciples He utilizes for major tasks.  By “major,” I do not mean wealthy or famous.  Grandparents who subsist on meager resources in small house but assume guardianship of nine of their grandchildren have done something “major” to expand the kingdom of God.  One of the nine is the author of the author of this blog entry.  My grandparents subordinated their personal desires and needs to embrace the difficult task of rearing the nine of us.  As people who genuinely relied upon God, they accepted this incredible burden of love.  Hence, God looked into their hearts and saw an image of His unfailing love.