“The tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all mental illness. Running away from our problems rather than facing them, makes us sick.” Scott Peck

“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” Carl Jung

“The cross is not only imposed upon the saints as their burden, but bequeathed unto them as their legacy. It is given unto them as an honour and privilege.” Richard Alleine

           Life is hard. That is the painful, if obvious, truth with which Scott Peck began his best-selling book, The Road Less Travelled, in 1978. Of course, it is not the whole truth, but even as a “part truth” it hits an uncomfortable nerve and causes us to wonder why this should be. What’s more, Peck’s thesis is that we make life even harder than it is already by trying to avoid the problems that are, as it were, built in and naturally there. Everyday there are jobs to do, problems to face, and difficulties to deal with, and the temptation to which we are all drawn again and again, says Peck, is to avoid, shun and evade these things. We procrastinate, hoping that painful things will go away. We ignore them, forget them, and even take drugs to deaden ourselves to their reality. We attempt to get out of such things rather than suffer through them but this tendency only makes things worse. Sometimes we will go to the most extraordinary lengths and construe the most elaborate fantasies to avoid the legitimate pain which, hard though it is, is just part of a healthy, normal life. Ironically, these extraordinary lengths and elaborate fantasies are often worse for us than the legitimate pain that they were devised to avoid. At this point, says Peck, there is the makings of mental illness and, worse still, he suggests that, because we are all prone to this kind of behaviour, all of us are, to one degree or another, mentally ill. I know, this is not a very happy thought, and you may wonder why your minister should want to write about truths that are properly associated with psychiatry.  The answer to that is that these truths are also central to Christianity and with Lent now upon us, their power seems to me somehow larger.

           ^“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.’” The preceding statement from Jesus, a key Lenten text from Mark Chapter 8, is part of a larger section in which Jesus speaks about his own cross, a cross which he says cannot and must not be avoided. Indeed, when Peter intimates that such an avoidance would be preferable, Jesus rebukes him in the strongest possible language, calling him Satan and suggesting that his line of thought is from the devil, not God.  The temptation to escape by any means possible the crosses that we are given in life is powerful but ultimately evil. On the other hand, those who shoulder their crosses for the sake of the gospel will have life. 

           Lent is a difficult season because it involves painful work. This work calls us to search our souls, face our problems and carry our crosses, but this work is also redemptive and it has healing implications for ourselves, the church and the world.  

God bless you in the midst of it, Blair

March & April

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