I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to escape drama. I’m not sure why or how it found me in the latter part of 2018, but alas, it did, and the last 6 months I’ve found myself deep in the thick of it. I’ve always hated drama, but the reason I did was because of what it represented – reality.
The leadership of Churches and organizations hate drama because it represents dipping into water deeper than a streamlined efficiency they are attempting to swim through. Drama represents the real life thoughts, differences, and of course problems that humans bring to the table when they interact, and when multiple people bring those thoughts, differences, and problems to the same table, inevitably there will be conflict. To the degree those differences can be managed, there will be peace and harmony. When they rise to the surface, craziness ensues.
I used to believe that if everyone in a group decides to focus on the same thing, like bringing people to Jesus, and do their best to forget about their own “Baggage” let’s call it, then everyone would be living out the “gospel” and find themselves in harmony and doing the things God wanted them to do.
LOL
I literally thought this way until the Sunday we arrived home from Spain. It’s easy to forget about the drama one finds themselves in when you go away to a different continent for a month. I didn’t think about it at all until vacation finished and it crept back into my head. Now hear me, I wasn’t experiencing hate or bitterness, but just thinking.
Then Sunday morning I was contacted by a young lady from my old church who asked me to come and be with her family as they would be taking her dad off life support and he would pass away. I drove to the hospital that morning wondering what life was like in Massachusetts on Sunday mornings. I don’t think I had ever really gone anywhere other than church in Worcester on a Sunday morning, so this proved to be a different environment than I was used to.
I sat and prayed and hugged and cried with this amazing family as they said goodbye to their dad. I wondered why I would never have been able to do this before. I thought about my own life and the story of the Good Samaritan that Jesus told in Luke 10. Would I have ever taken the time to stop what I was doing administratively, left the church buildings, and talked and wept with a heartbroken family losing their loved one?
The truth is inefficiency doesn’t sit well with the evangelical church.
So now I sit and love on my family and look for jobs and watch the church world do their thing this Easter season, and I think. In fact, I’m beginning to think that the best way to sit in drama is to think. One way of dealing with it is to “double down”. My friend Garret told me this morning that that is how most people deal with drama. They double down on their position and run free with their opinions, whatever they may be.
He wisely said that “doubling down” is not a church thing or a congregant thing, but an everybody thing. When it comes to sides and drama, everyone doubles down and digs in to their position and in an effort to get back to their efficient ways, pretends that the others on different sides don’t really exist.
I thought to myself that I have been guilty of doubling down many times, but now am in a unique position to realize that thinking and if you’re the type, praying, may be the best way to deal with drama. Think about it. The only way to truly love your enemies is to stop what you’re doing and to think about how to love them through those things which makes them enemies. But we don’t have enough time in our efficient lives to truly love our enemies. When we make an enemy, we want them to go away. If it’s in our best interest, we continue to send them texts asking how they are doing or telling them we are praying for them. But it’s not efficient to keep them as friends. They have too much “baggage.”
Honestly there are people who have too much baggage, but unless you stop to think through drama, you will make a myriad of stupid choices regarding the drama like write dumb back handed facebook posts or blame others for all your own problems or ignore the hurt and pain that others feel.
Even now I’m processing what church looks like on the other side of all of this drama. The only thing conclusive I’ve come to up to this point stems from sitting in people’s thoughts, differences, and problems, and letting them know that those thoughts, differences, and problems are every bit as important to God as the mega church pastor’s urgent desire to fill every seat in the house at multiple services.
So today if you’re dealing with drama, can I ask you to sit and think, not about how they suck and you are right, but just about everyone involved. Sit and think about how you came to this point; who has been most affected; and what can you do to help the injured (even emotionally) Samaritan lying in between you and your end goal of peace and prosperity.
