Getting Hurt: A Crash Course

If you go through life without getting hurt by something, you are probably not healthy. Numbness in your body is quickly diagnosed as being a bad thing. The ability to feel, whether pleasure or pain, is good because it helps you interact with the world. I used to LOVE playing outside when I was a kid. Running, climbing, jumping and rolling everywhere with my friends was one of my favourite things to do! I'm getting excited now just remembering! Haha. I have plenty of minor scars on my body and a fake tooth to show for it all. As children we pick up bumps and bruises, cuts and scrapes from everywhere. It's amazing. I can't wait to be a parent to sit down with my kids at the end of the day to hear their stories about where today's latest battle wounds came from!

Just before and definitely after we hit puberty, we enter into a new, more intense battlefield. The deep realm of emotions. We feel like the mines of rejection await our every step as we duck and dodge bullets seemingly aimed at our hearts. We fearfully move forward all the while wondering if we're going to feel a knife in our backs. When we're little, a bump or a bruise is pretty much the end of the world...for a few minutes. After that, everything is ok and we just get over it, move on and let it heal. Our emotional wounds however are internal and the pain can last us a lifetime. If we let it. I reckon (not a scientific observation) there's 3 ways that we typically respond to pain in our lives: 1 - Bearing with Pain, 2 - Indulging in Pain and 3 - Numbing Pain. I'll talk a bit about my thoughts on them but please hear my heart, I'm not trying to speak indifferently as I've probably been involved in all of them at some point.

Idulging in Pain
Indulge definition: Become involved in (an activity, typically one that is undesirable or disapproved of): "indulge in gossip".

This is where we experience a hurt and we do something to either prolong it or intensify the pain we experience. For example we might go through a painful breakup where a relationship ends against our will. What do we do? We listen to music about people being in love or love being rejected or unrecognised. We watch films about romance and happily-ever-afters with 3 people's share of ice cream and then just feel terrible afterwards. Maybe we punch something really hard to make our knuckles hurt or get into fights we probably won't win. At the end of the day we're indulging in pain which I don't think is healthy and in fact is massively dangerous for our physical and mental health.

Emotional pain puts a strain on us mentally and sometimes even physically and so the longer we hold onto it the worse it can be for us. It can lead to various mental disorders and bodily illness. People who indulge in pain for a long time can begin to see it as their friend or even their saviour which can manifest in the form self-harming (which I'll probably mention later). This can open the door to various forms of further uncontrolled indulgence e.g. over-eating, masturbation, binge drinking etc. There's a notable link between indulging in pain and bearing with pain.

Bearing with Pain

     Pain is a part of life but I don't think that means it's supposed to be a life-partner. One of the issues with indulging in pain is that it can become so familiar we forget who we were and what we were like before the hurt took place. This means we then want to hold onto the pain as some form of security. If we get taken in by that trick we can become people who Bear With Pain. You probably know a pain-bearer in your life and you might have been/be one yourself. It could be that person you see is calling you and you let it go straight to voicemail because you just don't feel like you've got it in you to listen to their story again about a hurt that happened so long ago! It might be that person who somehow manages to bring round every conversation to that time they got hurt. It might be that famous singer whose songs make you cry because they're all about the pain they felt and still feel. However it shows up, pain-bearers are among us and they are those who hold onto their pain for dear life! (That paragraph didn't sound massively compassionate because you can't hear my tone or see my face and awesomely expressive hand-gestures! Sorry)

     I think a lot of us think that bearing with pain is the same as dealing with it or even getting over it. If I step in dog poo and just carry on walking no-one would congratulate me on dealing with it! It would still be very much on my shoe and would go with me wherever I went along with its fragrance! Picky people might say if you walked long enough eventually it would be gone because it would wear away. You'd be forgetting that I would have been in my house and friends' houses, my car, my school or work place etc. It would find it's way into all of my life, staining things and remaining as a constant reminder of that one time I stepped in dog poo! Ewww! That is not how to deal with dog poo! (This metaphor could go on for a while so I'll stop it there. Feel free to send me an extended version if you think of one!)

     Unresolved pain is not your friend, it's gangrene. People who indulge in pain tend to be bearing with pain and going through cycles of it. If they somehow manage to actually get over a hurt, they often panic and look for a way to cause themselves pain, consciously or subconsciously! Classic case is the good girl who always goes for the bad guys. Once she was innocent but some guy probably broke her heart and she developed a relationship with her heartache. She then goes from bad guy to bad guy to keep that pain sustained so that she can feel safe and if she ends up with a good guy she sabotages the relationship. It sounds insane to say it like that doesn't it! This can easily lead to numbing.

