Preview Chapter of 27 Messiah
CHAPTER 5
Partners, Masters And A Couple Of Heroes
“Another challenge in our search for self is the rising, pouring and bottling of emotions.
Let’s say you have an argument with your partner (any loved one that’s part of your daily life) during the course of an evening. Often, these arguments begin long before anyone starts to argue. Earlier in the day, you could have made a joke that was misinterpreted and misunderstood by your partner. You could have just blurted out something that didn’t make a lot of sense but was derogatory. Your partner shuts down partially, not because of any awareness and analysis about what was said, but because of an immediate, almost non-descript negative feeling that arises. If it hurts and you are around others, your partner may bottle the feeling in a natural way so as not to further tensions within the group. This can go basically unnoticed for everyone or there can be an awkward moment.
Hopefully, the conversation shifts quickly and the evening continues in a more positive direction. However, that night you see your partner a little reserved, so you begin to pry and then - you do it again. You blurt out something you shouldn’t have said because you were feeling a little threatened based on your partner’s temperature dropping shoulder. Both you and your partner begin to argue, but you can’t even realize why it’s begun. You react only to the moment just before you start to argue and then jump into the battle.
How far do you take it? Are you going to dominate no matter what? Are you going to aggressively apologize and still leave the other person with a sense that you really aren’t sorry for anything? If the person apologizes to you, are you going to honestly and deeply still hold onto resentment even though you may have said, “I forgive you?”
Confusion in part results from not bringing love to the table. Other emotions have overpowered your love for your partner causing you to fall into a “take-no-prisoners” state of mind. There’s an alluring sensation about this. You see red and your brain begins switching between defend and attack. Why? Why do we do this?
It’s because of fear and our ingrained past. When we succumb to the fear, we are no more than enemies for as long as we are looking to win. Here’s another opportunity for a better sense of self and gaining in the soul search. Look to lose even though at first glance this appears to be insane. Why do such a thing? Wouldn’t this prove to be detrimental to our self-esteem, our identity and hurt our overall self? The answer is “No,” but only in terms of you becoming the dominant force, boasting in your weakness like St. Paul. If you can’t boast in your weakness (trust me—it’s a positive thing if you do it honestly), then the healthier alternative would be to stand up for yourself when your partner smears you. Try to remain responsible throughout and you’ll win the day.
Did you ever notice that whoever remains calmer often wins? There’s a reason for that. You’re in more control of yourself and it gives you power. The trick is not to succumb to the temptation to abuse it. That’s why looking to lose confidently remains the better option. For all you tough guys and tough gals out there, looking to lose is not as severe as you might think. Looking to lose will empower your partner and will demonstrate your love for them.
The perfect 27 Messiah example of this comes from John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus. John had a sizable following and his disciples hung on to his every word and did what he commanded. As the final prophet of the coming of Jesus Christ, John said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)
John declared his love for his Master, Who in many ways was his religious partner across town. John looked to lose his own disciples over to Jesus. John looked to lose his own life for the sake of Christ. Jesus said that of all people born of women, none was greater than John the Baptist. There was a grand sense of self that John gained in his experience of Jesus. It looked like John had lost so much as a result of his commitment to God. John was imprisoned and beheaded. John looked to lose in order to prove his love for the Son of God. John helped empower Jesus by baptizing Him. John helped empower Jesus because he sent his disciples and a large following to Jesus. John was completely satisfied by his own losing.
In your own discourse with your partners, communication about where you could have done better means you searched to improve your ability to see your truth -- the cold hard truth in some cases. It means you are listening to your partner and improving your sense of self. You have no idea how powerful this will truly make you. If you hone this skill, you will eventually be perceived as a person of strength. You may seemingly be at your most vulnerable, but you are very mighty in this moment. Wisdom has descended upon you from your submission to goodness.
Take Christopher Reeves (God rest his soul) and Jerry Lewis as examples. Both men entered into an observable state of vulnerability, yet both dominated as people of strength from their weaknesses. Their identities of strength and their self-identities have been confident because of their efforts. From this, both men gained a more profound sense of self and I’m confident their souls have been personally searched.
What separates the likes of these two people from the rest of us? Why aren’t we all doing something equally powerful? There are a series of answers for these questions. Both Reeves and Lewis acknowledged an extensive network of assistance - the countless unsung heroes. I already gave a couple of examples from earlier in my life - both Paul Whalley and Mike Thompson had dramatic positive effects on me in terms of my “self” and soul searching.
Who are the unsung heroes in your life? Hopefully your family like mine is part of this. If they are not, then you have the opportunity to change that reality through what you have learned here. I pray you find the strength and courage to look to lose in some situations so that you may gain in love with them. However, in family matters, if you humble yourself enough to lose, then your sibling or parent may see this as weakness and at some point, attempt to crush you. You gotta balance losing against the prospect of hearing, “I was right about everything!” If they respond negatively like this, just walk away and come back to try again. After about four attempts, let them know that you’ve been attempting to build a better relationship with them but the only way that’s going to happen is if they begin to listen to you. If that doesn’t work, then I suggest a series of harmless pranks to give them something to crank about.
