7 The Denial Trap
7
I had never seen him do this before; in fact, I didn’t even know that he owned an exercise bike. There he was, riding as hard as he could as he told me that he planned to ride every day. You would think I’d have been encouraged and encouraged him in return, but I wasn’t encouraged and didn’t say much to spur him on. Seeing him on the bike made me sad because I knew what was going on. The day before, he had gotten a cancer diagnosis, and riding that bike was his response to what he had been told. He wasn’t riding because he had a newfound commitment to physical fitness; my dad was riding to prove to himself that he wasn’t as sick as they made him out to be. Like so many of us, he dealt with the devastating blow of that scary diagnosis by denial. I didn’t know what he was telling himself, but I knew what his commitment to riding that bike meant. He rode to ease his mind and, in easing his mind, to give some kind of peace to his suffering heart. I was sad for my dad because I knew hope for him would never be found in denying the truth.
She had done it day after day, week after weak, and month after month. Deep in her heart she knew something was dramatically wrong, yet she worked to convince herself that she was mistaken and that things would be all right. Jared had always been a bit of a homebody, but he wasn’t one anymore. His rare late nights at work had become an all-too-regular occurrence. The weekends away, which he once seemed to hate, didn’t seem to bother him anymore. Charges on the credit card piled up, and there were overly friendly emails from a female colleague at work.
At home Jared had grown more distant and withdrawn, and their times out together had become more and more infrequent. Susan knew that something was wrong, yet she didn’t want to believe that it could be happening to her. She explained away the changes, telling herself that she was making a big deal out of nothing. She told herself that every marriage goes through cold stages. She told herself that Jared had always been a hard worker. It wasn’t until enough evidence piled up to make Jared’s unfaithfulness impossible to deny that Susan finally admitted the truth. Denial had let her suffering fester and Jared’s sin against her deepen. Whatever temporary peace her denial achieved, it left her with a bitter harvest in the end. I remember her saying to me, “I let this happen to me because I was afraid to face the truth about Jared and our marriage.”
Sam didn’t have it in him to tell his family. He had walked in that day as an executive with a zooming career and walked out of his boss’s office unemployed. He walked away with a solid severance, but a day would come when those checks would end. He couldn’t believe it had happened to him. He had been a loyal and productive worker. Year after year had brought raises and promotions. The last promotion gave him a larger income than he’d ever thought he would have. It enabled Sarah and him to move into a larger house with a bigger mortgage and to buy two new cars. Life seemed good until some executive in the home office in another city decided to begin the process of closing down Sam’s division.
As Sam drove home that evening, he decided that he just couldn’t tell Sarah yet. He knew she would panic, and if she panicked, there would be no way to keep this disaster from his kids. Sam was shocked and angry. He felt ripped off and betrayed. He had given everything he had to this corporation, and in an instant they had abandoned him. It incensed him that he had cared so much about his work, but they had cared so little for him. But Sam wasn’t just angry with his bosses; he was angry at God. He told himself that he had been one of the good guys, that he’d tried to do what is right, and that he had believed that God would care for him. Where was God now? Where were his promises? Where was his love for his family? Where?
That evening Sam didn’t drive directly home; he did something he’d never done before. He stopped at a local pub and had a drink. He told himself that he needed to tamp down his anger and clear his head. After the second drink, he knew he had to get home, but there was no way that he could bring himself to tell Sarah. When he got home Sarah was in the kitchen doing the normal supper routine and asked him how his day was, as she always did. Sam lied and said, “Okay. You know, same old same old,” and quickly went upstairs to change. He sat on the bed determined to put on a good front. That night, after watching too much TV, Sam crashed into bed next to Sarah, who had no idea of the trial her family now faced.
Sam couldn’t sleep, because all he could think about was the pending foreclosure on their house and the possible repossession of their cars. He knew that there was no way they could continue to afford the kids’ school tuition, and the big special vacation that they had planned for years would never happen. He lay awake imagining that the phone would begin ringing with threatening creditors on the other end. It was a nightmare, and Sam felt betrayed, trapped, and alone. He looked over at Sarah sleeping and felt he had failed her miserably. Why had he agreed to the new house and new cars? Why hadn’t he been more careful?
