This article first appeared in DisciplesWorld Magazine and is reprinted here with their permission. Visit DisciplesWorld online at www.disciplesworld.com.
By Katherine Murray
It was a recent scene on an all-too-real TV talk show. A defiant, angry teenager sat scowling on the stage, arms crossed, head down, while the talk-show host and her guest expert, the current pop-culture psychologist, pushed a microphone in the child's face and hurled words and epithets meant to thump her in the head and wake her up to her bad behavior. The girl's mother huffed in exasperation and raised her hands in a gesture that implored the audience, "See? What did I tell you? Can you believe I have to deal with this every day?"
The audience, stirred in anger to support the mom, joined the teen-bashing. The girl sunk lower in her chair, her face an angry mask, no doubt wishing the earth would just open and swallow her up.
It's an awful scene, isn't it? It left me with an incredulous question: We do this in the name of helping people? Is it really our intention to help this young woman heal the hurts that are driving her, or are we simply looking on as voyeurs, feeling better about ourselves because our lives, at least, aren't that bad? As I asked myself that difficult question (I so want the answer to be the first one), I wondered what Jesus—the very embodiment of healing—would have done on that stage that day. That's a show I'd like to see.
Unfortunately, reality TV offers as many painful stories as you can stand to hear— heartbreaking personal stories of abandonment, abuse, heartlessness, betrayal, manipulation, self-destruction, and self-loathing. We spend our prime-time hours captivated by people eating bats on a remote island or wondering who will steal another's partner before the end of the show. There's no disguising it—we live in an odd age, a time that takes the very real needs for healing, love, safety, and belonging and turns them into a sport played out on television screens nationwide.
Who knows what drives people to take their struggles to a national stage? Perhaps it's the craving for celebrity, the desire to be special, or the hunger for attention. But it could also be a belief that, "Now, finally, I'll get some answers and someone, somewhere, will help me with this problem." A mother brings a tattooed-and-pierced son to the stage so she can feel supported when she tells him publicly she's ashamed of him. A husband brings a philandering wife to the public eye and feels justified (and perhaps a little sorry?) when the audience attacks her. A child brings a parent to the limelight, pointing a finger and saying "You were never there for me." The audience helps the child lash out at the parent and then suddenly swings back in understanding of the parent when they hear the heartbreaking details of the parent's life.
Anyone I know who has ever witnessed "mob mentality" has been frightened by it. As people, we come together with incredible energy to support the best—and worst—in each other. As a group, our shared opinions seem to carry a life-force of their own. Think of how it might feel to be sitting on a stage and feel 400 other hearts in the room all caring about your problem and hoping you get it figured out. The feeling of support, love, and hope must be incredible. But now think of sitting on that same stage and feeling the judgment and rejection of those 400 people. Their opinions of you only reinforce the shame, hurt, and fear you already carry deep inside, affirming your worst fears about yourself—that you are unlovable, bad, unsalvageable. At that point, only one thing can cut through such a tangled mass of mistaken beliefs and free you to begin healing: the love of God.
Right now in our culture we are drawn to strong-minded, directive, patriarchal leadership—we want to be told the way it is; we want the reassurance that there's someone who "knows" what's wrong with us, what we need, and who is willing to tell us how we can fix it. Whether our favorite personality doctor is Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, or any of a number of popular personality pundits, I think we lift them up as self-help superstars because, as a society:
· We believe there's something wrong with us
· We look outside ourselves for answers
· We want an easy fix and we want results fast
· We don't want the work to hurt too much
· We want someone else to tell us how to do it—or better yet, do it for us
· We want happiness served up fast-food style
· We listen to the loudest, most aggressive person in the group (sometimes without meaning to)
These personality docs often give what sounds like good, practical, "real-world" advice to people who are adrift in the turbulence of out-of-control emotion. The thump-in-the-head approach that both Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura use may actually help calm the waters for a bit and create the opportunity for a person to begin to listen for the voice of reason. It's the new kind of shock therapy—someone we perceive as stronger and wiser helping us "snap out of" the self-delusions that bind us.
But one big problem with this kind of invasive pop-psychology tactic is that it springs from judgment—a rejection of a person, where they are, what they're doing, who they're doing it with. And the message is given publicly—Christians 0, Lions 2. At its worst, it's a jeering, shaming message that says, "Hey, dummy, the rest of us see what's wrong with you. Why can't you see it?" At best, it's a message that says, "You don't like what's going on in your life? You can change it if you choose." But its essence is judgment and not grace—and grace would replace separation with reconciliation, shame with acceptance, and hate with love.
But I think the primary flaw with Talk-TV psychology is that even though the practical ideas and straight-talk methods can help people clean up the surface of their lives, they are attempts to "see" a problem by changing only the mind. They speak to the symptoms and not the cause. A new perspective can make a huge difference and make things better for a time, but it's not enough to change a life. A wounded heart needs God's touch in order to grow healthy in love. And, from what I've seen, that's not what most straight-talking TV personalities are offering.
Personality doctors can speak only to the mind, the ego, addressing the surface problems. Jesus heals hearts and a healthier life naturally begins to grow.
Jesus had a knack for being able to step into another's life and speak truth to that person in the way they were ready to receive it. The woman at the well didn't feel shamed or rejected—Jesus simply told her about her life matter-of-factly and let her know that what she was seeking couldn't be found where she was seeking it. The blind, the hungry, the lame, the bleeding, the rejected all came to Jesus for healing—not for coddling, berating, or excuses—but because they wanted to be healed. Jesus first gave them welcome, meeting them where they were as they were, spoke the truth to them about their situation, and then asked them to choose again and let their hearts be made whole.
People looking on thought Jesus was crazy or at least a heretic. He didn't go along with mob mentality, loving the people everyone loved and hating the people everyone hated. He saw the spark of God in everyone and spoke and reached out to their highest selves. Somewhere deep within, I'm convinced, we know the higher selves in us—children of God, the way he sees us. Jesus understood the power of speaking to that spirit in us, the place beyond the mistaken fears we carry about our worth, past the daily messes we create in our relationships and circumstances, far away from the petty, separating judgments we heap upon ourselves and each other. He knew, saw, and spoke to our hearts and, in so doing, healed them. The symptoms then naturally dissolved and dissipated into the nothingness they always were. And a healthier life began to grow.
So perhaps a good test for us, as we find our way through this time of "reality" everything, is whether a person is addressing the highest self—that of God—in another. Are we appealing to their best or worst? Are we encouraging them to believe the best about themselves or dragging them down to fear the worst? Although TV pop psychologists may be well-intentioned people who can bring about some manner of practical, surface healing, unless they are able to speak with love, gentleness, respect, and clarity to a person's deepest need—the knowledge that we are each worthy of love—I'm turning my television off.
© 2002 DisciplesWorld
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