We Have a Problem

Copyright ©2018 by The Good Elder. All rights reserved.

In April, 1970, the Apollo 13 crew encountered a critical problem with the spacecraft, a problem that crippled their life support systems and which was very nearly fatal. Can you imagine being stuck in a space capsule, hundreds of thousands of miles from earth, surrounded in a vacuum, with life support systems failing, communication failing, and not knowing if you would die?

Undoubtedly, these men, the supporting crew back on earth, and even the general public endured some incredibly intense emotions within a short span of time. However, in order to have a chance to salvage the situation and make it home, they had to put the emotions aside, face the problem, and work out some ingenious solutions, or they would certainly die.

In everyday life, we encounter many problems, from societal ills to personal challenges and shortcomings. Problems are more "rule" than "exception", especially these days, as we never seem to be too far removed from some issue or tragedy. However, by dealing with them properly, we are able to build wisdom, faith, and courage, expand our consciousness, and draw closer to God.

If we are to continue to grow and improve, then when faced with the ills of society, but more especially, when faced with our own shortcomings, we must be brave enough to admit (at least to our own selves) to any relevant parties that we have a problem, and be willing to do something about it.

Certainly, we are all familiar with the age-old story of the oldest sibling rivalry mentioned in the Bible. Both Cain and Abel offered sacrifices to God, but Cain's offering was not accepted (even though it was his idea). We can certainly sympathize with Cain for being upset. We can hear him saying, "If it wasn't for me, Abel wouldn't have even brought a sacrifice! How is it that his is better than mine?"

Obviously, there is more to this story than what appears in the literal English translation, but one thing is clear; God was not indifferent to what Cain offered. God gave Cain some honest advice: "If you change and improve your offering, then I will accept yours, too. But if you don't, then your not doing is in itself a sin; and it will become easier and easier not to do. But, you can rise above that tendency."

In short, God told Cain, "We have a problem here..." But, instead of facing his own problem, Cain reasoned, "My problem is Abel, so let me get rid of him." Because, "to fix my problem means that I have to change, and it is easier to get rid of Abel than to face, let alone fix, my problem (which I don't want to admit exists)." But, as Cain found out, instead of fixing his problem, killing Abel made things much, much worse for himself! As Cain soon realized, "[his] punishment [was] greater than [he could] bear."

What we see with Cain is a tendency among humanity that persists until this day, i.e. avoiding and/or projecting our problems onto someone else. In Cain's case, he was unwilling (or unable) to accept that he could bring a better offering than he did, so we conjecture that he reasoned, "Abel is making me look bad. I'll make him pay. I'll get rid of him so that there is no one else to show me up!"

But, even with Abel gone (punishment notwithstanding), Cain still had not come up with an acceptable offering. Who else could he kill? And, even if his was the only offering, he still could not force God to accept it!

Problems of a spiritual nature, character flaws or internal shortcomings, can only be resolved from the source, i.e. with and by the (wo)man in the mirror. Just like with an oil spill, the way to stop the pollution is not to spray chemicals in the water or to lay miles and miles of boom. All of that is helpful to clean up a spill, but you only stop an oil spill by plugging the hole (i.e. the source of the pollution)!

In our society today, we are taught the proper lessons of how to live on PBS children's programs and in kindergarten. But, once children grow up, the societal institutions (particularly the media) seldom encourage or reward the practice of any of these teachings in manners, decorum, respect, discretion, and civility.

Some people who benefit from the inequitable distribution of wealth build and live in high rise condominiums, from which they can look down and see the hungry and the homeless struggling to survive. Many of these same people would rather advocate for criminalization of homelessness, advocate against drug rehab funding, advocate against universal health care, blaming the problem of poverty on the poor, instead of on the system that favors and props them up on the backs of those poor ones upon whom they look down. The more they project the problem away from themselves, the closer and more visible it becomes. But, when asked to help, the recalcitrant will say, "They did that to themselves."

But, when the wealthy discover that their children are just as susceptible to addiction than less wealthy folks, when they discover that diseases like HIV don't care where you live, then they want to declare a crisis. Some, unfortunately, will instead even cut off their own children rather than help them (shame and stigma)! This is just one of many examples in our society that we can lift up and show how the projection of problems only makes the problem worse! We could also lift up guns, or immigration, or the corrupt judicial system, just to name a few.

The more that people try to make the issue someone else's fault/problem, the worse it gets; the worse it gets, the less empowered people feel to change it... until it hits too close to home for too many. Then the cry goes out, "Somebody do something!" But, of course, each one of us crying out is a somebody.

Just as in the macrocosm, we find the same dynamic in our individual lives. We have a tendency to project when we become aware of our problems and shortcomings. We often try to make it someone else's fault, so that we can claim that we don't need to change. We say crazy things like:

• "If they wouldn't make me so angry, I wouldn't treat them so bad."
• "If they didn't make me look so bad by being better than me at such-and-such, I wouldn't work against them."
• "If people didn't like them more than they like me, then I wouldn't have to talk about them behind their back."

The truth is that most of these thoughts are so fundamental to our approach to life that we're not even aware of them as thoughts, let alone that we perceive how they factor into our low expectations of self, in our pessimistic outlook on others, or in the decisions we make about how we (habitually negatively) treat one another. Subconsciously we know, but to we just want the problem to 1) be outside of us so that 2) point at someone else and 3) make it go away by making them go away.

But, if/when we are the problem, we don't want to be gotten rid of, we don't want people to stop loving us, we don't want people to ostracize us. We want people to be patient with us, we want people to understand the pain, the anxiety, the low self-esteem that gave rise to our problem. Most of all, we want to be free of the problem; but we can't have freedom without first finding the problem inside and getting rid of it!

My mentor told me one time, "The biggest room is the room for improvement."

Like those astronauts from the Apollo 13 mission, we (all) have a problem! There is something about ourselves that needs improvement, something that we know about, something that perhaps we have been ashamed of, or maybe been in denial about. We can be in our feelings about it, we can try to assign blame to someone else, we can try and shoot the messenger (but we'd still have the problem!)

...or we can buckle down, do the hard work, eliminate this problem/evil from within our hearts and live! "Can these bones live...?"

David was a man after God's own heart because, when confronted with his problem, he was contrite yet courageous enough to say, "Yes, I did it, and I'm sorry."

In order to have a chance to salvage the situation, fix our relationships, and improve ourselves, we will have to put the emotions aside, face our problems, humble ourselves, and work out some ingenious solutions, or we will die, stuck/trapped in our own undone-ness. Thus did God warn His people through Ezekiel (chapter 18):

[31] Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
[32] For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.