When Sam got up the next morning, it immediately hit him that because he hadn’t been honest with Sarah, he had to act as if he were going to work. He reasoned he would spend the day looking for a job, and he would hook a new job and then tell Sarah. That way he’d be able to assure her that everything was okay. So he got dressed, kissed Sarah goodbye, and went off to “work.” That day he sat at Starbucks and made several calls to potential employers, but in the afternoon he numbed his broken and fearful heart with three or four drinks. This became Sam’s pattern for the next few weeks, and the nearer he got to that fateful day when the severance checks would end, the more he drank. Sam’s response of denial had sadly morphed into a lifestyle of deceit and addiction. Lie upon lie marked his relationship with Sarah, and the daily drinks had given way to a bottle of whiskey in his briefcase.
Denial hadn’t solved any of Sam’s problems and only brought more for him to deal with, and it had surely done nothing positive for his relationship with Sarah. Sam knew a day was coming when the truth would be known. In suffering the loss of his livelihood and his ability to provide for his family, he had chosen a path that had damaged him spiritually and would soon do damage to his family, and he didn’t know how to get out of the mess he had made.
The response of those people to suffering argues the point once again that it really is true that we never suffer just what we’re suffering, but we also suffer the way that we’re suffering. One of the tempting traps to every sufferer is denial. It is very tempting to deal with the pain of the thing you are suffering by working to minimize its size, power, and potential effect on you and your loved ones. It is tempting to work to convince yourself that what is bad perhaps isn’t so bad after all. It is tempting to try to cobble together temporary peace of heart by some way denying the reality of what you are facing. It is tempting to rise to the throne of God, to create a world of your own making over which you are sovereign and that will work in ways that your real world is not working. Patients regularly deny physical symptoms, married couples regularly deny the true state of their marriage, and people in debt are often all too skilled at denying the financial disaster to come.
This may sound harsh, but it is something we all need to face: when it comes to suffering, no one swindles us more than we swindle ourselves. It is so tempting to tell yourself subtle lies in order to give some peace to your heart. It is so tempting to work at thinking that things will be okay that won’t be okay. It is tempting to work to convince ourselves that we can handle things that are bigger than we are and beyond our control. It is tempting to put on a happy face when we are not happy and to give platitudinous, faith-sounding answers to questions, when inside we’re doubting God’s presence and love. It is tempting to deal with the hard things before us by closing our eyes. In suffering, denial is more of a temptation than what many of us think, while it’s a response that never goes anywhere good.
A Welcome to Face Reality
I think it is very important for every sufferer to reflect on how utterly, unashamedly, and boldly honest the Bible is. From Genesis 3 on, the biblical writers don’t present to us a sanitized version of life. The Bible presents a broken world populated by fallen people where nothing or no one functions in the way that God intended. The world that the Bible presents is a world you will recognize, because it’s just like the world you live in with all of its dysfunctions, disappointments, painful trials, and universal suffering. If you’re looking for escapist literature, the Bible is not your book. From the shocking sibling homicide of Genesis 4, to the adultery of David, to the unjust execution of Jesus, to the final defeat of the Enemy, the Bible is marked by stories of deceit, family betrayal, political corruption, disease, famine, rape, murder, and unspeakable spiritual darkness. I have said this many times and it’s important to mention it here too: there are stories in Scripture so weird and dark that if they were in a paperback book at your local drugstore, you wouldn’t pick it up.
Why is this important to recognize? It’s important because the honesty of the Bible about the true conditions we all face and are required to deal with is a gracious welcome for us to be honest as well. Biblical faith never, ever requires you to deny harsh and dark realities. Biblical faith never asks you to minimize your suffering. Biblical faith never makes you put a happy smile on your face and act as if things are okay when they’re not okay at all. Biblical faith never asks you to defend God’s reputation by acting as though you’re doing better in your suffering than you are actually doing. God’s honesty about life in this broken world is a welcome to each of us to be just as honest.
In fact, an entire book of the Bible (Psalms) is a script of the honest cries of God’s people—cries of confusion, doubt, and fear in the midst of the painful trials of life. God never reprimands us for being afraid. He never mocks us in our weakness. He never minimizes what we’re going through. He never turns his back on us when we wonder what he’s doing or why we’re facing what we’re facing. Not only can your Lord handle every bit of your honesty, but his Word is a welcome to be honest.
