The Courage to Be

 The following was featured on the Staff Blog of Belle Meade United Methodist Church this week.

May 2 marked the 11th anniversary of the historic Nashville Flood.  On that day in 2010, my house was severely damaged by a mudslide in our neighborhood.  My wife and I wound up losing our home.  We lived with friends and family, we survived because of the generosity of others.  During the next several months, we experienced almost every emotion that one can experience.  Some days it was hard to get out of bed, but I recall one evening as my family was eating dinner together with a gift card given to us by an anonymous stranger, I looked around the table and realized that we still had the same family love and relationships that we had before we lost our house.  I realized that it did not matter where we had been eating together that night, we would still have each other, and the relationships we had always shared.  I began see our experience through a new lens that has given me courage to face life since that time.  I have come to appreciate the writings of theologian, Paul Tillich, who writes about “The Courage to Be”.  

It has been a while since I read Tillich’s words directly, but I paraphrase them in this way (and add a bit of my own to them). Most people live lives of superficial busyness that are often driven by a variety of anxieties.  The one big core anxiety that few of us can tolerate is the reality that we will one day die.  Most people will go to great lengths to avoid the thought of their own death.  We don’t like the idea that those we love might one day die, but the reality that we will one day die often drives us into living a frenetic life of activities and trivialities designed to distract us from the reality of our own death.  Beyond this, we fear the rejection or judgement of others.  We seek to avoid the pain and sadness of loss.  Out of anxiety, we might try to control others so that we can avoid undesirable outcomes.  We may try to live life in a way that denies or avoids deep feelings of sadness or anger.  The bottom line is that life is unpredictable, other people are unpredictable, deep emotions can be deeply painful, and the ultimate end of life is death.  (Cheery, I know).  

The ironic experience is that to avoid the discomfort of life, we may unconsciously construct beliefs, practices, and behaviors that are designed to minimize the pain, control other people and situations, and deny death.  However, the resulting life is one of shallow connections, meaningless activity, and a superficial existence. Paul Tillich suggests that a life of meaning and depth results from being able to affirm death.  For him, “Courage” is living in spite of the reality of death, not denying death.  The courage to be is the courage to live life as it is; accepting others without trying to manipulate or control them.  It is learning to feel all of your feelings and having the courage to experience the depth of the pain and forsakenness that you might find in the losses of life.  Because so many of those who struggle with the abuse of substances do so because of the depth of pain in their life and in their past, the 12-step tradition affirms learning to “Live life on life’s terms” as one of their tenants.  Learning to live life on life’s terms also means coming to terms with our own mortality.  Only in acknowledging death and having the courage to experience our fears, sadness, loneliness, etc. can we know what it is to have true joy and depth of being.  

The beauty of our Christian faith is that at its heart is a God who has lived the depth of forsakenness, suffering and death through the life of the incarnate Jesus.  We have the power of Jesus’ resurrection to give us power over death.  The unknown of death is still scary.  The loss of loved ones still hurts, but the resurrection should help us embrace death in a way that allows us to live fully.  If we can trust God with our lives and our future, then we should have confidence to know that we can deal with anything we encounter.  Not that we want to encounter “everything”, but we have the confidence to know we can if that is what life brings.  If that is true, then we can stop trying to make others do what we want them to and give them the freedom to live their lives.  We can stop trying to manipulate situations to try go get them to turn out as we think they should because we can trust that God is in the future and can bring blessing from sadness.  2 Timothy 1:7 says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  When we find the courage to feel the fear and live our lives anyway and we trust God with our lives and futures, we find the power to live life fully.  We have the ability to love without fear – without holding back or without trying to control.  In the courage to be, relationships are deeper, life has more meaning, and we experience true joy – life not just eternal, but life abundant.  

Chris O'Rear, M.Div., M.M.F.T. 

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Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1952.