Numbing Pain

     Numbing pain seems like a rational, logical thing to do. Most of us don't like physical pain. Most. We dodge it and lessen it wherever we can. If someone threatens us on pain of violence we'll probably do what they want. We don't go in for surgery and say "No anaesthetic for me thanks! Slice and dice doc!" If you've ever had major surgery you are probably in love with anaesthetic! Today we're even able to medicate natural bodily occurrences of pain and I'm sure a lot of us are grateful for that too.

     Sadly we often try to take the same approach towards our emotional pain. This is when the pain is so unbearable or has been so prolonged that we find ways to remove it from ourselves or to remove ourselves from it. We do this with a variety of different tools. Most of which are actually really bad for us in the long run and distort our relationships with other people. Some of us have enough will power to just decide to stop an emotion's access to us. Sometimes we numb the pain by first indulging in it until it so overwhelms us, it becomes part of us and so we can't feel it any more. Maybe we put up a rough, tough exterior to prevent people getting close enough to us to hurt us emotionally until eventually that rough exterior becomes our new identity because it's so familiar (this often looks like the bully, the driven business person, the hard-working athlete or even the mean parent). Commonly we replace it with other stuff, sex, drugs, music, work, money, video games or some other hobby. This is incredibly dangerous because numbing pain does not mean that it is absent or that it has been dealt with. If you've done this yourself you might have experienced moments when your pain subsititute is removed and the pain comes back with a vengeance! You then grope madly for the nearest painkiller. We can make ourselves cold and indifferent but the trouble is, it seems like it's near-impossible for us to reverse that on our own.

So what do we do? Indulging in pain and befriending it is a terrible idea... Ignoring it is too... Now what? Pain has to be dealt with and it has to be acknowleged. We have to say "yes it hurt and yes it was wrong." We accept that a wound was indeed inflicted so that we can really assess the damage. inspecting the wound further can show us why it hurt in the first place and maybe reveal something about ourselves that we didn't know. You learn a lot about yourself when you find out what hurts you. It's no coincidence that we often get hurt the same way over and over. I often find that if I get hurt by someone emotionally and I actually check myself I find an area of particular sensitivity. Once I know this is there I can better protect it (or get it healed) maybe by letting close friends know that that is not a strong area for me. We can often (especially Christians) acknowledge we were hurt and then pretend to be over it because that's what we're "supposed to do". Rubbish! Denying pain leads to numbing. Bad times. From this point we can begin the healing process which starts with forgiveness.

The Good News!!
I think that understanding that you were NOT CREATED TO LIVE IN PERPETUAL PAIN is massively freeing and key to moving forward. The issue is a lot of us identify so closely with our pain that it becomes a part of our identity and our self-perception. If we see suffering as part of our identity then in the battle for freedom we'll fight half-heartedly because we afraid of who we'll be if we win! Check out what the bible says about Jesus, he was "...despised and rejected--a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care." (Isaiah 53:3) What does that mean? It means Jesus knows pain and understands it. He knows your pain and understands it. He understands the temptation to press your face into your pain and never come out! But he didn't do it, he had something else in mind.

     Elsewhere it says that "He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed." (1Peter 2:24) If you don't know this already, Jesus took a serious beating before he died. He was stripped and whipped and beaten. We even created a word to express the unbearable pain of crucifixion - excruciating. While on the cross he was actually offered wine mixed with gall which helps to numb pain but he refused it! He faced the pain of our sin head on! It's all wrapped up in this phrase: "By his wounds you are healed." Jesus went to the cross and bore all of that pain so that we could be freed from the rule of pain which comes from sin. But how?

     The bible is beautiful so I'll give you some more...Jesus wacked out this sweet line at one point: "Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." If you're into pain-indulging, pain-bearing or a pain-numbing, you're carrying something that Jesus doesn't want you to have to carry. He's taken that responsibility on himself. It's a little strange when you're carrying something heavy and a stranger comes over to offer to carry it for you! We reject them (especially if we're British) and choose to struggle or we treat them with suspicion. If we're smart, we should just let them carry it. 

     How do we let Jesus carry our pain away? A good way to start is by talking to him about it. Tell him about your stupidly heavy burden! Tell him how bad the pain is! Tell him how much you want to get rid of it! Another outrageous Jesus phrase is "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed." Ever felt like your pain has left you emotionally bankrupt? Ever felt like your hurt is inescapable prison? Ever felt like you've been blinded by past experiences and are unable to see the future in a positive light? Then Jesus is saying "Hey, I came here for you! Let's end this and start a new life. You see if you give your heart to Jesus he gives you his. The same heart that enabled him to die for those who hated him. The same heart that enabled him to love those who rejected him. The same heart that prayed for the forgiveness of those who were crucifying him. It's filled with love and in love there is the power of forgiveness.

