Music.
Welcome to the Rooted Podcast. I'm Luke and we believe here at Rooted that you
can see lasting life change for your good and for God's glory. Today we're going to continue our discussion about what does it mean to live in the light,
to step out of darkness, and to step into the light. And today we're going to talk
about that place where we start. I talked a little bit about last time about the narrative
of Scripture, the fall of humanity in Adam and Eve, and how we all tend to hide. We all
tend to minimize and hide. And today we're going to be kind of digging into and talking
about, well, if we're not living in the light, where are we? And we're in denial. We're in
that place, in that state of denying what is going on around us, or going on in our
life, or denying what we need to address and to talk about openly.
If you're familiar with like the 12 steps, this is part of that very first step, stepping
out of denial, admitting that there is a problem, admitting that there is something going on,
that we don't have it all together.
So the way I define denial is this way, is that denial is a willful blindness
and avoidance of realities that we don't want to face.
I'll say that again. Denial is a willful blindness and avoidance of realities
that we do not want to face.
I think that this is really important for us to understand exactly what's going on.
And it is this kind of, I get the picture of, you know, someone plugging their ears
or someone covering their eyes in order to say, ah, I can't see the problem, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
And that's the place we find ourselves at if we're living in a place of denial,
of saying, I don't have a problem with this particular, I don't have a problem with alcohol.
I don't have a problem with pornography. I could stop whenever I wanted to.
I don't have relationship problems, other people are just not as good,
it's not my fault that my relationships never work out.
I don't have hurts or things that I need to address, there's just things that I'm never gonna talk about.
We're living in denial, we're in a place where we're saying,
nope, I've got it all together, I don't need to address this.
And it's a place where, left unchecked, we can get ourselves into some serious trouble.
I think about this, when I think about denial, I think of one of my favorite books and movies,
The Lord of the Rings.
If you're familiar with The Lord of the Rings, in particular the last movie, the last book,
The Return of the King.
And if you're not familiar, a summary of the important piece of the story for this particular
illustration, is that there's a kingdom and the reign of the king has been long lost. The true
heirs left the kingdom and have left the king to be taken care of a family of stewards. They're not
the kingly family, they're the stewards. They're the ones who are supposed to be taking care of
the kingdom. And under the watch of the steward, the current steward, the one who is in the role
of the king, but is not in the lineage of the king. In the middle of his stewarding, of taking
care of the kingdom, overseeing the kingdom, evil has come, and it's been coming slowly,
and it's been coming for a long time. The kingdom is sitting right outside of the dark place,
outside of Mordor, where the dark lord lives, and he's been getting reports, he's been getting
notified and told that evil's coming, the Dark Lord is building his armies. And his.
Chosen action has been to be blind to what's going on. He's ignored the coming forces.
He's ignored the warnings of his sons. And he's been willfully blind. He's been in denial.
Particularly in the movie, up until his hand is kind of forced. Our protagonists, our heroes are
encountering him, and he's just like, no, there's no problem, go away. Our gates, our city will hold,
we have no need to fear. He ultimately just continues to go down a path of self-destruction
and destruction of his sons and of himself
because he refuses to take off the blinders,
to step out of denial.
And that is similarly where we find ourselves. It's a place of willful blindness.
It's a place where we choose to ignore something.
And the funny thing about us, about humans, is that if we choose to ignore something long enough,
Pretty soon we forget that it's there, right?
Know, maybe there's that.
Let's take a more innocuous topic or thing, maybe there's something on your to-do list
that you just don't want to do, and you're just like, ugh, I'm just not going to think about that today.
Well, you say that to yourself enough times, you're eventually going to forget about the
thing you're trying to not think about.
You'll get really good about not thinking about it, and then the due date for that thing
on your to-do list will come, and you're like, oh, I actually really forgot about it.
And that might be something serious, it might be something not all that serious, but you
know what I'm talking about, we've all done that before.
