The Commonality of Pain

Even though we have brains for logic and reason, humans are distinctly emotional beings. Try as we may, we simply can not turn off that emotional engine inside of us. We can attempt to be robots, devoid of emotion and feeling, but in the end we are subject to the ebbs and flows of the hormones that rage through us (some sexes more than others *cough* women *cough*).

When it comes to relating to people, it would make sense that we tend to relate on an emotional level. We can get along with people logically, but still not connect emotionally. It is our emotions that ultimately form long-term bonds with people. It is our emotions that draws us to be attracted to one person but not another. Logic is great and absolutely necessary, but there’s something about emotions that get us going, or crush us in despair.

It occurred to me, though, that not everyone has the same emotional experience. We come from many walks of life. Some good, some bad and some that are just outright horrifying. Yet, we often assume that people will connect with the emotion of love. The truth is, many people don’t have experience with love. It’s sad, but there are a growing number of people in the world that don’t know the flavors of love. They’ve either been denied it, or presented with twisted versions of it.

The one emotion, however, that we have in common is pain.

All of us know pain in some form or fashion. Most of us know pain very well. We also know many different kinds of pain. Shame, disgust, disappointment, disillusionment, and on and on. It’s a reflection of the world we live in and I’d say more of us understand pain than understand love. And it’s not that those who don’t understand love CAN’T understand it, it’s just that they have no experience with it. In many ways, they may trust the emotion of pain more than they do love because of it’s familiarity alone.

Is it any wonder, then, that people often unite themselves through pain? Look at the groups and communities around the world. We unite around our shared pains. Battered women’s shelters. The various anti-drunk driving groups. Alcoholics anonymous. All of this, ultimately, resulted because of shared pains. We intrinsically gather around one another, like a flock of animals that collect to protect the wounded. It’s really a beautiful thing and is something to be learned from.

You see, we - as in the “Christians” of the world - often assume that the way to reach people is by loving them to death. Granted, we absolutely should show love in all that we do. Frankly, that’s not so much a Christian principle as much as it is a human principle. However, if we want people to be healed and if we want to connect to them, we need to understand and unite with them in their pains. Too often we portray ourselves as a people with all the answers and a life that has been just “dandy” since we found Jesus. Bluntly, that approach is laden with outright idiocy.

Churches - rather, the people of the church - are just as flawed as their next door neighbor. Maybe even more so if we’ve deluded ourselves into believing we’re immune. Numerous studies have shown that a church member is just as likely to get divorced, or struggle with drugs and alcohol. We’re simply not immune and it’s darn near time we stopped pretending we are. What we NEED to do is to embrace our pain, our struggles, our HUMANITY. It is only in that common ground that we’ll ever connect with people and be a force not only for love, but a force for healing.

This entry was posted on August 9, 2007 at 1:10 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.