     I'll end with this. Forgiveness is the enemy of emotional pain. Emotional pain latches onto us through unforgiveness in our hearts and unforgiveness becomes the leash around necks. A very wise man called John Eldredge once said this: "Forgiveness is setting a prisoner free and then discovering the prisoner was you." Jesus holds the power of forgiveness and he wants to give it to you so that pain is no longer your master. Not so that you won't encounter pain but so that you won't be ruled by it. Let Jesus take your pain away and show you who you were born to be. Do you want to be free? 

If you want, you can pray something like this:

     Jesus I'm coming to you with all my pain. ____ hurt me and it's still affecting me. I give you my heart and ask for yours in return so that I can be released from my pain and have the power to forgive others. I want you to show me who I was created to be and I want to see myself as you see me.

Thanks for reading, I really hope this impacted you and has helped you recognise negative patterns in your life. It's time for you to be free! If you want to talk more about giving your life to Jesus please contact me. I wrote some thoughts on forgiveness last year so please look into them as I found them helpful.

Part 1 - http://tony-campbell.blogspot.com/2011/09/understanding-forgiveness-part-1-free.html

Part 2 - http://tony-campbell.blogspot.com/2011/09/understanding-forgiveness-part-2-paying.html

Part 3 - http://tony-campbell.blogspot.com/2011/09/understanding-forgiveness-part-3.html

Part 4 - http://tony-campbell.blogspot.com/2011/09/understanding-forgiveness-part-4.html

Living Stones

      When Christians move to a different area and/or begin looking for a church they often have a checklist that they go through mentally (or maybe even literally, who knows!?) before deciding whether they will stay or leave. The most common ones I've found are something like "Do they have good doctrine?" (i.e. it's the same as mine) "Do they play music I like?" "Do people make me feel welcome?" Or sometimes even, "Are the chairs comfy?" (my tone may sound ungracious through the medium of text) A lot of this to me sounds like questions we'd ask to help us decide whether we'd be staying in a hotel again or not. It seems to demonstrate that our attitude towards church is a service that should be provided for us that can be measured on its quality. It's seen pretty obviously in the use of the term church "service". This thought both scares me and upsets me. Ever heard of "Mystery Shopper?" (http://www.mystery-shoppers.co.uk/) Me neither until I heard of the website "Mystery Worshipper" (http://ship-of-fools.com/mystery/uk.html) which sends undercover spies into churches on Sunday mornings to sit through meetings and then write a report about them. I'll give you a second to satify your desire to go and have a look and see if they've been to your church...

      The general points of analysis include how long the sermon was, which instruments were played, how full the building was etc. I think a lot of us approach churches in this way. I know lots of people who have not returned to churches because no one spoke to them. This is not an attack introverts but these people often didn't get spoken to because they didn't speak to anyone. I'm not saying it's ok for church members to ignore newbies but I am saying that I think we (me included) need to change our attitudes. How about asking some questions? How about rolling our sleeves up and finding out where we can serve? How about finding people we can hang out with? I think it's time to stop treating churches like hotels that we come to be cared for and start treating them like the families that they are in which everyone has a part to play.
 

     If we enter churches and we feel unwelcome, perhaps God is leading us to introduce the gift of hospitality! Maybe if they're not reaching the community, God has put us there to lead people in evangelism. If we don't repair our attitudes, church becomes the hotel we check in to each weekend to be pampered in preparation for the rest of our week and nothing more. We "pay our money" receive our "service" and then we check out. The difficulty is these churches may have massive numbers of people turn up because people love to be pampered while their relationships with God and with each other remain shallow if not non-existent.

     We tend to wait for special titles and recognition or at least a request before we start serving in our churches which exposes our desire to be acknowleged and affirmed by people sometimes (which isn't evil in itself, perhaps another blog post sometime). I think God really values those who serve in secret before they get a title because they know they're serving the purposes of God and they're serving God's people. I know a few people who've been involved with planting churches and speaking to them about their experiences has somewhat change my personal perception of being part of a church. (I'm not claiming to know anything about church planting haha) If you plant a church with a small group of people, you understand very quickly what it means to be a member of that church. You understand that you are a leader even without a title and that you are an essential part of that group. You quickly discover that if you don't get a job and tithe and give offerings, the church has no money. If you don't preach the gospel, the church doesn't grow. If you don't make time to spend sowing into individuals and sharing your life with them, people can't grow and develop and community doesn't exist. If you don't personally invest time into your relationship with Jesus, the church feels the lack.