So denial is never a biblical response to suffering. If you have to deny your difficult realities to obtain some kind of temporary peace, you may enjoy temporary peace, but it’s important to know that you are not exercising biblical faith. You see, the message of the Bible is that the arms of God’s power, presence, and grace wrap around the deepest and darkest moments of human suffering. God wants you to know that it’s impossible for you to go through anything outside his understanding and care. The message is that God’s grace is not just about your past forgiveness and your future hope but also about everything you’re facing right now. All today’s sorrows, disappointments, weaknesses, unexpected dilemmas, and the suffering that results have been addressed by his grace.
Crying out to God in your moment of need is like talking to a dear friend whom you are comfortable talking to because you know that she knows exactly what you are going through. But there is more. God not only understands the broken space that is our current address; he inhabited that space in the person of his Son Jesus. This means that the One to whom you cry has firsthand knowledge of the things you’re dealing with. It is frustrating to every sufferer to share their travail with people who don’t have a clue and can’t relate because they have no firsthand knowledge of what you’re talking about. Jesus is not just a student of our suffering; he became a firsthand participant in it. This is the powerfully encouraging message of Hebrews 4:14–16. Read these words slowly and carefully, paying attention to their implications for you in your present suffering:
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
It is almost impossible to capture the life-altering glory and practical helpfulness of this passage for every sufferer. But let me do my best to detail the powerful, antidenial implications of its wonderful string of encouragements.
1. In Your Suffering, You Have an Advocate
You never have to tell yourself or others that you’ll load your burdens on your shoulders and somehow, someway, push your way through. You never have to feel or act as if you’re alone in your suffering, because the One who sits on the throne at the right hand of the Father not only faced all the things that you now face, but he also faced the myriad of temptations that you and every other sufferer faces. In your weakness, worry, doubt, and fear, he pleads to the Father in your defense. In those days when your heart is more given to anger than worship, he is your advocate. In those moments when you question God’s goodness or want what God has given to someone else, he pleads on your behalf.
You don’t have to deny what you are going through and the way it is affecting you, because your Savior went through it too, and he makes gracious arguments on your behalf. It’s silly to deny what your Savior already knows to minimize the power of what he also experienced. Cries for help and confessions of struggle are where true peace and true comfort are to be found. Why? Because the One to whom you cry and confess has been where you are. Not only will he not turn his back on you when your suffering becomes a struggle of faith; in tender love he’ll take your case to the Father. In light of the advocacy of the Savior, denial makes no sense at all.
2. Because of His Advocacy, You Have Reason to Stand Strong
I think these words are so helpful: “Let us hold fast our confession” (Heb. 4:14). It doesn’t take long for suffering, trial, and difficulty to become a crisis of faith. There are moments in suffering when God doesn’t make sense to us. There are times when it seems that his ears are deaf to our cries. There are situations in which it looks as if his promises have failed. There are circumstances that don’t look at all like good gifts from his hands. These moments can easily morph into a crisis of personal faith.
These words, “Let us hold fast our confession,” are so helpful because we’ll never get our reason for continuing to believe and to put our lives in God’s hands from our ability to figure out our circumstances. We’ll never establish peace of heart by trying to understand things that God hasn’t revealed to us. Our motivation to stand firm in faith, even when we are going through things that we don’t understand, is found in one thing: God’s declaration of his intention toward us. In a hundred ways in Scripture he declares that he is for us and not against us. In the Hebrews passage he tells us he is for us as our advocate. He carried every bit of our penalty on the cross so that in our darkest moments of struggle, in the middle of the toughest moments of trial, we would be met with mercy, not judgment. That is reason to continue to believe, even when we are assaulted by confusion and fear.
3. Your Advocate Is Able to Sympathize with Your Weaknesses
Suffering always exposes our weaknesses. Suffering confronts us with how little in life we actually control. It confronts us with the vulnerability of our physical body. It forces us to face how quickly precious relationships can dissolve. It requires us to admit the limits of our personal and financial resources. And it makes us deal with the fact that we have little ability to get ourselves out of what we never controlled in the first place.
One of the hardships of suffering is profound feelings of weakness and inability. Suffering powerfully exposes our humanness. It reminds us that we are weak, small, and lacking in power and how limited in resources we really are. Suffering doesn’t make us weak; it simply exposes the weaknesses that have been there all along. It exposes the delusion of our sovereignty and independent capability. It’s painful to be confronted with who we really are and how needy and dependent we are.
