Legion

"Legion"

Mark 5:1-9

If you're a perfectionist like me, there's a reason you're trying to be a perfectionist.  And by perfectionist, I'm defining as someone who is trying to portray themselves as having it all together.  The reason we're trying to be that way is because we don't want anyone to know we really aren't perfect.  The secret is, everyone else already knows.  But don't tell us.  It's too fun being wrapped up in our delusions.

The thing is, we all have our issues.  We're all bent here and there.  The way we are all most bent is not our own particularly skewed dementedness.  The worst thing, in all of us, is how hard we work to make sure no one else finds out.  That we try to hide our craziness is the craziest thing about us.  It is the flaw that is driving us most mad.

The harder you work at doing all the voodoo, slight-of-hand, and hypnotism, trying to convince others you're something your not, the deeper you go into the rabbit hole.  The more you become a false self, ruled by your delusions and illusions and lies.

Kurt Cobain was the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the Seattle-based rock band Nirvana.  The last few years of Kurt Cobain's life were filled with drug addiction and the media pressures surrounding him and his wife Courtney Love.

On April 8, 1994, Cobain was found dead in his home in Seattle. His death was ruled by authorities as a suicide by self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.  One of the most compelling points surrounding his death was the suicide note that he left.  It was a note filled with the angst that his false self had taken over his life, and he didn't know any other way to be free of it.  He wrote:

The fact is, I can't fool you, any one of you. It simply isn't fair to you or me. The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending...Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch-in time clock before I walk out on stage. I've tried everything within my power to appreciate it (and I do, God, believe me I do, but it's not enough)…I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasms I once had as a child.

Then he went on to write:

I have it good, very good, and I'm grateful, but since the age of seven, I've become hateful towards all humans in general...I'm too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away.

Do you hear it?  Do you hear it in the voice of this suicide note?  It's almost like he's looking in a mirror as he writes it, and he's full of disdain for the image of himself that he's staring at.  He can't see who he really is anymore.  He only sees his false self reflecting back at him and it sickens him.  He's lost any semblance of his true self.

What psychologists won't tell you, if you've done any work with a psychologist, is that one of the things they're looking for from you is resistance.  Resistance to their questions, to their line of questions.  Do you know why?  The more resistance you exhibit the closer the counselor is getting to your pain.  Your resistance is all the protection you have wrapped around your pain.  Part of that resistance is the facade you put up.  Part of the resistance is the delusions you have convinced your self of who you think you are.  Part of the resistance is the illusions you spin in front of others, trying to get them to think--as you do--that you're really something you're not.

So, when you read this long chapter in the book, The Deeper Journey, on the "false self" try to get in touch with how much resistance you are putting up, trying to convince yourself you really aren't anything like what the author is describing.  Don't just listen to the words of the author as you read, but listen to the messages you are telling yourself in your own head as you read the words:  “I don't do that.  I'm not like that.  I'm a pretty good person, after all.”

Or the deflections.  “I'm not like that, but boy, that's describing so-and-so to a tee!”  Ask yourself, as you hear your own ego-defensive voice, "When am I going to finally face the truth!!??  I'm messed up!  Guess what everybody--I'm messed up!!"

Go ahead.  Run and hide.  Some get really good at it.  But the further you go in that direction the more and more you get in character debt.  The higher you have to keep building your ego defenses.  The more resistance you have to strengthen to keep people from seeing what they already see.  You're flawed!  You're living out of a false self!  Admit it!  Don't resist.  Just get it out on the table.

There's another term psychologists use in describing what happens when the external lies you are telling yourself and others about who you are come face-to-face with who you actually are.  It's a musical term:  dissonance.  What is dissonance, Brenda/Deb/Beth?  It's when at least two musical notes are sounded that don't go together.  You hear a lot of dissonance at your kids early piano recitals.  You're proud of them, but you cringe a lot when you hear the discordant notes that are played.

