Acknowledge Hard Realities—without Spiritual Bypassing
In a recent Substack post, I explored how God doesn’t ask us to deny reality. While there’s often a sense in Christianity that acknowledging difficult circumstances displays a lack of trust in God’s power, we cannot trust God with a reality we refuse to admit.
Today’s post explores how to engage with life’s hard realities without spiritual bypassing or using faith to deny our emotions.
Name how it makes you feel:
It takes courage to share how difficult things make us feel, especially when the people we’re sharing with may not entirely agree with our perspectives. While it may not be safe to share in all circles, we can bravely name how hard situations make us feel to the safe people in our lives. In doing so, we remember we’re not alone in our ache. This naming can be as simple as:
“The current administration’s actions make me feel afraid because I don’t see how dehumanization of others aligns with the love Jesus talks about—or a better future for my country.”
“I’m anxious about the current state of the economy and about what it means for the future of my family.”
“I feel angry by the number of Christians who seem to care more about aligning with a political party than they care about living and loving like Christ.”
Practice lament:
Modern church culture tends to emphasize joy, and while this is beautiful, neglecting to also acknowledge brokenness prevents us from seeing the full character of God, who meets us in our ache.
Lament is not dwelling in pain, refusing to see God’s goodness. Rather, it’s speaking our pain because we trust that God will be present with us in it. It’s remembering that we can trust God with our hurt as well as with our joy. It’s remembering that presenting our pain to God does not equate a lack of faith.
Take action where you can:
Individually, none of us can fix the challenges facing our communities, country, or the world at large. However, we can commit to making our voices heard, to taking action where we can, to banding together with others to stand against injustice.
This can look like calling congresspeople to make our voices heard, donating time or resources to help people in need, or protesting what is not Christlike.
While we cannot single-handedly fix the world’s brokenness, we can channel our fear and frustration into partnering with God in bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth.
