I was remiss in reaching out to my friend after he lost his job. In fact, he was out of work for nearly two years, and I failed to connect with him.
He had worked faithfully and effectively in the same job for 18 years, but a corporate downsizing decision was made in a city far removed from where he lived and worked and–if one day he was gainfully employed doing a job he loved and did well–the next day he wasn’t.
Even though I’ve had his name and phone number on my “to do” list for months, I had yet to contact him. Except recently I accidentally “ran into him” and apologized profusely for being so neglectful. He assured me he was not offended, reporting that he now has a new and different job, one he finds both challenging and rewarding.
As we talked, briefly, while setting a date to have lunch together, he shared something with me he said he had discovered during his painfully frightening time of being unemployed.
“I learned how faith and denial are often the same,” he said.
At which I found myself thinking, as I walked away, “I wonder what he means by that?”
So the first thing I asked him, when we had lunch together recently, was to explain his “faith as denial” statement. And considering the awareness, sensitivity and insight with which my friend is blessed, not to mention how he has cultivated such gifts across his lifetime, through both formal training and related experience, I believe we would all do well to ponder his explanation
“I can’t begin to tell you,” he said, “how many people tried to encourage me when I was unemployed. And they clearly meant well. What they said to me, I’m sure they considered to be ‘faith statements.’ As in, for example, ‘God hasn’t forgotten you’ or ‘Don’t lose faith, don’t give up hope.’ Or even more trite, shallow sentiments, cliches like, ‘Keep a stiff upper lip’ and ‘Things are bound to get better.’ Much less, how we often rationalize such trauma with well-intended comparisons such as ‘It could be worse, at least you still have your health.'”
“But what I perceived,” my friend continued, “was how uncomfortable most people were with my discomfort. And believe me,” he confessed, “I was in as much discomfort; indeed, I was suffering from as much disappointment, resentment and anxiety as I’ve ever experienced.”
“In other words,” he explained, “as well-meaning as my encouragers surely were, I suspect they were just as unaware of how they may have wanted to avoid facing, with me, such stressful circumstances. So they resorted to the kind of ostensibly ‘comforting’ statements–‘faith’ statements, if you will–in an effort to, unconsciously, try to manage their own discomfort in relation to mine. While appearing to draw near to me, they were actually distancing themselves.”
Hence, my friend’s “faith as denial” observation.
Here’s another illustration. If you’ve ever spent much time around a funeral home, at a traditional wake, which we often call a “visitation” or “viewing,” when someone has died and friends are trying to comfort the deceased person’s loved ones–perhaps you’ve noticed–how people often say the dumbest things, theologically speaking, however well intended. Statements like, “He’s in a better place,” or “God took her.” Or how about, “Just think of her working in her garden (or him playing golf) in heaven.”
As helpful or otherwise as such sentiments may be, as often as not–according to my friend’s interpretation–they may have as much to do with “denial” as with “faith.” Since, of course, there are any number of painful things in life, however real and undeniable, we might prefer not to face. And “pious cliches”–be they religious or secular–can often serve as apparent “shields” in anyone’s (unconscious?) effort to deny, avoid or distance oneself from such painful reality.
As for my “pious cliches,” be they “religious of secular” suggestion: it’s easy to invariably lay such a way of seeing and interpreting life at the feet of those who claim a “religious” perspective, however conventional or otherwise. Especially if such folk are given to expressing themselves so predictably in their particular religion’s jargon. As in, for instance, my friend’s use of a word such as “faith” as possibly a synonym for “denial.”
I’ve noticed, however, that so-called “secular” people also have their own “when the going gets tough, the tough get going . . . stress doesn’t build character, it reveals it . . . the sun will come up tomorrow” cliches comparable to even the most shallow of more explicit religious verbiage.
I’ve been training professional people-helpers for the past thirty years, so what my friend was explaining in his “faith as denial” interpretation of his unemployment crisis and those who sought so sincerely to comfort and encourage him–it made perfect sense. For what he was describing is, in fact, the fundamental dynamic of any authentic helping relationship: the ability of, at least, the professional helper to manage her/his discomfort adequately enough so as to not reinforce the discomfort of whomever it may be who is seeking help.
Such tension is indeed inherent to any legitimate helping relationship. Or as the Methodist preacher-poet, Robert Raines, put it: “There’s a difference between being careless of human misery, and being carefree in the midst of it. Caring, but free of care.”
Otherwise, such “caring”–what my friend called “faith”–it may merely be a form of “denial.”
