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What Security Can Buy

Brennan Manning’s book “The Importance of Being Foolish” has lead to thought about my need of security and how that affects my trust. The general thought of Manning is that security is one of the enemies or a roadblock to experiencing God. Yet, I have heard no real practical ideas (until today) of how to push security away without destroying not only my lifestyle but also my identity. I could live among the poor, but if I really feel I am called to create media that leads people towards God where does throwing the dream away leave me? So now, after my idealistic encouragement, I will let you in on how I believe my story fell out of trust and into an overwhelming need for security.

Deep within me there is an underlying inability to trust. This “trustlessness” has been intensely experienced by three people in my life and acutely experienced by (possibly) everyone I have known. This trustlessness calls me to move away from people and those that would show me love in exchanged of a surety that no one will ever be able to love me. The surety develops into security when that voice and the voice’s lie are confirmed. People get close enough to know me, I move away, and I don’t feel their love. Then I remember after the fact and recognize that I am not being loved. Thus the surety that no one will ever love me is confirmed and I move into the domain of un-love as a secure place. A place where I might be free of the pain of un-love with other people, voices, and things that, like me, do not share love (or believe they do not share love). Yet, as I begin to feel this inability to trust I am reminded that my nature did not always pull toward the security of un-love. I did not always hide in trustlessness.

The security of trustlessness is an agreement I made. I look through my life and I can see all the ways in which I have refused and moved away from trust to cope with the pain and resentment of being left to the domain of un-love. I have agreed that something core in my identity is not loveable, something not wanted. Yet, have I really been left? No, of course not-- at least not by God. To move towards freedom and understand God’s love for me though I must be freed to also admit that others have left me and, at some point, pushed me into trustlessness. Identifying those movements and remembering the occasion on which they happened is the road to healing and identifying the wound. The wound is the event by which the agreement took root. The wound happened when an event gave space for doubt in God’s limitless love and replaced it with a voice of evil, in this case: you cannot trust him or her. Moving into the wound also reveals the enemy in more depth.

If am deeply honest with myself I come to find that the person or people that seemingly caused my wound did not in fact cause the wound. Instead the father of lies infected me (and quite possibly the other person as well) with lies about our identities, our strengths, and our sins. Also, if am deeply, deeply honest with myself I will find that these major areas of woundedness— the areas that I am most under attack are areas that were designed by God to be most glorious and weighty. Trust, for instance, is not only an admirable strength in daily life but also a quality of God held very highly in the Bible. Trust is brothers with truth and conquers fear and doubt as well as creating space for love. Trust doesn’t need a definition—it is a good thing.

It is my hope that my life will look different as I move away from security and towards trust. For some reason one of the first desires that rose in my heart was to accept myself. Trust accepts, I know Jesus accepts me, and I know others accept me. In Manning’s words, how do I find the right to not accept myself? The next freedom I am slower and find more shame stepping into is compassion.

For me there is shame stepping into a freedom of compassion because I carry with me many memories of not being companionate. There is also a link between compassion and action. I am not sure if that is a natural or a needed link. However, I find myself in many places where I long to feel compassion but I don’t have the strength or resources to act on it. Shame has used those situations to create another agreement: you can never be compassionate because you don’t have the strength to be so. Yet the truth is I am compassionate. Manning gives his definition of compassion in his book that leads me even closer in desiring a life of deep compassion. The definition also brings into question what kind of action compassion calls us to and casts more light on the lies of shame in my life. “To be compassionate,” Manning says, “is to understand the conflicts other people have created in themselves without getting caught up in their poignant drama; you realize your compassion will be most effective if you stay centered in loving acceptance.”

I always thought that my compassion would be less if I didn’t take on the drama. I wonder what new freedom there is with the truth that I can be compassionate and am compassionate? Moreover, I now know that moving towards people the way my hearts desires will make more of an impact and show more love than popular assumptions of the act.

posted by Simon Yost @ 7:46 PM