Saturday, March 5, 2011

Tritisms

Tritism. That is a home-made word. A word for something I cringe at.

"Don't worry. Nothing's ever as bad as it seems."  
Um, sometimes things are even worse than they seem.
"God won't let anything bad happen."  
Can you explain the Holocaust using that philosophy?
"It's all good."  
No, it's not. Some things are evil through and through.  
God is good. And He loves us. But some things are just rotten.
I could add misquoted out-of-context scriptures to the list, but I don't want to give anyone the impression I don't love God's word.

I think sometimes we use trite little sayings as a way to say to hurting people: "Stop complaining, I don't want to think about your pain." I have seen people who are suffering try to do what the scripture says and get prayer, and be slapped with a tritism for it. So the pithy little phrase has effectively been used as an excuse not to pray for them, and to blame them for their pain, and to disobey the scripture that tells us to weep with those who weep.

The other day I read a bunch of 'advice' for the heartbroken, and was disgusted.

"Stop being a moron and realize that emotions can be controlled. Proceed to control emotions and never feel bad again for rest of life. Not that hard."

"Broken hearts, makes you learn to be stronger. Without pain, we won't know how strong we are today. However, its the person's choice to put themselves back together again. If the person doesn't then of course they won't learn..."

The heartbroken are morons?
People who are weak and emotionally out-of-control?
They've just got to get it together?
What miserable comfort.

We have really bad reactions to other people's distress outside of Christ.

The Bible says the Lord is near to the broken-hearted;
He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds.
Wound care is such a labor of love.
Deep festering wounds are a whole other subject than skinned knees.
They take gentleness and patience, and a tolerance for the disgusting.
They require care for the whole person.
They don't heal overnight: there are bandage changes.

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