We all have some slime that we hold. Most of it is in our nose. I remember as a kid having a cold and blasting out one of those sneezes that shot out a rope of snot at least a foot in length and running to my mom. Horrified, she tried to take care of it while at the same time dodging its infectious tendrils.
Slime has a protective quality to only the one using it. The rest of those who are in its trail, only seem to be marked and grossed out by its glistening path.
I found out last week that marked someone with my glistening path of slime about 3 years ago. The person was mature enough to maintain a relationship with me long enough to confront me about it. Unfortunately it took this long for this person to feel comfortable with me enough to let me know. When you hear the story you will see why it would take so long. The scenario was retold to me like this: I had just spoken at church on a subject that was specifically difficult for this person, and very much as usual, I used humor, and coarse language to try to get my point across. Well, in this case it didn’t sit well with this person. There was too much going on to just let it brush off their back. I’m not sure when they brought me aside, whether it was that week or a week later, but I remember it not being awkward. It was here that they told me the problem that they had with what I said: they said that the joking manner was hurtful and unkind, that the nature of the talk made them feel like they were in an unsafe place, and made them feel ashamed of the Bridge.
As they re-approached me three years later with the original confrontation, they offered up my response. To hear my words back from this person 3 years later was very much like if I were to hear about a time I aimed and fired a sneeze right at them. No matter how much it was a defensive mechanism to stop something from entering my nose that would make my body sicker, it still was a brutal attack of unwanted slime. And sure enough what I heard was that: “I prayed about what I was talking about, and I felt that this was appropriate for me to share, so… sorry”
And even though I said sorry, this was not an apology- or a listening for that matter. It was a defensive dismissal. It was the banana slug numbing the mouth of the confronter. And though what I said might have been an accurate portrayal of my snapshot of reality, it did nothing for the human who was now DISMISSED IN GOD’S NAME.
Because what I had pulled out was the ultimate in slime. It would be one thing if I simply dismissed this person by saying: ”Tough luck. My humor is my humor. Deal with it!” They could easily say. “well, the guy’s a douche…now I know.” But no, I pulled the pastor trump card: “God told me.”
“God told me” is the ultimate in responsibility pass off. And though it may be that scripture inspires much of what is good in the world. Most of what we see when people use the “God told me” phrase is: their excuse to not have compassion on the humanity that is right next to them. They shoot out the protective slime of “a higher power” so that they don’t have to experience the difficulty of working it out. “God told me YOU ARE A SINNER”…”God told me that what I had to say this Sunday was right, and your reaction was wrong”…”God told me it was important for me to hijack an airplane and drive it into a building.” When taken to this level it is clear that the monstrous use of “God told me” excuses the user from thinking about the actions they are taking to bulldoze the people next to them.
Let me be clear: it is very important to pray, to listen and to have an interactive relationship with God. And that includes obeying things that are difficult that come from your prayer life. However, when we allow those elements to excuse us from listening to or having compassion on those in our vicinity, we have made our right way of acting…wrong.
In Paul’s first Corinthians love chapter he describes how most of us see the whole picture: “Now we see in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I have been known” We all only see a little bit of the big picture… Sometimes we use our slime to pretend we know more that we really know. And eventually (like three years later) it shows.
I remember a story of another sliming that occurred.
A farmer was down on his luck. Crops weren’t growing, and there were several situations where his prize livestock were dying. Things were not going well on the farm. The,n as if things weren’t going bad enough, his children were in the grange hall discussing what needed to be done with the farm’s losses, when a storm came in an toppled the building. The farmer’s children were all crushed in the fallen rubble. All of them! Now I’m not sure if the level of loss contributed to what happened next, but in this farmer’s mourning, he began to develop a skin irritation that began to get worse. It quickly spread like a cancer over his entire body. It was painful and not getting better. People used to envy this great farmer and family man; now when they saw his boiled skin, they shuddered.
A couple of his friends came over and sat with him. What a picture! A friend coming to simply mourn; to sit and be with the afflicted. Sometimes that’s the only thing you can do. And it is the right thing to do. When someone loses their livelihood, children, or health, sometimes the best thing to do is simply sit with them. Listen to them. That’s all. What a gift to give your precious time to simply BE with someone.
However soon one of the friend’s map of reality got the best of him. In the time that he was sitting with his friend Job, he simply wasn’t focusing on the guy with a skin issue next to him. Rather, he was trying to piece together why someone who had so much, so quickly was decimated with nothing? His reality map told him that much of what happened to this man was far beyond unfortunate circumstances. Perhaps he was an insurance assessor that had to check the “act of God” box on his assessment of Job’s losses. Regardless, the situation demanded further exploration… because these repercussions could be personal. What did Job do to get into this mess? What did Job do to deserve all this? These became the important questions… because he definitely didn’t want to do whatever Job did.
So out of the silence one of the “friends” pipes up with his protective slime: “Hey Job? What did you do to deserve all this?”
Job’s answer was “nothing.”
