There is Lots to Learn Between the Headlines

Monday morning you will wake up to the headlines or the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts extolling the greatness of 1 NFL team, 1 NFL quarterback, possibly a field goal kicker, running back, or defensive player.

If you ever played football you will likely, even for a brief second, compare your experience to theirs. I played one season of Pee-Wee football, which is the precursor to Pop Warner youth football. I honestly have only 2 independent memories of that experience, each less than a second in length. But in my mind, I always wonder what it was like and what it would be like to play in H.S., College, and the NFL. I hear voices saying “You could have been a football player.” Other voices say “You could never have been an athlete.”

We often compare ourselves to the highlights we see of others. “3.484 billion people actively use social media - that's 45% of the world’s population.” (InfluencerMarketingHub.com) We are part of a generation of social media connections through highlights. We see highlights of what others are eating, the newest toys they purchased, their favorite vacation spot. We see people’s great accomplishments all over social media. We make fashion choices based on highlights we see every single day, not necessarily fashion magazines we have to make an effort to acquire. We don’t have to go to anyone’s house, sit on the sofa, and page through their photo albums (remember those?) to see what is happening right now, in real-time, with those with whom we think we are acquainted.

We are also in unprecedented times when, like I have begun to do, people can express their thoughts, share their opinions, and let their voice be heard literally around the world through social media. We feel like we are trying to communicate to a mass audience, many of whom we think we know. We can actually count our “friends” on Facebook, yet we feel like we are never heard and feel that our friends number fewer than the fingers on our left hand.

Then there are the voices in our heads, what experts call our internal monologue. Don’t tell me you don’t hear voices, you do and so do I. However, we choose to identify them, they are there. It’s perfectly normal to have some form of inner speech. Most of the time the voices are telling us what we think and believe. Sometimes they are speaking about others. Most of the time they are talking about us. At times, our voices are speaking mutually conflicting messages. Often the voices are comparing our life to the highlights we see of our “friends” lives.

I’m reading Louis L’Amour’s epic novel How The West Was Won, a tale of the journey in a life of struggle against fierce enemies and nature’s cruelty, to win for all time the rich and untamed West as the prize for perseverance. It feels like a narrative that relates closely to what I will continue to share in this blog post. What caught my attention in chapter 6 was a look into the inner speech of Zebulon Prescott, who along with his family, set out towards the West via the Erie Canal. Zeb has an internal monologue about feeling like he doesn’t really know his own son as he should. His son, injured in a river pirate attack, had begun to understand his father, but the voices in his head told him he didn’t know Sam. From our vantage as readers, we know much about Sam and I feel his father does too, but Zeb was just listening to the wrong voices. The monologue also served to give us a sense that either Sam or Zeb’s time on earth was short, a foreshadowing of things to come.

There is an epidemic amongst teenagers, particularly in our region, but really in America as a whole. Overwhelming hopelessness and accepting suicide as a way of relief is so prominent it is scary. Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who took their own life. If my parents did, they surely shielded me from any knowledge of such things. By the age of 15, my kids had suicide directly affect them and at age 19 my daughter lost her best friend to suicide. The monologues that teens are engaging in in their own minds are taking some of them down a path that has no return. They are darker and stronger than the inner voices that you or I may have heard.

They are certainly more prevalent and they are in part a result of the influence of culture in 2021. What happens to a society that will listen to the message that strength of character does not have to match the strength of policy for someone to be encouraged to have great influence? What happens to a society where bullying can be broadcast over social media and some argue that it is protected by the First Amendment? What happens to a society where the lines of right and wrong are blurred because too many listen to the selfish voices in their heads rather than the Golden Rule of the past, or better yet, the Word of God?

What have those voices been telling you lately? I would like to report that the voices in most people’s headspace, or what one friend calls the “boardroom” are giving affirmations just like Stuart Smalley, the Saturday Night Live fictional character created and performed by comedian, satirist, and politician Al Franken. Smalley would practice Daily Affirmations like "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me" and "I am a worthy human being." Instead, the voices in our heads are not kind and do not use such catchphrases, but tragic, terrifying, and often deeply depressing messages like “I can’t match up”, “I’m not enough”, and “I don’t matter.”

We look at all the highlight reels of others, but real life is not the highlights. What is happening between the highlights is what real life is. The Monday morning Super Bowl highlights will not begin to tell the whole story of the team and athletes they illustrate. Typically, we choose to show the very best of ourselves on Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter (well, most of us anyway). But we are a sum of all things that have influenced us, the voices we’ve listened to, the way we have been influenced physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Discipline and hard work is the real-life that has happened to these winning athletes. The influence of coaches and teammates is what has impacted them between the highlights.

