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28
2006
Denial Is Not Just a River in Egypt
Over the past – well, let’s say 10 years or so – I have been exposed to a lot of transitional circumstances and situations. A lot of places where nothing was ever designed to be permanent, and yet at every moment in time, every single person who has been there has wanted things to stay just the way they were – forever.
The party – and the show – must go on.
I wish this night could last forever.
I wish we never had to grow up.
I don’t want to have to work.
I hope I don’t have to move out this summer.
I wish I could be a student forever.
Are any of these things wrong? No, not in themselves. Good times are good times – and they are what make life worth living.
But what happens when we are not just having a good time, but medicating our fears?
I have seen people party and have a great time because they love their friends and just really enjoy being around each other. Very rarely, if ever, have I ever seen this kind of party go out of control – there is a loving intoxication that takes over and every feels like they can just be who they are.
I will admit that it has been a very long time since I have been to a party like that. Actually that’s not true!! When my friends from high school recently came together and visited with each other at Dylan’s, I think we did get together to see old friends – and it was a great experience.
But at my age – and I think in this day and age – these parties are growing scarce. People are under a great deal of stress and are tired – and are made guilty on top of it all…
In his short film “Theory of Achievment” Hal Hartley presents a character who has just been chewed out by his boss and is waiting for the elevator. What he says is so poignant that I will reproduce it in paraphrase here:
“So you work and you work… you make sacrifices… and when you make it – when you finally can stand up on your own two feet – by yourself – they take it away! Or worse they don’t allow you to do the thing that you are good at! They don’t want to hear about it when you have to take a cab to work – and when you pay for it with your own money – they complain about how you are working yourself to death!”
As students, as workers in the workforce, I think everyone can relate to this struggle. Unfortunately, as a society we have learned to medicate the stress and the pain away from our lives with alcohol, sex, drugs, video games, invigorating substances, etc. to the point where we forget our troubles – or put them off for another day. Procrastination is a mild form of denial – it says the problem exists tomorrow, but not today.
One of the most disturbing trends that I recognize, is that college itself – the ENTIRE LIBERAL ARTS ENTERPRISE – has become a form of medication. Many students in college don’t know what they want to do – and they end up with a business or sociology degree or something else that everyone else seems to take in order to get by. (This is not to say that there aren’t legit business and sociology majors out there – this is just an example.) They want to extend the high school drama further, rather than have to deal with the uncertainty of the workforce and dreary outlook of spending a lot more time at home.
When I was in college, there was a guy I didn’t know too well, but who I ended up hanging out with sometimes because he was close to friends of mine. Despite his somewhat befuddled appearance, this guy was straightforward about a lot of things – not just with other folks but with himself also. He realized in the middle of his second year at Whitman that he didn’t know what he wanted to study.
He could have skated through just to escape real life for another couple of years, but despite the expense he had already put in he left school and started working. I was a little sad to see him go, but at the same time I had a lot of respect for the guy. He was at school to learn, and if he wasn’t sure what we was going to do he certainly wasn’t going to waste the time and money dinking around in extended high school mode.
I have been through enough generations of college ministry groups to know that there is a fantastic loophole that can be taken advantage of when clergy don’t feel they should (or can) intrude into the lives of students who grew up in their parishes.
The easiest way for someone to avoid spiritual growth – and by this I mean putting off the maturation process – stay a kid forever – is DENIAL.
Denial is the opposite of honesty. It is worse than telling a lie. A lie is admitting there is a problem and trying to mislead or misdirect resolution of the problem. Denial is not even admitting there is a problem.
If there is no problem, there is no attempt at a solution.
If there is no attempt at a solution, there is no accountibility – no way for an outside person to help evaluate the effectiveness of a solution.
If there is no accountibility, there is no positive change and no growth.
If there is no growth, a person implodes – they cave in and die.
I have always been the type of person who knows that honesty is always the best policy. This is primarily because I am a horrible liar, and I can’t deny much of anything that is really going on without someone figuring it out.
That being said, I can also testify that with one or two exceptions my relationships with others are always fulfilling. I have felt betrayed from time to time, but I sleep at night knowing that I have treated the day – and all its scenarios – with respect by being true to what is real.
There is a passage in Proverbs – “Giving an honest answer is like giving a kiss.”
The principle is clear – through the cultivation of courage to live an honest life, a person will find that their friendships are stronger, but more importantly their relationship with God becomes incredibly strong and real. When a person is honest with God, it is the only time God truly answers prayer and directs a person to real solutions. If you aren’t straight with God, how can He help and nurture you?
