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"Fake It Till You Make It"?!
Tuesday's Trust
"Positivity" vs. Living in the Question?
When Tommy and I took the "Positivity" test on Saturday (see yesterday's post) and each promptly flunked it, it made us stop and realize a crazy-making scheme in our world. Are you telling me that when bad things happen, horrible things actually, one cannot be sad and actually "real" about that sadness? It also made us stop and think,
OH MY! WE CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE WORLD AND THE "CHURCH" ON THIS ONE!
The church has taken "faith" and secularized it into "the power of positive thinking," or as some denominations speak it, "Name it, and Claim it!" a horrible abuse of God's word and God's ways. "Name it and Claim it" is an attempted manipulation of God by holding Him hostage to what we "think" His Word says, and therefore "making" Him do it in our lives.
Some superficial and/or legalistic church-goers seem to think that no matter what is going on in your lives, you should be "happy." I often coin this heretical thinking as a "Peachy-Keen Religion," one that suggests you are not really holy if you ever realistically view your situation and feel sad, even showing such sadness by weeping or crying out, or anxious, sometimes desperately aware of your vulnerable state unless God indeed does intervene, and so on regarding any of the "negative" or "bad-feeling" emotions.
(Recently, there has even been the controversy along these lines that any time one is anxious, it is a "sin"! -- How, I ask, can these so-called "men of God" have the audacity to say such when even our own Savior was anxious to the point of sweating blood when He realized His enemy was breathing down His neck wanting to destroy Him, and that even His Father might not intervene against such a dastardly thing? Would they say our Savior sinned at such a point in His humanity? Do they think He missed the chance to think positively and therefore honor God with such living in plastic-land?)
So, no wonder we child-loss grieving parents all feel utterly abandoned by our families, and even our church families, when we allow ourselves to get in touch with the God-given emotions of angst, weeping, etc. over our beloved child. Such heresy has crept into the church despite Jesus clearly weeping over Lazarus, even when He knew He was going to raise him from the dead. So how is the church any different from the world? The world has a "Fake it till you make it," mantra that is inhuman, plastic, and downright manipulative, but it feels that even the church has fallen for such a heretical view in the "name" of "faith" or "trust."
God does indeed ask us to keep our eyes on Him as He is transcendent over all our circumstances. But He doesn't ask us to lie, via manipulative "Fake it till you make it" ploys. Instead, He invites us to cry our tears out with Him, allowing Him to come alongside us to genuinely comfort us. Where are the "Christ-like" Christians who would do as Christ does and "come alongside" us in the depths of our hurt amidst grieving our child? Instead, they just throw out messages to "Get Over It!" because really, they don't want to be bothered.
Thank goodness our Lord does not treat us that way. No. He says,
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."
~Matthew 5:4
And we are. He does not blast out at us a "Get Over It" mentality. Instead, He bravely comes into our pain with us, sits with us, holds us, even weeps with us, all the while still being true to Himself by correcting our mistaken notions about Him, or challenging our fatalistic tendencies by reminding us there is more to the picture than we can see, or calling us to keep our eyes on Him, and He will carry us through...