So now you’ve granted them the courtesy of sounding off a number of consecutive times and you’re hoping they’ll give the two of you a chance no matter what has happened in the past. The past is the devil’s tool and people use the past in two very dramatically negative ways. Firstly, they may bring up how you wronged them again and again in an attempt to make you pay the rest of your life. The other side is where the culprit ignores what they did wrong. Their reasoning is that what happened is in the past and what’s done is done; essentially exempting themselves from accountability. Both of these extremes can lead to hatred over time.
If you choose to remember someone’s sins against you and perpetually hang them over their head, then don’t go complaining when someone does it to you. And comparing the level of devastation you sustained against what you believe should be the level of inconvenience you caused someone else, is such a pitfall it will cause you to lose respect, honor, love and friendship. It changes your identity negatively in the long run.
It’s the same if you choose to exempt yourself from accountability, because you deem your sin or aggression as ancient history. This results in two possible outcomes: the person you wronged will either let it go or they won’t. The danger with someone just letting it go is that you just may reprogram yourself into thinking it’s OK to exempt yourself from other things where you need to be accountable. You may begin to develop an attitude that looks to be oppositional instead of finding compromise. If you see you are able to keep escaping accountability, you may eventually become addicted to exempting yourself. This is what I deem, the “exemption attitude addict.”
It’s sad to watch people act this way, because they have no clue. Their sense of self is skewed because they’ve been overtaken by their compromised identity. It’s a vicious harmful cycle and can leave a lot of hurt people in the wake.
Sadly, there are those who will choose hurting others instead of changing their stance, including spousal arguments, financial pressure and humiliation - anything to avoid being caught from hiding something or from the experience of the whole world closing in. These types of outcomes can leave people on both sides despondent to the point of self-harm and in particular, suicide.
Suicide is one is of the most difficult things to deal with for all who are connected and left behind. There is tremendous guilt and all kinds of second-guessing. There’s challenge in our faith. Often, there’s resentment toward the individual and/or God. There’s blame all over the place. There’s condemnation. There’s depression, bitterness, a feeling of betrayal and every other negative emotion.
In terms of the Christian religion, it’s often thought that the person who commits suicide will go to hell and not pass go. While this may sound authentic and true to some people, there are considerations you may not have realized.
When a person commits suicide, they are first of all in a moment of temporary insanity. To actually pull the trigger against yourself, to plunge the needle in, to drive off the cliff, to jump off the bridge or building, to perform any act that results in your own death is utterly insane in the moment. Arguments against insanity can be made in terms of euthanasia, but I’m excluding this topic. It’s outside the norm of what we call traditional suicides; therefore it won’t be used in this analysis.
People belabor the idea of what led up to the decision to commit suicide. It’s our love for the person that sets us in a tailspin, trying to find answers. We try and get in the head of the person we lost and somehow see them in the light their fatal decision represented.
There are sometimes years of thought and planning ahead of the final moment. People who have completed suicide have done so for reasons. They have justified the reasons to the point of action against themselves and they have judged themselves not worthy of life anymore. They have tried themselves, found themselves guilty, given themselves the death penalty and have executed themselves. It hurts like hell to not be with them; especially when you think you might have been able to save them somewhere down the line.
All this is part of our human make-up and here’s the point that most people haven’t thought about in terms of the soul of the person who has completed suicide: what did they think in the split second or moments after the irreversible act and just before their death? Your loved one may have had that moment of regret that leaves a moment of possibility.
Time is a meaningless concept during the moment of death and I believe people who commit suicide have such deep feelings in this moment that the act and the regret are always right there together. Sure, it’s a sin to take your own life, yet there is hope for your loved ones as your love for them and their love for you had a chance of being there in that moment of no return. So, take heart all of you survivors. Hope lives on and your faith in God’s mercy just may be the determining factor. Don’t blame God; instead beg Him to grant mercy upon your lost loved one. If any part of this book has substance, it is this. It is my hope that you see the truth in what I have written here and after I’m called home by Jesus, if one of you still here sees this, everything I have strived for in my life has been worth it.”
—End Chapter—
27 Messiah is a personal growth piece that helps break down controversial issues without the usual rhetoric aimed at gaining agreement. The thread throughout is a series of moral crossroads over controversial issues such as IVF, marijuana, LGBTQIA+ rights, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, the death penalty, racism, and the like. This dynamic expression of faith pursues a Jesus that the world did not expect. 27 Messiah is a refreshing and unique look into the age old question, “Who am I?”
In his groundbreaking book, 27 Messiah, Father Mark has drawn so much from the pool of life, capturing the essence of soul searching and personal discovery. His readers acknowledge a stronger component of faith in their lives as they begin to realize they don’t have to succumb to and be of the world while in it.
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