Tell Me Where You Hurt
“Bartimaeus, a blind beggar...was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’”
February 13, 1981
Join me in an experience.
Close your eyes for a moment. Don't open them until I say so. Your name is Bartimaeus. You live in Jericho, a town 15 or 20 miles northeast of Jerusalem. And you are blind as a bat. Most days are spent by you sitting on the street side in Jericho listening to people and life pass you by. The word gets out about a strange young man from some place called Nazareth. Unexplainably, sick people become well after contact with him, you hear. Crazed people become sane, cripples walk, and, dare you believe it, blind people throw away their white canes. One day, you learn that Jesus is in Jericho. You can tell by the noise of the crowd that Jesus is passing by. You figure that you don't have anything to lose, so you begin to yell your head off to get his attention. People tell you to put a lid on it, but, no way, you are not giving up. Sure enough, Jesus hears you through the din of the crowd and tells you to come. Bumping into people and scrambling, you make it to him. He asks you what you want, and you tell him that you want to see. He says, "Open your eyes." You do that, too. "Now you can see, your faith has made you well, go on your way." And so you follow Jesus down the road. No longer will you be Blind Bartimaeus. Now you are seeing Bartimaeus.
Not really. You are not Bartimaeus, and neither am I. In fact, we don't even do as well as he did.
At least, he had the guts to yell and say where it hurt. Most of the time, we just hold it in, pretend things are great, when they aren't, and hope no one notices the cracks around our edges. To be sure, we have physical sight. But like Bartimaeus, we don't see all life has for us, much of life's joy passes us by because we won't say, tell, and face where we hurt. If you won't admit where you hurt, then it is hard for anyone – another person, God, or both – to help you.
Today, I'd like to talk about three maladies that keep people like you and me from seeing and experiencing the kind of life God wants us to have with him and each other.
First, there is the silent suffering of held inside feelings. The Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno has been quoted as saying that all humans pretty well share a "common grief" with one another. The problem is that we are afraid to let others know what is bothering us or scaring us. And, thus, we nor they ever know that we are feeling pretty much the same things in our lives.
If Unamuno is correct, and I think he is, then each of us is usually troubled about matters more related than unrelated to the problems of others around us. We have fears about our health and dying. Sometimes we fear that the special people in our lives will not love as much, or in the way, we want. We feel intimidated because others around us seem to look better or do better than we do. It haunts us to consider what people would think about us if they knew about us what we know about ourselves. Many of us live with a free floating sense of dissatisfaction, a feeling that whatever the point of life is, we are missing "it". Some days we just aren't sure that we will be able to cope or manage the conflicting demands made upon us. Children feel guilty because they feel they are not living up to their parent's expectations. And parents feel like it is all their fault when a child doesn't do well with school, a job, or a marriage. People who have a lot of "others" in their lives and those who are alone both endure their own special kind of loneliness. And on and on the list goes.
These are the sorts of ways all of us feel. Yet the trouble is that we never know it because we are afraid that people might laugh at us, think less of us, or be repulsed by us if they knew the "inside story" about us.
Sarah Bernhardt is considered one of the great actresses of the first part of this century. It is said when she made her performance debut on the New York stage many in the audience were brought to tears. In the audience was the wealthy railroad magnate William H. Vande bilt who dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief. Backstage after the performance, the usual gruff tycoon covered the young actress with compliments. He told her that he was so moved by her acting that he would like to give her a gift, anything she could name. Her answer: "There is one thing, I would like the handkerchief you cried in."
Oh, how we long for a sign that the other guy (or gal) has a damp handkerchief in their pocket like we do. Each of us has a version of that common grief. In one of John Lennon's last songs there is the line: "Woman, you must understand, there is a little child inside your man.” Yet we men are notorious for keeping our feelings in and letting the pressures kill us before our time. And women do it, too. What help it would be if we could show our handkerchiefs to each other!
As a pastor, I hear the struggles many people face in their attempts to bring off their lives. I hear them in confidence. And I keep them in confidence. Yet I will tell you this. It has been a long time since anyone revealed anything to me about themselves that I have not heard before – an unfaithful deed, a haunting fear, confusion or depression, feelings of just not being "good enough". What I hear is not shocking, just human. And the worst part of it all is the self-inflicted loneliness of the person feeling they must hold it all in. On the occasions in which I have risked sharing my plight with another, I have almost without fail received the encouragement I needed from the other, even an "aha! you. feel that way, too?" Most times both parties have felt relief that their problem or feelings did not have to be intensified by being the "lone ranger", the only one in the world.
