I was reading this post from a fellow friend of mine at the Brennan Manning forums and came across these paragraphs that really made me stop to reflect.
We made it to church in one piece and most likely pasted on one of those frozen-caught-in-the-headlights-kind-of-smiles of “I’m fine” that we Christians do so well when we are scared that our humanity makes us less worthy than the next human being. But during the time in the service, where one can stand up and ask for prayer, I stood up with tears just a streaming down my face and said, “If not for God I would be dead drunk right now instead of standing here in church.” My self loathing was off the scale at that moment. The pain was all the way through my gut. A beer would have been so much easier to down than admitting that the pain was bubbling up.
People didn’t quite know what to do with that kind of honesty. My sobriety hinges on my honesty so I gotta do it especially when it ain’t pretty. So often during prayer times we ask prayer for someone else. Someone who needs prayer so bad. Someone other than ourself. Have you ever unburdened yourself like that and then had the feeling that people are squirming in their seats because of the tension within them to stand up and with relief shout, “That’s me too!” and the urge to get away from you lest their facade breaks and their humanity is revealed? It was one of those kind of mornings.
I think she hit the bullseye. We are so scared to be honest with ourselves fearing to be honest and spill ourselves out makes us less spiritual. We fear the shame, scorn, and ridicule we may receive or worse yet, when many years are passed away and our name is called out on the stage that someone will remember and throw back what was scattered as far as the east is to the west back into our life again.
I too have had the same feeling that the author explained in her last paragraph both as the one who ‘unburdens’ himself and also as the one who went from contender to pretender and held back from admitting ‘me too, I struggle with…’.
I even noticed this a couple of weeks ago at communion. After the pastor read through the 1 Corinthians 11:17-32
verses and invited the congregation to the table to be served by the elders, I noticed that everyone included myself looked around to see who was going to be first to get up. Finally, someone had the courage to be the first one to get up and walk towards the communion table. Of course everyone else followed and got up shortly afterwards and headed towards the front of the sanctuary.
When I noticed this, I first thought that maybe it was people in the congregation waiting as long as they could mentally confessing their sins before partaking of the elements to make sure that they were not partaking in an unworthy manner or to subconsciously judge the first person who got up as not taking enough time to ‘confess’. However, as I look back on this, I now believe differently.
The communion service previously mentioned and the depiction of the woman who stood up and admitted her need for prayer are similar in more ways imagined. In both instances, someone had to be the first one to admit a need whether it was prayer or it was a need to partake of the Lord’s supper. In both instances, someone was the risktaker to turn from being the pretender to being the contender. Someone broke the silence. Someone unlocked the celldoor of their own prison to walk out free.
It seems that the church body that preaches honesty on Sunday morning despises when one of their followers becomes brutally honest. It seems as if the messiness is despised because it makes everything appear unclean. I too have felt the ‘bad vibes of urges’ with people wanting to distance themself from you fearing that their perfected state of humanity will crack and their own messiness pours out.
The stigma of feeling the ‘bad vibes’ is turned into the stigmata as someone has now mentally sewed a Scarlett letter on your very being that they want to force you to wear forever. Why? Because someone has decided to calculate their own level of what the church should tolerate instead of reading the Word of God. And the person who wants to be the Contender remains the Pretender because they know that they need a Jesus they are not finding, not another condemnation, not another stigma, and not another stigmata.
That’s the tragedy. In many ways, we go from Sunday to Sunday hearing sermons of being the Victorious contender and we still walk away still being the pretender. Brennan Manning in his book The Signature of Jesus said this:
Weary and breathless, we sense that life is slipping away. We change our wardrobe, slip into the costume for the next performance and regret that we have tasted so little of the peace and joy that Jesus promised.
Why? Manning answers this question paragraphs later when he stated:
We are trying to be several selves at once. There is the civic self, the parental self, the financial self, the spiritual self, the society self, the professional self. And yet we are uneasy, strained, and fearful that we are shallow…
The Pretender is the person who feeds and nurtures the selves. The Contender is the person who denies himself, crucifies the flesh, and takes up the cross. The Pretender is the ‘happy idiot’ who tells everyone everything is all right when deep inside it’s not and eventually surrenders their true self to the generated characters of the selves. The Contender is the perplexed warrior who is honest enough to admit their fears, failures, shortcomings, and needs and wins the war over the self to fulfill the desires of the Holy Spirit.
Even though you feel like you are pounding the fists on the wall. Even though you feel as if the road looks the same everyday even though you are walking somewhere. Even though you feel like you should have given up and other people have given up on you. Keep Contending.