“Social Media Influencer” …Have you met one yet? It is a career option in 2021. Google the word “influencer” and you will discover something that wasn’t really even a thing 10 years ago. Yes, you can make a case that as far back as the 1920s a French fashion designer Coco Chanel was an influencer with her product lines and Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people of the 20^th century. But by that definition, we have had influencers since the serpent promoted a product (the forbidden fruit) and an idea (equality with God). However, with the popularity of social media, the definition of influencer has changed. “Influencers in social media are people who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a specific topic. They make regular posts about that topic on their preferred social media channels and generate large followings of enthusiastic, engaged people who pay close attention to their views.” (InfluencerMarketingHub.com) “Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field.” (Wikipedia) In his talk today, my pastor said “Whatever is informing you is forming you.” * Whatever voices are speaking into our lives, from the inside or from the outside are influencing and shaping who we are, who we are becoming, and what we are doing.

If we compare our life to only the highlights of Biblical characters, we will also miss so much of what God has for us to learn about life. Take Elijah for instance. His Facebook page would show himself with King Ahab of Israel and his effectual prayers causing a drought for 3 years. He would post pictures of the meals God provided during the resulting famine in the land. He would, with permission no doubt, post a picture of the widow’s son he raised from the dead. There would be a whole slew of posts from Mount Carmel and the gathering of over 850 idolatrous prophets. Pictures would include the consummation of the drenched offering with his calling down fire from heaven. Oh, and don’t forget the meme he would have posted, something to the effect of “Don’t bother Baal while he is pooping.” It’s in the Bible, I Kings 18:27. Check it out. Finally, you would see his friend Elisha’s post about Elijah being carried away in a whirlwind of flaming horses and chariots and taken to heaven. There would be a picture of his fallen cloak, the symbol of God’s calling on his life. John the Baptist would post that he’s modeling himself after Elijah. When Jesus, the Messiah arrived, people would post that Elijah had returned thinking it was him. Elijah would show up once more at Jesus’ transfiguration in a post by either Peter, James, or John, when he is conversing with Jesus and Moses about Christ’s coming crucifixion.

What a highlight reel. What we don’t see is the real-life in between the highlights. Real-life is that place where we start thinking we’re the only ones who have ever had to deal with whatever it is we’re going through. It’s those times we run away to take a break because we need to get away from everyone and everything. It’s hiding your feelings and being polite with everyone we meet knowing they’re probably not buying it. It’s the need to blow off steam, letting it out, letting go. Real-life is when we wonder why we even bother. Despair, fear, and resentment erode our self-esteem until anger and worry take root and begin their slow, destructive work on our confidence and sense of purpose. James 5:17 tells us that Elijah was just like us. All of these previous real-life examples come from the life of Elijah and the time between the momentary highlights.

If you are struggling with real-life, if your life seems to have no highlight and the only faith you have is in a negative future, stay with me a second.  If you are living in fear and struggling to move forward, I have some helpful ideas for you. First, no matter how bad the situation of your life appears, God always has far more taking place behind the scenes than we are aware. Read the story of Elijah from start to finish and you will see the action going on behind the highlights. This behind-the-scenes action is working for your good. Don’t take my word for it. Take His Word for it (Rom. 8:28).

Second, just because you are feeling bad now doesn’t mean everything has always been bad or everything will always be bad. If Elijah could call down fire from heaven and destroy a water-soaked alter one day, and then, just a day later, fall into a deep, dark depression, your real-life situation is not so unique. You are not alone. But again, read the story from 1 Kings 18 and 19. Take His Word for it. God will come to you, probably not in some supernatural, awe-inspiring, MGM Universal kind of way; not in the wind, not with an earthquake, not in the fire, but with His still small voice. Are you willing to stop praying to and listening for a god that does not exist, a god who is indisposed at your greatest time of need? Are you willing to forgive yourself for not having the strength you wish you could have and feeling powerless? It is in your powerlessness that God has the chance to show up with more power you could ever muster in a million years.

There is a new dialogue that will happen inside. When you finally have the conversation with God, that inner conversation that will change everything, He will likely tell you to go ahead and get up and from this place of desperation you are at, start moving and watch what He is going to do. It will be an ongoing dialogue. He will calm your heart, your mind, and the seas of your life with His words, “Peace be still.” He will take you new places and do new things, that won’t always be easy mind you, but He will provide the strength that you were counting on non-existent gods to give you. You see, relying on your own strength was relying on a false god, the superhero that you are not. Relying solely on others was relying on a false god, the superheroes that they are not. Relying on mind-altering actions and substances, the pursuit of wealth, the aim for fame was relying on false gods. Those things have and always will leave us empty, depressed, and still desperate for peace, inner peace. God, the One, True, Living God, will take you from the edge of giving up to a place of excelling in the calling He has revealed to you. But it’s a journey that doesn’t happen overnight.

The best friends I have and the best conversations I engage in are those where the highlights are not what is most important, but the real-life that is in between the highlights. Yes, it’s fun to talk about that time I stopped the rain or that gathering where I called down fire from heaven. But where I grow the most and where I impact others the deepest is when I can talk about the time I ran for my life to get away and be all by myself. That was the time when God met me on the edge of despair and said, in a quiet whisper “I’m going to help you. Will you let me? Please get up and let’s go on together.”

Thanks for reading.

*Inner Peace – Erwin McManus, Mosaic