Each of us can learn a lot from old Bartimaeus. If something hurts, yell. Or better, begin by admitting it to yourself. Then tell someone: God, a friend, a pastor, a counselor, a loved one, someone. It is better than sitting on the side of the road, bottled up, with life passing you by.
Thus, I commend to your and my use, the Bartimaeus remedy, tell someone where you hurt! This is why confession is always a part of Christian worship.
Second, there is the human disease that cripples our living and blinds us to loving ourselves, God, and others: GUILT. At the turn of the century, there was a Mexican bank robber who made life miserable for Texas Rangers. Jorge Rodrigues would cross the Rio Grande River, rob Texas slip back home to Mexico unapprehended. Finally, one day a Ranger caught sight of Rodrigues crossing back into Mexico. He followed him to a little cantina restaurant in the robber's home village. With gun drawn, he got the drop on the surprised Rodrigues: "There is no escape, either give all the money back or I will let you have it." Slight problem, Rodrigues did not speak English. A little man came up and volunteered to translate. In Spanish he told, Rodrigues what the lawman had said. In Spanish, Rodrigues quickly responded: "Tell him not to shoot. He can find all the money buried under the fifth stone due north of the town water well." The little man turned and in flawless English said: “Jorge Rodrigues says he is a brave man and that he is ready to die."
I don't know how the little guy who did Jorge in for the stolen money felt, but most of us live with our share of guilt for times in our lives that we have betrayed someone or at least let another person down. We have done what we wanted to do because we wanted to do it even knowing that someone would be hurt if they knew. The problem is that in recent years it has become unfashionable to feel guilty. It has been popular to blame our environment or our parents for our deeds and feelings. I guess there always has been the ever popular practice of blaming someone or something for why we do what we do. And it is true, we are not always totally to blame for our actions. Yet each of us are guilty enough that unless we admit the guilt and ask for God's forgiveness, then life will never give us any peace. Perhaps, even more serious, until we admit our guilt, then we will never open ourselves to the help God gets to us to do that superhuman feat of forgiving ourselves. Jesus lived his life, Jesus lost his life, trying to get into the hard heads and tough hearts of humans that God is not out to punish us but is out to forgive us. And so it really takes a lot of audacity and guts to make our standards higher than God, holding back forgiveness of ourselves for all that God forgives us for in Jesus Christ.
Before we leave this malady of guilt, we need to deal with another kind of guilt. Not only is there pain of real guilt, things we SHOULD feel guilty about, there is also the unrealistic guilt humans inflict upon themselves. In a little book about guilt, Professor Thomas C. Oden deals with real and what he calls idolatrous guilt.
Idolatrous guilt occurs when we give unrealistic goals to ourselves, and when we don't reach them, we feel guilty. We set before ourselves the unrealistic expectation of being super parent or super spouse, who never gets tired or irritable, who is always spontaneous with meeting the needs of husband, wife or child. Yet some days even the most loving mom and dad just don't feel like being parental, the most caring spouse just doesn't have it to be understanding. So even when we go ahead and do what must be done, we nevertheless feel guilty for being resentful about it. We fail to realize that it is not the spontaneous acts of love that are the greatest example of human caring. The real heroics of human caring occur when people go ahead and do the loving thing even when they don't feel like it. No guilt needed here!
Another example Oden offers has to do with the unrealistic expectations guilt we inflict upon ourselves by trying to do more than is humanly possible in any one day. He says that most humans have perhaps ten big things they need to do in a given day. Yet only one two things can really be done well. So, instead of doing the one or two things most needed and even doable in a given day, we attempt four or five, do them halfway and feel guilty for not doing or halfway doing all ten!! I find no evidence in the Bible that God expects us to do everything everyday, just the best we can!
Thirdly, and finally, there is another form in which we humans hurt, and like Bartimaeus, we need to get it out in the open. This is the pain of what John Claypool calls the "cotton candy" syndrome. You know how cotton candy is: looks so good, but when you put it in your mouth, it disappears. A personal example of the cotton candy syndrome. I turned 16 in 1964. That was the year of the '64 GTO – bucket seats, four in the floor, and four-barrel carburetor. I thought that my life would be complete with a '64 GTO. Well, in 1975 for $350 I got a 4 in the floor, 4-barrel carburetor, and bucket seats. And you know, it wasn't such a thrill.