And so we need to recognize and come to terms with ourself and kind of wake ourselves up
out of this sleepy state of denial, of denying that we have a problem, of denying that we need help.
And so here are a few kind of, you know, I want to take the rest of our time, and I want
us to kind of do some self-reflection, do some diagnostics with ourselves and think
through, are there places in which I might be in denial?
And here are a handful of the behaviors. I don't think this is maybe, um.
You know, all-encompassing. This isn't all the things that we might do in denial, but this is some of the big things, so.
One of the big behaviors of denial is that we minimize things.
So, by that I might mean that we, um, we might compare ourselves to other people to make ourselves look better.
Right? Oh, look at that person. I'm not that person. I've got it more together than they do, so I must not have a problem. Right?
We might point to the positive things in our life, right? Nothing's black and white, right?
Nothing's all negative and nothing's all good, but we might try and minimize or avoid
the serious things that we need to talk about
by just kind of focusing and highlighting the good parts in our life
and kind of avoiding the other half of the picture.
Or we might keep track, or we might not keep track or keep things foggy so that we can't see
how big the issue is, right?
We might kind of just keep things kind of hazy, not really think about it, right?
This is an easy one to talk about when it comes to perhaps alcohol abuse, right?
Well, how many drinks did I have? Ah, just a few, I don't really know.
How much have I been drinking? How often do I drink?
Oh, just really, you know, maybe once, twice a week, something like that, right?
And by not ever trying to get down to the specifics, we keep it in this kind of foggy haze
where we can kind of continue to think, ah, it's not that big a deal, right?
Maybe for an issue like pornography, you know, ah, it's a thing I do every once in a while.
Well, how much is every once in a while?
How often is that?
Not just, let's be specific about that. You know, maybe we kind of just keep things in a bit of a fog, right?
If we're dealing with things about like healing from trauma or hurt, we often kind of can
build these, where I call them no-go zones, I'll call them no-go zones, places where we
kind of won't want to go to, don't want to talk about.
Person that we don't talk about, person we don't think about, person we don't talk to.
Topics we avoid, places we don't go, right?
Or maybe we just kind of, maybe there's some hurt or there's some things that need to change,
but every time we think about, I really, really need to build some more healthy relationships.
I really need to make a change. I really need to make this difficult decision.
I'm just going to kind of minimize that by...
Numbing myself out. I'm gonna hop on social media. I'm going to Watch more YouTube. I'm going to go out and buy some things
I'm gonna go do something to make myself feel good so that the problem feels smaller,
we can minimize minimizing is a is a,
Broad thing that we do in denial. The next thing that we often do when we're in denial is we rationalize things,
I Once heard a preacher. I don't remember who but it's stuck with me and he's talking about,
Rationalizing is just telling rational lies to yourself. Did you catch that?
Rationalizing something to yourself is telling rational untruths,
rational lies to yourself And so we might say that we're stressed out that this is just a season,
Right just tell ourselves like I don't have a problem. This isn't an issue This is this will go away if I just ignore it long enough,
We might pat ourselves on the back and say you know what I deserve a break. I deserve a reward this,
You know I give myself a break right like this isn't a big problem, right?
And we're continually playing ourselves as the victim and In saying that like the place that we're stuck in is totally fine
Yeah, we might just say that this is normal, right?
I don't have a problem, this is just normal. And the thing is, it may have become normal for you,
but that doesn't mean that it's healthy for you.
And then the last thing is simply self-deception. Self-deception is when we begin to believe our own minimizing and rationalizing.
This is when we've been in denial for a long time.
It's when we really, really start to believe our own press. We start to say, you know what, this isn't my problem, everyone else around me is the
one who's wrong.
We become impervious to feedback, we become impervious to loved ones, people who care
deeply about us, speaking truth into our lives.
And it might not always feel that way, but often, when we're in denial, one of the reasons
that we're in denial is because we have a pride issue.
