Broken

Why are we so survival-of-the-fittest? We imagine and pretend with each other that we are an enlightened people. I am not saying there isn’t a light. There clearly is a light. Pretending there isn’t a light is half the problem. What I am saying is that proximity or conversation about the light is not the same as having it. We shape and form our theorems for life after our limited experiences imagining that we are giving to ourselves and others a Martin Luther-like-truth that will “set us free” but our broken half-truth has a shelf life of about 20 minutes. We think of clever ways to say things that mean nothing and make no real difference.

The tell-tale sign that we are not enlightened is that we hide our pain. Why is that so tell-tale? Because we are afraid that these “enlightened people” will throw the weaker version of ourselves under the buss “if they only knew.” The trouble is that it is just true. So what do we do? We do the worst thing possible. We form our own leper camps where all of the other similarly broken people come together to tell each other that we are not broken or that the non-broken people are just bastards for judging us. Let me disrobe the king’s new clothes on that one! We are all broken. There are no un-broken people judging us. We are our own worse critiques and we know we are broken. Getting around other broken people is still totally survival-of-the-fittest. Why? Because we want to secretly compare ourselves with the worst in others and say “see, I am not that bad.” And even this statement has a sliding scale of meaning. We could mean “See, we all suck therefore on a curve if we all suck then we all must be doing OK,” or we mean “Compared to the degree that you suck, I don’t look so bad.” You know what? There is no curve to brokenness. You are either broken or you are not, and everyone is broken.

So what about the light then? I will tell you about the light. Have you ever broken a bone? Imagine if you had convinced yourself you were OK and kept using that bone. I did this. I was in High School and I was catching a football and I broke my finger. My first reaction was, “Oh my gosh! I broke my finger. HELP!” My next reaction was classic, “MAN UP!” and so I grabbed the goofy broken finger and pull it further out of socket and tried to pop it back in. A few days later when the pain was unbearable, I went to the doctor and found out that my little self-adjusting fix had ruined a tendon in my finger. I wasn’t enlightened. The “answer” was not “within me all along.” If ever there was an answer in me it was my first response to the situation… “HELP!” To this day it affects my ability to play musical instruments. Sadly I have learned to live with it. When I play, I don’t have the hand strength to play really long without that hand going numb. Whenever it gets cold outside my finger aches. I will forever pay for my foolish self deception and classic ignorance in thinking I could do this on my own or fix the mess I was in.

We all tend to play a role in our demise. More importantly we play a role in our recovery. But you know what… recovery sucks too. Why? Think of a burn victim who fell asleep with a cigarette. Over the months of recovery as their body is replacing the destroyed skin, repairing nerves and the bandages are being replaced that person is going through unimaginable pain. Burning to death would suck. Recovery sucks too. What is worse? Who cares? Do you really want to live a life that keeps putting you to bed with cigarettes?

I think it is time to kill the survivalists inside us. You know that if you are honest you would last about 24 hours at best lost in the woods. The survivalist mentality is like a couch-potato telling other spectators how that last play should have been run. It is complete fiction. You are not a coach. You are not a quarterback. You are not a running back. You are not a doctor. And if you are then you know that you are simply qualified to “try,” brave enough to “try.” If you are, then maybe you are actually acknowledging that brokenness needs healing and not left to turn green and kill us slowly.

Like the burn victim at the hospital, we need a team of doctor surrounding us, helping us out. Gathering around us other burn victim who are all falling asleep with cigarettes is foolish. We are only in survival mode at best.

Enough is enough! Identifying the fact that you are broken is step one. Step two is getting help. Do me a favor. If you are like me and you have a bookshelf, then find all of your self-help books and rip out three quarters of the pages. What is left is a generous approximation of the value of all of your books put together. You were not meant to do this alone. Let me say that again. If you are trying to fix yourself on your own, then know beyond all hope that your plan will fail. Remember the last time you tried to fix some addiction or obsession you have on your own? Smoking, drinking, pornography, lust, OSD, etc. Go ahead and give up. It will be your best next step.

When I was younger I had a friend who had a lot of pain from his relationship with his dad. It was poring over into all of his relationships. He was so angry at his father and at what he was becoming as a result of his emotionally abused history. But he was a smart guy. He started to see how he was self destructing in the rest of his life. He acknowledged that he was broken and now causing his own pain. After praying together and talking together I felt like Jesus gave me some insight into both events in his past as well as perspectives he was carrying. One intense night, we dedicated ourselves to going to war over his life. He wanted it back and was ready to do whatever it took to get out from under the crushing pressure of his brokenness. Sometimes we have to get that desperate. This is because of the self-protecting nature of our truly unenlightened current reality.

We held a funeral that night. After hours and hours of sharing his pain with me, crying and yelling, punching at the air, laying on the floor and weeping, we eventually found ourselves in my backyard. I pointed at this spot on the ground and said, “Dude, your old self is buried right there, in the ground. That isn’t you anymore. It’s time to say a few words over your old self and put it to rest. But you don’t have to be nice.” I started us off, “Well, you moron. I am so glad you are dead. There is nothing more in life I want for my friend. I hate you and love that you are gone. Good Bye!” He started out, “You suck. You are week and I am glad you are gone. I want nothing to do with you.” By the end he had picked up any stone he could find and started pummeling his old-self grave! By the end he felt free from needing to be that version of himself. I shared a few thoughts with him, “Now you have a choice. From here on out you can be what you want to be, the best version of yourself. And if you decide to go back and dig up that rotting corpse you can. You can throw that smelling decomposing corpse on your shoulders and carry it around again, but that will be your choice. You are not subject to that ‘thing’ anymore. And if you do ever find yourself in that position then just go bury it again, immediately! That is not you anymore.”
I truly hate the world we live in right now that wants to hide our brokenness, or worse pretend it isn’t brokenness, or throw each other under the buss when we reveal our brokenness. I just want to be real. Not a jaded “we are all broken” kind-of-real that doesn’t take a single real step toward getting out from under the mess. I am talking about a “real” that is really ready to face the issues. If you are hurting, then come with me to the hospital. I think I am done convincing people that they need the hospital. I am fine with telling them where it is (i.e. get into a real church if your church isn’t more like a real hospital. Jesus and his people will help you. If you church is a club, then feel free to enjoy the club, just don’t replace the hospital with a club when what you really need is a hospital. If your church ignors brokenness or leaves you simply and acknowledging that “everyone is broken” but doesn’t do anything about it, here is some advice: stop wasting time and get a new church.)

It is time to face the fact that we need the light. We need Jesus. What he has been offering for 2000 years is needed more than ever. We are just goofy people that like to smoke and fall asleep with our cigarettes. We know it hurts us. We know we hurt others. We risk getting burned and when we do, we hide our burns. These risks are a waste! The costs are too high! We are too busy basking in our ability to break ourselves and others.