Seriously, the "cotton candy" syndrone is the human experience version of that candy that looks so good, tastes so good for just a second, then just melts, and is gone faster than it came.
We spend our lives thinking if I can just get this or that. If I can just get this position or that honor. If I can just reach this goal or make that quota. Then, then, I will be happy, complete, fulfilled. And you know how it is: cotton candy. Once you get it, the sweet lasts a moment and then it is gone, and you are empty once again. We go from even snazzier houses, cars, clothes, achievements hoping some satisfaction will last. And it doesn't. And thus we hurt. Oh, for the courage of Bartimaeus to cry out and say: why, what's going on!
I think the "cotton candy" syndrome is based on a fundamental human feeling of not being "good enough". So, our lives are spent on the "proving myself" treadmill: working hard, tiring out, and getting nowhere fast. It isn't only a materialistic, acquisitive stuff matter either. Many of us try to prove ourselves, overcome our feelings of not being "good enough,” by amassing what I call G.D.U.'s Good Deed Units. We take on jobs at church, in the schools, and in the community. We come in at night with our tongues hanging out. And there awaiting us somewhere in the night is that feeling, 'you really ought to be doing more. You haven't quite done enough to be good enough.’ Or, ‘if you really were a good person, you would – here it is again – feel more spontaneous about your deeds, instead of obligated and guilt motivated.’
So, each of us are like Bartimaeus, usually miss more life than we hit. I am sapped by feelings I am afraid to share, my guilt can be like a low grade fever that cripples all I do, and I go and go trying to prove that I am good enough with deeds that are as lasting as cotton candy. When I don't like me very much, then I don't like others either. It is almost impossible for a person who does not love himself to love anyone else. When I am so busy fretting and worrying about myself, I don't have much time or energy for the needs of people around me. I may even strike out at others desperately seeking to make myself look good by making them look bad. Contrary to what we sometimes think, most damage done in the world is not by people who think too much of themselves but by people feeling inferior and troubled lashing out: from the Hitlers to the tormented parent who abuses its child. It is not when I am on top of the world that I kick the dog and yell at my wife, it is when I feel in the pits. And feelings held in, guilt, and the cotton candy syndrone put me in the pits. And I can't get out until I admit to myself, tell God, usually through another human, that I hurt.
In psychotherapy, there is a term called "unconditional positive regard". It is a gift that the therapist – be he/she doctor, pastor, or counselor – gives the person. The person is accepted unconditionally regardless of what they reveal about themselves. This total acceptance does not require the person to hold in their feelings, cast blame about their guilt, or prove anything to get it. It is simply given. Now what happens is this. The person can let his defense down and stop avoiding his guilt and trying to earn a "good-enough" feeling. Freed from having to use his energy to keep up a good front, the person is able to take a look at his life, decide what needs to be changed and decide how to change. The person is able to let his guard down to see what parts of his life can't be changed and begin to learn to live creatively with the unchangeables, like the death of a loved one or a deed that cannot be undone.
You may have guessed it by now. Unconditional positive regard is just a whittled down version of what the Bible calls grace. Jesus lived and died to convince us that God is not out to punish us but out to love us. God's unconditional positive acceptance of us does not require us to always be on top of our feelings, doesn't depend on our being blameless and guilt free, and does not demand us to be "good enough" because we have earned our G.D.U.'s on the proving myself treadmill.
God's grace, his unconditional positive regard, for each of us simply goes with the territory of the gift of life. We are "good enough" because God made us and loves us, and God doesn't make or love any junk. God's unconditional love doesn't condone the times we hurt others and ourselves. It simply empowers us to stop the self-put downs of ourselves, accept the unchangeables, and change what can and needs to be changed about us.
You see, we waste a lot of life and lives when we are so absorbed with fretting about ourselves that we miss the people around us who need us. There are hungry people in the world that need to be fed. There are probably people in your house or somewhere you will be this week who need some attention from you. If you are bottled up with guilt, unexpressed feelings, and tormented with the "not good enough" treadmill, you are going to miss them. You are not going to have any energy to do you or any of God's other children any good if you can't, like Bartimaeus, let God take the garbage out of you. The church has been around for two thousand years to give you the news: you don't have to live that way. You are good enough; it goes with the territory of God's gift of life and love to you.
Can you tell me where you hurt? Your life and the life of a lot of others depend on it. Amen.