Yes, But...

(c) Staci Stallings 2004

Satan lies. He does. That's what he's good at. He doesn't want you to know the truth. He abhors the Truth, and so he lies. And lies and lies and lies. Some of his lies are directed personally at you. "You'll never make a difference anyway, why even try? You're not good enough. You're not pretty enough. You're not smart enough." All those lies are meant to keep you on the sidelines.

However, there is a more subtle type of lies that I call "collective lies." These are lies that are hard-wired into our culture. "Sex is the ultimate of everything, and it really doesn't matter whom you have to hurt to get it." "Money will automatically make you happy." "Life is a competition, and the only real way to get ahead is to climb over people." Collective lies are aimed at pitting us one against the other so that Satan does have to do anything. When we believe these lies, we do the destroying ourselves.

I am usually on the lookout for Satan's lies. Not that I go searching them out. They usually find me. But I am generally in-tune with what's really going on in many situations and how Satan is trying to sow trouble at every turn. Often, it's in the subtlest situations that he takes a real foothold in a life. For example, a couple gets into a serious conflict because something bad happened to one, and trying not to burden the other, they hold that secret on their heart.

Of course the other feels the secret even if they don't know it, and they begin lashing out in hurt because they don't understand what's really going on. Satan is playing both sides, and everyone is falling for the lies of "this is happening because" when neither party really knows enough information to understand what is truly going on. The collective non-communication lie is: "'I know what's going on' even when I truly don't and can't."

There is a collective lie that I recently uncovered that goes to the heart of this conflict. I call it, "Yes, but..." While discussing a good friend's life situation with my sister the other day, I said, "We all have hurts. We all have pain, and we all have the choice to give that pain to Christ or to hold onto it." To which my sister replied, "Yes, but how can you say that, because you've never lost a sibling like our friend has."

Instantly, although I'd heard similar statements a thousand times and never put it together, I realized how much of a lie that is. Very calmly I replied, "Yes, I have. I lost seven." My mother had seven miscarriages along the way.

That stopped my sister for a moment, and I said, "And you know I very well remember Dad sending me into the house when I was about five years old to check on Mom. She was lying in bed, and at the time I didn't really know what was going on. She didn't even know what was going on. But they had put her on a strong dose of drugs for the physical pain, and it had affected her emotionally. She was crying, and I mean to the point of hysteria. Here I was five years old, and I remember standing by that bed, and all I could do was to put my hand on her shoulder and rub it. That was it. I was helpless.

So yes, in a way I do understand that pain and confusion of losing a sibling-maybe not in the exact same way, but I do understand on some level."

In that moment I saw past the lie the real lie. By saying, "Yes, but..." Satan tricks us into believing two things: 1) we are all alone in our pain because no one could ever understand how much this hurts 2) we don't have to be compassionate with someone else because their pain is not as great as our own.

The reality, the Truth is that we all have pain. We have all experienced it. It may be disease, abuse, violence or alcohol. It may be poverty, helplessness, or hopelessness. It may be that someone or a bunch of someones picked on us in school or at work. It may be that Mom or Dad didn't like you, or liked sister or brother better. It may be that Mom or Dad had such high expectations that you could never reach them. It may be that things were going great and one day the world turned on end because we got sick or someone close to us got sick or someone close to us died. It may be any one of a million different things, but the pain is real because the pain isn't "out there"-it's personal.

All of our individual pains, though superficially different, are in substance the same. They hurt, and they make us have to choose between holding onto the pain and letting go and trusting God. Simple or as difficult as that. So the next time someone is trying to "out-do" your pain, or the next time you catch yourself trivializing someone else's pain (you know the old argument that the crucifixion wasn't as bad for Christ as it would've been for us because He was God and He knew what was coming), stop and realize that Satan is whispering that lie into your ear.

You can believe it if you want to-goodness knows a lot of people do. But you can also reject it, and be compassionate toward the person in front of you (or even toward yourself, with the "this hurts, but I'm being silly because someone over there had to deal with something really bad"). First, stop and hear the lie.

Understand it for the lie that it is. Realize that you don't know all there is to know about the situation and how far down this person's hurt goes, and then empower yourself that you can combat that lie with the Truth that we all have pain, and we can use it to be compassionate or to be competitive. Being compassionate when you understand this principle will let you look at yourself and others in a whole new light, and that's the Truth.