So, in counseling terms, all of us have this discordant gap between who we really are, and the false self we are trying to portray to the world.  The larger the gap, the larger the anxiety.  The more distance there is between your portrayal and your true self, the greater the level of insanity.   The bigger the gap of dissonance in a person, the greater the possibility of totally losing yourself and your self identity.  The more despairing you become, the more hopeless.  The more like Kurt Cobain.  The more we, like this mad man who confronted Jesus, allow the demons to control our lives.  Lots and lots of demons.  Legions.

Take a look at the description of this guy.   The guy shouts and screams.  My daughter, Kristin, and I were driving around LA one time when she was in college there.  The state prisons and hospitals had just released hundreds of patients onto the streets of LA because of budget cuts.  The people were pretty much harmless to others, but they shouted.  A lot.  It seemed there was one on every corner, shouting at cars--some of the cars were parked and empty.  They were screaming at people, at the traffic lights, at building walls.  Anything that could be screamed at was screamed at.

Now you may say you aren't crazy like that.  But do you, or have you ever "gone a little crazy" and screamed at your kids, your spouse, your parents?  It's there.  It's in us.  That thin line, that dissonant gap between who you show yourself to be at church on Sunday and what happens behind closed doors at your home.  It's in you.

The guy who ran up to Jesus had cut himself with sharp rocks.  Why do people cut themselves, or perform other acts of self injury?  Self-injury behavior is something that is more common than many people realize. In one study of high school students by researchers at Brown University, 46 percent had injured themselves in the past year on multiple occasions.

Self-injury is used by people as over-drinking or drug use is used by others — to drown out emotional pain with something else. It focuses your attention and takes your mind off of your emotional pain, if only for a little while.

How many of you, even though you may not be trying to dull the reality of your false self with alcohol, or drugs or a blade, are nonetheless slicing yourself with sharp, self-hating words?  Admit you're hurting and you don't know what to do about it.  And the way you're trying to handle it is all wrong.  It's only making you bleed even more.  What sick thing are you doing to yourself to deal with your pain?

When this guy runs at Jesus at top speed (imagine how scary that would be to have some naked guy running at you at top speed screaming at the top of his lungs) and skids on his knees in front of Jesus, notice what he screams:  "What business to you have, Jesus, Son of the High God, messing with me?  I swear to God, don't give me a hard time!"  (vs. 7)

The reason I point that out is that our false self doesn't want to be messed with.  It wants to be left alone to do whatever it wants to do.  Our false self doesn't want anyone checking it out, challenging it, or especially, as Jesus was trying to do with this guy, totally cleanse him of the monsters within.

C.S. Lewis does a great job with this point in his book, The Great Divorce.  It is such a great book.  I should have us read it for next years Lent study.  The book is a story about a bus ride from hell to heaven.  A bus comes into dark, overcast, always drizzly hell, every so often to pick up souls who want a chance to check out heaven.  People line up in hell, even though they have no idea what they're lining up for.  (I thought that a hilarious point of Lewis, to make part of hell be nothing but lines of people, for which no one knows what they're lining up for or waiting on.)

So a bus load makes it to heaven and it's dark and wispy characters unload.  One of the characters, is described as a "dark and oily" ghost who carried something on his shoulder.  What was on his shoulder was a little red lizard, who talked incessantly in the ghost's ear.

"Off so soon?" said a voice...

"Yes.  I'm off," said the Ghost.  "Thanks for all your hospitality.  But it's no good, you see.  I told this little chap," (here he indicated the lizard), "that he'd have to be quiet if he came--which he insisted on doing.  Of course his stuff won't do here: I realise that.  But he won't stop.  I shall just have to go home."

"Would you like me to make him quiet?" said the flaming Spirit--an angel, as I now understood.

"Of course I would," said the Ghost.

"Then I will kill him," said the Angel, taking a step forward.