This is where the redemptive fact declared in Hebrews is so helpful and comforting. The fact is that as you are forced to admit your weakness, you can run to One who understands that weakness at every level. The original word used for weakness in the passage pertains to weakness of all kinds. Maybe the best translation is that Jesus, our High Priest, is able to understand our “humanness,” or the “human condition.” Your Savior doesn’t look down condemningly at your weakness. He isn’t disgusted with your limits. Rather, with the knowledge of firsthand experience, he greets you not with abstract compassion but with tender, understanding sympathy.
This passage is telling us that someone knows what we are going through. There is someone who gets the burden of being a frail human being, making our way in a world gone bad. In sympathy he welcomes us to know that he knows, to be comforted by his understanding, and to not let the shame of our weakness keep us from running to him for help. He shared our humanity, he gets what we are going through, and he carries our travail in his heart. His understanding frees us forever from having to deny our struggle or act as if we’re doing better than we actually are.
Jesus was born into the toughest of conditions; he was misunderstood, mistreated, and rejected throughout his life. His closest friends forsook him when the going got tough. He was betrayed by those he should have been able to trust. He was regularly hungry and knew what it was like to be homeless. He felt the sting of the worst kind of injustice. He endured torturous physical suffering. From birth his life was never easy, and his death was marked by public shame. No one rose to his defense. He not only suffered; he suffered alone. Even his Father turned his back on him in his deepest moment of agony. He did not use his power to make his life easy or to escape injustice and torture. He came to earth knowing what he would face, and he faced it all for us.
Don’t let the fact that Jesus went through all of this without sin negate for you the real agony of what he suffered. He felt the full force of the same kinds of travail that you and I now face. And he didn’t just live through this hardship; he lived through all of it for you, so that in your travail you would have a place of comfort and refuge to run to when there seems to be no one or nowhere to run for help.
The One who took on weakness is for you in your weakness, and that is the best of news!
4. You Can Come to Him with Confidence
Perhaps everything in your world seems to be shaken because you can no longer depend on things that used to be dependable. Perhaps what once got you up in the morning, motivated you to press on in life, and gave your heart joy has evaporated before your eyes. Perhaps what once seemed solid and permanent has eroded like sod on a wet hill. In those dark moments there’s one thing on which you can be eternally confident and on which you can build your motivation and hope. It is the understanding and sympathetic love of your sovereign Savior. He not only has the experience to understand you and sympathy to help, but he also has the power to make a difference.
5. There Is Mercy and Grace Form Fit for Your Moment of Need
Almost every sufferer at some point is greeted by well-meaning people who want to help but don’t really understand what the sufferer needs. Maybe you’ve been given food in your moment of trial, and you’re thankful, but money was the real need. Or maybe people have promised to pray for you, and that means a lot, but you really wish they’d just sit with you and break up your long, lonely hours. Or maybe you’re tired of getting advice, and you long for someone to just walk through the hardship with you. People mean well, but often they don’t really understand what you’re going through, and because they don’t, they aren’t able to accurately target what you need.
Again, this is why the specific words of Hebrews 4:14–16 are so comforting and encouraging. Because Jesus does understand exactly what you are going through, since he went through it too, he knows just what you need. So he offers you not a general catalog of hit-or-miss provisions, but help form fit to you individually.
When you are exhausted, discouraged, overwhelmed, and barely holding on to hope, it’s tempting to work yourself into thinking that things are not as bad as they seem or that you’re better off than you actually are. But because denial doesn’t deal with reality but avoids reality, it never goes anywhere good. It will never give you what you need or help you be what you need to be when the unthinkable enters your door. But because Jesus walked in your shoes and faced what you now face, you’ve been forever liberated from the trap of denial. You’re free to be weak and to cry out in weakness and free from ever having to put on a spiritual act.
The opposite of denial is not honesty but confidence. Hebrews 4:14–16 is meant to fill you with redemptive confidence, because it is only that confidence that can give you the courage to be honest with God and others in your time of need.
Review and Reflect
1. When you consider that “God’s honesty about life in this broken world is a welcome to each of us to be just as honest”, how can you be more honest with God in your prayer life?
2. Paul Tripp points out that when we deny our difficulties in order to feel immediate peace, we “are not exercising biblical faith”. What does biblical faith look like?
3. How is your biblical theology challenged or strengthened by knowing that “God’s grace is not just about your past forgiveness and your future hope but also about everything you’re facing right now”?
4. What does it mean that “the One who took on weakness is for you in your weakness”?
5. How does living out Hebrews 4:14, “Let us hold fast our confession,” help in times of suffering?
Heart Reset
Psalm 3:3
Hebrews 4:14–16; 11:1