When a person is able to deal with what is real, they commune with the world around them. When they deny who they are, what they do, and how they are living their lives, it isolates them from honorable and quality people. It removes them from situations that otherwise have great potential. Their life feels like a stinking shithole – erm I mean Sheol.
Denial is, in some sense, the gate to hell.
Why did Christ make such a big deal about Peter’s denial? What was the end result of Judas Iscariot’s denial?
I can’t speak for those who read this, especially for those who are in college still and whom I barely know. But in any case there is a deafening silence that comes across the crowd when a priest or anyone tries to bring up whether the life of a typical college student is God-fearing or not.
If you hide your life in silence, it’s like cheating on the test of life – you will not learn the material. You will not hurt the priest or your parents. The only person you are cheating is yourself when you live a life plagued by denial.
I am not saying this to discourage you or to come down heavy with the iron fist of morality. My concern is that regret is never something that is felt during acts of foolishness… Regret is the hangover that hits you once you have received knowledge of good and evil.
A popular party slogan has always been not to regret anything in life because at the time anything that made you smile was something that you wanted at the time. Every person that I know who has tried to live according to this fallacy comes to realize that in the past they have wanted really stupid things – things that even if they got them were totally not worth the trouble. This often comes when they see what would have happened had they chosen something different. Of course, denial can kick in at any time to prevent any sort of lesson being learned… but I have to hope that everyone sobers up at some point in life before they are 50.
If you persistently avoid regret by deciding you will never succumb to or associate with preachy people or people who are judging you, you will find yourself locking door after door – alienating friend after friend – until you find yourself surrounded by people who don’t give a damn about whether you live or die because to them, nothing is real and nothing really matters anyway. And this is great – no expectations, no hang-ups, no drama… that is, until you find something or someone that really does matter to you is gone – then the crisis emerges and – oops! – everyone around you doesn’t give a damn! Or else if they do care, their advice sucks…
If pietistic religion is the opiate of the drooling masses, nihilism is an equally popular novacaine coma.
Religious people can use books and psychotic abstractions to hide from reality. Nihilists prefer sex, drugs and debauchery.
Somewhere in the great divide is the touchstone between the world, God, and us. This is the only honest place to be in. It is a place that is known as ‘aporia’ in literature – it’s the unknowable present. Fully accounted for and raw, from which we gain epiphany – moments where the meaning of the unknowns in life line up and create an ‘ah HAH!’ moment.
If there is a mentality that opposes denial, aporia is certainly it. While aporia gives birth to epiphany, denial breeds apathy. Denial is safe and comfortable, aporia is entirely not safe – but new and often exciting.
Seeking ‘aporia’ is living so close to the Now that it defies perception, while at the same time putting a person in the perfect position to receive grace.
It is the place where God creatively injects life into the world. It is where God reveals his way to those at just the right moment. It is where you and I find ourselves redeemed and reconciled with all things and are able to act in the world with authority and integrity. Authentic epiphany only shows itself within the context of complete and total yielding to what naturally surrounds us.
Ultimately it is where God is, as O WN – “He who is.” The ancient name of God often gets interpreted as being a sign of cosmic splendor – generically ‘being’ beyond space and time – but it is not expansive at all. It is saying that the unravelling world of God is precisely where God is – and no where else. Not the past, not the future. Right here and now – renewed every day. As the psalms say in praise of God, “You renew the face of the ground.”
Aporia/Epiphany is not about escape – it is about living an engaging life that you no longer wish to escape. This is why people talk about the experience – and about theosis – as being a state of complete and total joy. You have no desire to escape this state, and until you are there – until you find this place – you will never be satisfied.
So if you are reading all this stuff as a college student with a party to go to this weekend, I hope you’ll take a moment sometime to make sure that when you go – you are not going to escape a broken heart, fear of money, fear of grades, or anything else that you need to confront.
Before you leave for the party – you might go through a brief exercise:
1) In a journal, write down your five top concerns for the week.
2) Next to each, write down what is within your power to act on each item.
3) If there are things that you should do to eliminate your concerns, do them before even thinking about partying. Even if this means just writing someone a note or leaving a phone message saying you need to talk to them later next week. Don’t walk out that door feeling like you are running away from life or anticipating how ‘blitzed’ you are going to get and how much you are going to forget your problems.
4) Having done all you can for the demands that life has put on you, go and have a great time enjoying your friends and ringing in the new year! I think you’ll have a much better time if you do!
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