Because we don't want to admit that things are not going well.
We want to say, you know what, no, just leave me alone, I can fix it on my own.
Just let me hold on to it. I know myself, that's my own tendency.
If there's a problem or a thing that I need to take care of, rather than asking or seeking
for help, I would much rather just say, go away, nobody see how I'm weak and vulnerable,
I just want to take care of it myself. And when I isolate myself like that, when I live
in denial that I don't need help, it doesn't get any better on its own. And I begin to
deceive myself with my own pride, that I can fix this, I can do this all by myself. The
is that I can't. And we weren't made to. God meant us to live in community. We cannot fix our own problems.
That's what Christ is for. So I have a few questions that I'm just
going to kind of end our podcast with,
or time together this discussion.
And sit with these. Maybe pull out a pen, pause this, pull out a pen,
or pull out your phone, and take these down.
Sit with these, and ask these questions of yourself. And these questions will kind of lead you
down a path of considering, perhaps, where are you in denial?
Where have you not been addressing and living in the light?
Where do you need to begin to take some ownership of where things actually are at?
So the first question I have is, are you keeping secrets? Are there things that you're just actively
not telling people about?
That if people knew about, they would be shocked, right?
Are you keeping secrets? Not are you, you know, I don't mean that
does everybody know everything about you,
but do the closest people to you, would they think that you're keeping secrets
if they were to find some things out?
Are there off-limits, second question is, are there off-limits topics,
off-limit places, events, or people?
Now I wanna be gentle with this one, like I don't mean that we need to necessarily
always be diving into the places where we don't wanna go, where there's some hurt,
or there's some trauma, or there's a brokenness,
But are we, you know, avoiding relationships, right?
Is there a friend that we can't talk to anymore for some reason?
Maybe that's something we need to deal with. Maybe we have family members who we wish we had better relationships with,
but we don't because there's some hurts, there's some things that need to be addressed there.
Are there just off-limit topics, like we can talk about anything
except for the places where I'm not doing very well?
We can talk about anything except for how much I go to the casino, or how much I drink,
or how much time I spend on the computer late at night. Are there off-limit topics, places, events, or people?
Are you isolating yourself? That's the third question I have.
Are you removing yourself from community? Are you isolating yourself?
Or are you reaching out to community? Fourth question is, do you feel like you're hiding yourself?
Do you feel like you're wearing a mask? Do you feel like you're not being truthful to yourself
and to other people around you?
And my final question, the fifth question here is, have others approached you
about something you didn't want to hear?
This is a big warning sign. This is big flag. If someone is coming up to you,
particularly if multiple people have said, Hey, you okay?
Hey, I noticed this thing that maybe you're doing.
You say, what's going on here? And I know because I've been there.
I know because I've seen people been there.
That is a hard place when someone comes up to you and they say, hey, I'm concerned about you.
What's going on here?
Are you okay? And what do we do? We minimize.
We start verbalizing all the things we've been doing to ourself.
And we say it to them, but usually harsher to the person who's actually just concerned for us,
who want the best for us.
Those are the type of people we want to keep around us, to be honest, the type of people
who are willing to say kind—or not kind words, but hard words in a kind manner, because
they want the best for us.
I don't remember the exact quote, so forgive me, but I believe it's a proverb in the Bible
that says that harsh are the words—I won't even approach saying it.
The essential point of it is, is that beware of the enemy who speaks soft and kind words to you.
Pay more attention to the friend who is willing to speak harsh and hard words to you.
A good friend, someone who actually cares about your well-being, will occasionally challenge
you and point out the red flags.
And when they do that, are we going to isolate, are we going to minimize, or are we going
to take a moment to say, yes, please help me.
Yes, I don't know what to do.
I think I might have a problem. I think this is an area where I need healing.
Can we take a risk and step into the light?
It's an invitation for that. So I'll leave that with you for this time.
Thank you for joining in this conversation.
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Music.