The burden of denial

I’m a big fan of denial.

I’m trying to maintain my amateur status in case it ever becomes an Olympic event. Gold metal, right here. NO ONE can hang with me.

Part of it is being raised Southern. You know, it’s not POLITE to stir up trouble when someone hurts your feelings. So you tell yourself they didn’t and move on.

I have stood toe-to-toe with a life-altering crisis. Actual trauma. My go-to? It’ll be fine. Everything’s gonna be fine. And I actually BELIEVED myself until the annoying thing came BACK a few weeks later.

Maybe would have had to settle for the bronze that time.

While denial can be a useful coping skill to get your through disasters, it is NOT a way of life. You have to live in what’s real, what’s true, not just how you want things to me.

I’m continuing my word study on ‘free’ in the Bible. Reading the scriptures where that word or some variation of it appears, check the footnotes and cross references. It’s absolutely fascinating.

As I’ve mentioned before, John is my favorite gospel and I know it pretty well. But somehow between the woman caught (set up) in adultery at the beginning of John 8 and Him playing the ‘I AM’ card at the end of the chapter, I had kinda skated over the middle.

Everybody was arguing. I don’t like arguing. I am not entertained by it, I do not get energized by it. I want to fix the problem, or bail. PEACE, please.

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’

They answered him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’

Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.’ John 8:31-36

Now, this is just a snippet of the argument. There was plenty back-and-forth before and after this moment. Verse 32 is often quoted out of context.

But look at what Jesus is saying. Jesus Himself is definition of truth. Every word He says. Truth. You are truly free when you live in, when you BELIEVE in, the TRUTH. That’s what I was missing: TRUTH = FREEDOM.

Man, I get that. When the truth comes out, it can be painful. But at some point, it is always a relief. Because I am a slave of my denial and all the lies I tell myself.

But apparently, I’m not the only one.

Check out the Jews’ response.

‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?

Ummm. That’s not real. That’s not TRUE.

Know what happened a few generations after Abraham? Egypt.

Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”

So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly. Exodus 1:8-14

Slave masters over them. Over slaves.

How did these people who MEMORIZED the Torah at a young age forget that part? The Passover? The last of the plagues. It’s EVERYTHING.

And another thing. They suspended reality on their CURRENT SITUATION. The Romans had sieged Jerusalem about 30 years before Jesus was born. Any authority the Jewish ‘rulers’ had was a false title as means of a fragile peace.

Israel was part of the Roman Empire. And they all knew it. They paid them taxes on a regular basis. And at any moment, the Romans could step in and crush an uprising. There was no independence. It was a bluff.

Slavery is part of their story, part of their legacy. As Beth Moore says, “You can’t separate your history from your destiny. That’s what redemption is.”

So there they are, staring the Truth in the face. Denying it. Making up an alternate reality. Trying to sell it to God Himself.

The Truth would set them free. He had done it before, He would do it again. All they had to do was own the truth about who they were, where they were and how they got there.

Step 1 of the twelve steps of recovery:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.

Translation: The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Guess what, folks. We got problems. LOTS of them. And if you’re anything like me, you try to make them go away before you have to look at them.

And that denial keeps us enslaved. We cannot be free until we embrace the truth.

But the truth is painful. We can’t see the freedom on the other side. What if it’s not worth it? What if Jesus fails us just like we’ve been failed by other people? And how many times have we failed ourselves?

Even knowing that, making ourselves vulnerable to our problems feels too risky. We will undoubtedly screw it up, but at least we can control how it goes down, right?

Please allow me to gently and respectfully throw my BS flag.

We can easily identify the lies other people believe. But we’re so enslaved by the house of lies we have built, we can’t even recognize it.

What lies are we willingly believing, because they feel less painful than the truth? What lies feel like freedom but are actually burdening you with a weight you cannot stand under? Guess what. We were never supposed to even try.

Jesus’ life was sold for the price of a slave. King of the Universe, Creator of the World willingly bound, beaten and executed. Like a slave. So we could be free.