Pain

Nobody is perfect. Everyone knows that nobody is perfect. So why do we pretend to be? We’re all terrified to show weakness or pain or faults, as if having them somehow makes us less human. Why do we answer every “how are you?” with “okay” or “good” or “fine?” Why do we smile and say everything is ok when our hearts are broken and our lives are falling apart?

Nothing makes us more human than having flaws. The problem is we feel like there’s some standard, a perfect standard that we have to live up to. So we hide our pain, not just from others but even from ourselves: when something hurts, we ignore it and retreat into our pride. We tell ourselves it doesn’t hurt and we look away. The saddest part is that when somebody is brave enough to admit that they hurt, others see a chance to mask their own pain by comparison, and so they mock them. This leaves the rest of us even more afraid to show weakness. We all endure deep, horrific wounds in this warzone of a world, but we just rub dirt on them and charge back into battle. We feel like we have to, like we have no other choice. But don’t we know a master Healer?

All this pain builds up inside of us. It eats away at our soul, numbing us to the pleasures of beauty, love, and passion. Pink Floyd argued that numbness was “comfortable,” but this is only in comparison to wallowing in the pain. There is a third option that is sadly unheard of by most people: healing. In Luke 4:18 Jesus says “The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed.” I used to read verses like that kind of distantly, like I was on the outside looking in, like it didn’t really apply to me. If you see yourself doing that, read it again: you very well may be masking your own pain. We are ALL the poor, we are ALL prisoners, we are ALL the blind, and we are ALL oppressed.

The reason we think there is a perfect standard is because there is: God. By pretending we don’t feel any pain, we are essentially trying to be God, and we seem to know instinctively that earning salvation on our own would require flawlessness. I don’t know about you, but that sounds a little out of my league: in fact, I can say without a shadow of doubt that every one of us has already failed to live up to that standard. But I catch myself trying to create that image anyway, and even convincing myself that it’s possible, that I could be perfect. But I can’t, and that’s why a perfect sacrifice was needed and was given freely out of love and grace by Jesus at Calvary.

So what does this mean? It means that we don’t have to pretend to be perfect. We don’t have to be flawless anymore, because Jesus was and he took our death anyway. He blotted out the standard with His blood. You’re going to mess up and it’s going to hurt. It’s ok to be scared, it’s ok to cry, and above all it’s ok to be in pain. We are freed to leave the masquerade and come as we are before God: broken, beat-up, bloody, stained with dirt, and, in spite of it all, loved perfectly.