Going to the doctor is scary.  Now hear me when I say that I am not someone that typically surrenders to irrational fear.  But when my appointment is made to see my primary doctor for the once a year humiliation test (if you’re around 40 years of age or older, you know what test that is), I get scared.  I begin to dream of all the terrible things they are going to find.  My mind wonders to what might be wrong with my body that will inevitably be painful to correct or potentially unable to.  Finally the day arrives and I’m sitting on the doctor’s table feeling like a terrified eight year old and he asks me,  “How are you feeling?  Anything wrong?”  In hearing that question, two responses rise to the surface, 1)  “No, nothing is wrong.  Why would anything be wrong?  I’m young.  I’m viril (veer*ral).”  Or the more obvious, 2)  Of course something is wrong.  I made the appointment dummy.  I’m not here to check on how business is going.”  So what happens is that I eventually tell him my problem, show him where it hurts and he prescribes a medication or remedy.  He knows that it’s ok to admit my pain, my problem.  But it’s not ok to stay that way. 

I understand the tension.  I know that the doctor is here to help me.  And yet to acknowledge my problem , my pain, is to admit something is wrong.

I find this same kind of tension often rising up in the local church.  In other words, most of us know something is terribly wrong in our lives and yet at the same time who wants to come to grips with the thing that may be killing us?  We are terminally prideful.  We either lie to ourselves or we lie to the one who is most able to help us.  Both or foolish.  Both are deadly.  I have done both. 

The language we’ve begun to use in our community is this, “It’s ok not to be ok, but it’s not ok to stay that way.”   That is, “We know that your walk with God is contingent on the grace of God.  So come, admit your weakness, your problem, your addiction, your doubts and let the grace of God wash over you.  This thing takes time.”

The backside of this conversation has to do with hypochondriacs.  I happen to have a few in my family, so I have first hand knowledge.  Hypochondriacs are in chronic, continual, and more often than not, imaginary trouble.  Something is ALWAYS wrong.  They have no problem verbalizing their pain, their aches and their own diagnosis of deadly diseases.  We have a few of these in our churches as well–spiritual hypochondriacs.  These are people who only feel good if they feel bad.  That is, unless they are terminally broken over their own wickedness, convicted over every sermon and contrite over the sins of past generations they just can’t move forward with a smile. 

My response is a bit painful because theologically I am more reformed in nature.  That simply means the centrality of the cross, our wicked heart and God’s ferocious pursuit of us is tantamount to how I believe and respond to sin.  That being said, those in the reformed camp [often], not always, lean a little too much into how wicked and broken we are and not quite as fully into joyful redemption that leads to faithfulness and freedom.  To my reformed friends…these are broad-brush strokes.  To my Arminian friends…probably not enough.  I get it. 

Either way, broken people should be allowed to say they are broken, fractured and hurt.  This confession is part of the redemptive nature of the cross.  Our response can be, should be, “By the grace of God, it’s ok not to be ok. But let’s not stay that way.”  Our two great problems are that we are sick and yet we are afraid to ask the One who is most willing and certainly most able to heal us.