Crisis may be a strong word for what some of us just call "drama" in this life, but things will undoubtedly come up to rock our worlds that we never could've seen coming. So I found myself trying think like your average pastor today for a second and come up with a simple step-by-step process, while simultaneously attempting to employ such catchy literary devices as alliteration, for dealing with such an occasion. This is what I came up with;
Cry out.
Calm down.
Cooperate.
Catchy right? I thought so. Each step is something we naturally want to do so why not consciously do them in a controlled manner and in a specific order that provides the greatest sense of relief and productivity.
First, cry out to God with every bid of anger, sadness, or _________ and let Him begin to bring healing into your life. He already knows what you feel but until you admit those feelings to God, He doesn't step into the picture. Secondly, calm down. The most powerful being in the universe has got your back and knows what you're going through so try to relax a bit. There's not much more you can do than begin the next step, which is to cooperate. Some sore of action is always required after something dramatic goes down. Either an apology, confrontation, questioning, rectification or protection. Something along those lines is usually what lies on our plate at this point. I believe God weighs heavily on our spirit in the wake that comes shortly after crisis and lays on our heart instructions as to what would be best for us to do. A lot of times we stand still with the excuse that we don't know what to do next when indeed we do have an idea of what is required of us next but we are either too afraid or too proud to cooperate with what God is calling us to do. This is why cooperation is the most important step of crisis management.
This is the point where I clarify that there is as much satire as there is truth in this post. Nothing in life is ever this easy. Contemporary christian pastors would have a field day making this into a perfect 30-45 minute presentation with funny anecdotes, personal experience, and new testament excerpts. Next, all they would have to do is bring to a boil, stir frequently, and present the audience with a steaming bowl of fresh christian platitudes full of empty spiritual calories. We've honestly got to go so much deeper than this when it comes to teaching "the flock" and dealing with controversial, complex life experiences. We are smarter than this, or at least I like to hope so.
But what do I know? This is just my pastorial shot in the dark.
This post may be confusing at first but that is because I couldn't really express my discontent with the healing process we are generally presented with by our spiritual leaders. After being challenged by a friend I was able to express it clearly in this statement;
ReplyDelete"From my point of view it seems like the healthiest thing to do is really explore your feelings with (a painful) situation and express them instead of trying to breeze over them like it was no big deal. In the end, the pain will never truly leave you until you deal with it fully. That's really the only decision we have with crisis. Deal with it now or later, because we will have to face it at some point in our lives."
"This is why I don't like the step by step process method. People go through a superficial version of each step on the list then act like they can just forget about the problem for good. I guess that's the heart of the issue I was trying to express but couldn't really put my finger on till now."