"Oh--ah--look out! You're burning me.  Keep away," said the Ghost retreating.

"Don't you want him killed?"

"You didn't say anything about killing him at first.  I hardly meant to bother you with anything so drastic as that."

"It's the only way," said the Angel, whose burning hands were now very close to the lizard.  "Shall I kill it?"

"Well, that's a further question.  I'm quite open to consider it, but it's a new point, isn't it?  I mean, for the moment I was only thinking about silencing it because up here--well, it's so...embarrassing."

"May I kill it?"

"Well, there's time to discuss that later."

"There is no time.  May I kill it?"

"Please, I never meant to be such a nuisance.  Please--really--don't bother.  Look!  It's gone to sleep of its own accord.  I'm sure it'll be all right now.  Thanks ever so much."

"May I kill it?"

"Honestly, I don't think there's the slightest necessity for that.  I'm sure I shall be able to keep it in order now.  I think the gradual process would be far better than killing it."

"The gradual process is of no use at all."

"Don't you think so?  Well, I'll think over what you've said very carefully.  I honestly will.  In fact I'd let you kill it now, but as a matter of fact I'm not feeling frightfully well today.  It would be silly to do it now.  I'd need to be in good health for the operation.  Some other day, perhaps."

"There is no other day.  All days are present now."

"Get back!  You're burning me.  How can I tell you to kill it?  You'd kill me if you did."

"It is not so."

"Why, you're hurting me now."

"I never said it wouldn't hurt you.  I said it wouldn't kill you."

"Oh, I know.  You think I'm a coward.  But it isn't that.  Really it isn't.  I say!  Let me run back by tonight's bus and get an opinion from my own doctor.  I'll come again the first moment I can."

"This moment contains all moments."

"Why are you torturing me?  You are jeering at me.  How can I let you tear me to pieces?  If you wanted to help me, why didn't you kill the...thing without asking me--before I knew?  It would be all over by now if you had."

"I cannot kill it against your will.  It is impossible.  Have I your permission?"

The Angel's hands were almost closed on the Lizard, but not quite.  Then the Lizard began chattering to the Ghost so loud that even I could hear what it was saying.

"Be careful," it said.  "He can do what he says.  He can kill me.  One fatal word from you and he will!  Then you'll be without me for ever and ever.  It's not natural.  How could you live?  You'd be only a sort of ghost, not a real man as you are now.  He doesn't understand...

"Have I your permission?" said the Angel to the Ghost.

"I know it will kill me."

"It won't.  But supposing it did?"

"You're right.  It would be better to be dead than to live with this creature."

"Then I may?"

"...blast you!  Go on can't you?  Get it over.  Do what you like," bellowed the Ghost: but ended, whimpering, "God help me.  God help me."

Next moment the Ghost gave a scream of agony such as I never heard on Earth.  The Burning One closed his crimson grip on the reptile: twisted it, while it bit and writhed, and then flung it, broken backed, on the turf.

The little red lizard on the shoulder is such a great depiction of our false self.  It has become such a part of us that we aren't sure what to do about it anymore.  We know the depth of it's evil in our lives.  We listen to the false self--the red lizard--every minute of the day, but at the same time we don't want to listen.  We hate it and need it all at the same time.  We are afraid if our false self were dealt a death blow, we would go up in smoke as well.

The man who raced at Jesus, screaming, was under the same spell.  But he had gotten to the point where he didn't have one red lizard on his shoulder; he had a legion of red lizards on his shoulder.

You've all got one.  (Take mirror around for people to see their reflections.)  I see them on your shoulders.  Do you see mine?  These little, red, tail whipping, incessant creatures called our false selves.  Can't live with them; can't live without them.

Would you like it to be killed?  It's possible.  But we're not ready for that quite yet.  There's another lizard on your other shoulder.  It's called your religious false self.  We need to talk about it next week.  And then we’ll start talking about what to do with these vile things.  Our false selves.