I believe in being part of a church plant you gain an understanding that you have a personal investment in the life of the church and you understand that it's not a part time thing but a lifestyle. Suddenly the Church of Jesus becomes part of you and you become a part of it. For real. Sadly as churches grow this mindset is often lost and we are able to sneak in the back of Sunday meetings and disappear without taking on any responsibility whatsoever while still claiming to be part of that church. I can remember being a teenager and being asked to stay behind after the Sunday meeting to clear chairs away. After a while it struck me that if nobody did this, it wouldn't get done. DUH!!! This opened my eyes a bit more to my place in the church as an individual member. The Bible says that we're living stones and together we make up a temple for the Lord (1Peter 2:5). If we're alive it means we're supposed to do something right? Otherwise we might as well be dead bricks. Instead of coming to meetings to be critical we can try getting stuck in to serving, living and loving the Church and see if that works out.

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts! :-)

Leaving the Church

     I've been thinking a bit about people leaving the Church. Lots of Christians seem to get to a point in their lives where they start jumping between churches without really committing anywhere or they abandon the idea of being part of a local church altogether. Some try to maintain their relationship with God alone (which tends to lead to mixes of different religous theologies and philosophies) while others "lose faith" or walk away from Him because of their experiences.

     While I was at university there was a lot of talk and activity based around finding the right church. This has created some issues for me in my thinking so I'm going to try not to sound ranty because that's not my heart.


     During a conversation with a friend who said he was a Christian but wasn't part of a church an interesting thought occurred to me. He said that he and his wife had left a church because the people were too judgemental and had then stopped being a part of any church. As carefully as I could I asked him if he had thought about the fact that referring to people as being "too judgemental" was in fact a judgement in itself. They'd left the church because they had judged the people and decided they were too judgemental. Mental! The feeling of being condemned by others is a BIG reason for people leaving the Church. Even people who aren't part of a church often feel judged and condemned by us! I reckon this is worth looking into...

     It's really easy to make judgements. I might even go as far as to say it's human nature. Judgement is something of the nature of God in us. When He created the world, He judged everything and His judgement was "It's good." When He made us He said we were "Very good." Take a moment to feel warm and tingly inside........................................................................................................................... :-)
In the Church however we seem to allow our judgement to spill over into condemnation at times. People feel our glares when news/gossip surfaces that they've done something wrong or they haven't been seen around for a while. Think about this, when God declared Adam and Eve to be "Very good", He knew what they were going to do! He knew they were going to mess up big time. I reckon we need to recapture our ability to look beyond people's faults and mistakes before, during and after they've made them so that we can see the image of God in them and declare them to be "VERY GOOD!!"

     I think a lot of Christians place a lot of emphasis on verses such as Luke 6:37 and Matt 7:3 where Jesus warns us about focussing on our own sin and not judging other people (Please get your teeth into Romans 14, it's amazing!) I think that it's great to understand that we're not to judge one another but it's also important to remember that Jesus is present whenever the Church gathers and His holiness may reflect on sin in our lives and so I think it's important to ask ourselves if we're feeling condemned by people or convicted by the Holy Spirit. James 5:20 tells us we can cover a lot of damage by helping to bring people to repentance but this doesn't work without real, genuine and obvious love. God rebukes and disciplines the ones He loves (Proverbs 3:12) and so I think it's right that we do the same. In the Church people should feel loved and accepted even while they struggle to walk out their faith.

     Everybody has issues that they are working through in one way or another. Some choose to hide their issues and slap on the "Sunday Smile" (expect a blog on that sometime!!) even during the week and pretend as though everything is great. We use this face because there is a fear of being judged by others or being seen as unspiritual for having struggles. The fact that we know we're hiding something changes our perception of the way others are peceiving us. We can become paranoid and defensive or we can become jealous of the "perfect people".

     One of the leaders in our church spoke a while ago about reminding ourselves of the individual journey we've been on with Jesus and how our relationship has grown with Him. Doing this rekindles passion in us as we go over fond memories and see how far we've come! (seriously try it!!) I think that it also births compassion in us because we realise that we in no way have it all together and we never have! Remembering this can really help us to be gracious.

     Often people leave the Church with a warped view of God because of what they've experienced of His people. We commonly pray things like "God let people see you through us" but the implications of that can be a little scary if we don't act like Him.

Holy Spirit please teach us how to live from the new heart you've given us that us full of grace, love and compassion instead of condemnation. Help us remember that it's You who brings conviction and that it's Your kindness that leads us to repentance. Help us Jesus to mirror you so that we can truly say to people as You did "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father."
Amen