Though an inquiry isn’t out of the question, there are times that are appropriate for mapping out cosmic reality… like college after drinking; and other times that are not. When someone has just lost their livelihood, family, and now their health; it isn’t your chance to learn from their mistakes. It is your chance to be kind, to mourn with them about the loss of their kids, to shake your head at the injustice of death, and sickness. It is your chance to encourage them to shake their fist at God asking why!?! It is your chance to be on their side. Be Sad. Be Angry. But to argue with them on how they MUST have done SOMETHING to receive such a blow from the heavens is just plain mean. He lost his children! He has skin cancer! It is not time for a teaching moment of a slimy interpretation of reality.
When we allow our interpretation of how things work trump our compassion and listening ear, we have made what we believe is right… wrong.
I received a more subterraneous sliming a year and a half ago. It was disguised as hope.
My dad had just lost the battle with a very personal form of cancer. He was very articulate lawyer who was diagnosed with a brain tumor that was growing on the speech center of the brain. As a result, my dad was trapped in his own mind. He could hear perfectly, come up with his answer, yet couldn’t communicate- his own personal hell. People thankfully were compassionate, and didn’t ask Job’s friends questions, they understood it was a time to mourn.
In September of2010 my dad died.
In my head I tried to relieve myself by saying “all dads die.” But making my dad into a statistic did no justice to the fact that all the rest of those dads weren’t my dad. And that I no longer had MY DAD. It was appropriate to feel the loss of that person in your life, and not dismiss it by adding it to the masses.
I heard many things during this time: I’m sorry for your loss. He was a great man. It’s better this way. You really can’t say the right thing to someone who is mourning. It all is a stupid, no win, piece of communication. Personally I think I would have just preferred a few who would come around me and sit.
It was here I got the hope slime – He’s so much happier now. At least you can rest assured that he is in a better place.
Now, I understand this map of reality. What is being said is: after you die, you go to heaven… and heaven is so much better than living here on earth.
But here’s my problem: I no longer have my father; so you telling me that I need to be happy about something that just happened is not helpful. On top of that, I might be able to understand if you said something like this if a child just moved out of the house and went to college; or if your co-worker just got promoted to a higher paying job with a nicer boss and great benefits. Though you can be sad that the change occurred, you actually can accurately see that “YES they are in a better place.” You can call them up and ask “is the grass greener over there?” You can see what they are posting on facebook. There is so much to validate this hopeful statement that they are in a better place.
On the other hand, telling someone to be happy for their dead father because he just got promoted to heaven… is severing the mourning process. It belittles the loss that the person living must come to terms with. It allows you not to be safe for the person mourning. They have to smile and wince with you in the room because you won’t allow for your vision of reality to include the pain and injustice that death holds within it. There is an injustice to death. There is a sting to death. And telling a child who just received a bee sting to have faith that the sting will go away is a brutal neglect of the task at hand. It’s time to tend to the wound. Comfort. See where it hurts. And be kind.
I know a majority believe in an afterlife of some kind. I have found that sometimes that knowledge anesthetizes us from thinking about the injustice and loss that is involved with death. I recently learned that historically, an understanding of a Heaven after you die is a more recent phenomenon. Rather, Christians and Jews during Jesus’ time believed in resurrection. They felt that death was an injustice that God, being a good, just God, would make Right. I was surprised to learn that when Jesus told the thief on the cross next to him, that “today you will be with me in paradise.” This was not heaven as we think of it today. But rather … early Christians believed that this was a place where God held those, until the resurrection, when all things would be made right.
I throw this out there because it was helpful for me to realize that I could be sad about my dad dying. That there were other, more substantial thoughts of hope at play within my faith, and I did not have to shut off my mourning process. If we do have a hope that God will make things right in the end, it is more important that we act in compassion today; and not just bulldoze someone who is grieving with a statement that shortcuts the real loss that they have experienced.
Just because it is uncomfortable to cry, mourn, hurt, be sad, be angry, be devastated; doesn’t mean we have to legitimize our wincing faces with a slimy God excuse of hope. It is not Godly to shortcut pain, and force others to be steamrolled in Jesus Name. Rather we must take into consideration the person next to us OVER our map of who God is. God can defend himself. The person in pain next to you needs comfort from the sting. They need you to not slime them with your questions about their mental ascent. They don’t need you to be right in your picture on how things work… they need you to be right there.
This even is important in the small things. I remember an action that was cut short in my marriage for the better. I don’t remember what happened… but I was right. In my wisdom I communicated to Crystal “I told you so.” And I’m sure it was done with absolute compassion (sarcasm is dripping from this statement.) It only took once to realize what was coming back at me. Crystal questioned me appropriately “How does it feel to be right?” My answer melted underneath itself.. “Good?...” My lesson was this: when my “right” is used against others it becomes a wrong.
Today, I wish to encourage you to be the kind of friends that will look beyond our unclear view of God and what is RIGHT, and consider that compassion for others and being a friend who listens is more important than being right. If I listened to that person who was saying they were hurt, if Job had friends that could simply sit with him, if I had a community that sought to grieve with me over the need to depict an afterlife to me, and if I could only have compassion for those around me… my right would stay right. Because I chose to cover my nose with a tissue, rather that slime the person with my need to protect myself.
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