Do you want to scream "wake up, you idiots!"
We all need to understand that "its not happening" is an ineffective mental survival tactic of terrified people.
In his stellar book, The Gift of Fear, Gavin DeBecker recounts how women who survived attacks by serial murderers and rapists knew something was wrong, but they discounted their fears. One woman was in her apartment lobby struggling with grocery bags and the elevator. A man she had seen occasionally approached her and held the elevator doors open. Once inside, he offered to hold some of her bags. There was something off about him, nothing concrete, but she had a sense that he was not right. Still, afraid of being rude, she let him carry some bags. “This is not happening, I am overreacting” she told herself.
When they got to her apartment door, she said “you can set them down here.” He said something close to “don’t be silly, I will just hand them to you and be in my way.” She knew right there, right at that moment, that he intended to harm her. Still, she was afraid of being offensive and, what if that was not happening? What if she was making it up? So, she opened the door just a small crack and he pushed her inside, onto the floor, choked her and told her he would kill her if she made a sound.
He shoved her into her bedroom. He turned up her stereo to a loud level. He raped her. When he finished, he told her to stay there and not make a sound or he would kill her. Then, he left the bedroom. She crept quietly inches behind him, saved by the booming of the music. He walked toward her kitchen, she slipped out her door. The last thing she was him doing was going through her kitchen knives.
She was raped, may God heal her. She was not murdered, praise the Lord.
People in America are in the hallway with the attackers. Guess what they are telling themselves?
Most of our neighbors know something is wrong. Still, we are living in a world of people opening their doors to mental and physical rapists. “It’s not happening”, they are telling themselves.
“Kids are not being mutilated, that’s not happening.”
“The man in the White House is not a walking, talking, senile national security nightmare, that’s not happening.”
“We are not at war with Russia and China is not using our open borders to import sleeper-cells. That’s not happening.”
“All-cause mortality is not up by ~40% in mass-injection countries, that’s not happening.”
“Young people, many of them elite athletes, are not dying of heart attacks since the pushing of the mRNA injections. That’s not happening.”
If we want our Country back, we need to help our neighbors or the mental and physical rapists will have a home in their homes, nearer our own.
A sure way to be ineffective at helping traumatized people
When people are afraid there is a technique that is guaranteed to not help them: yelling at them. A scared person becomes a terrified person when people scream at them. A slightly less catastrophic approach is to tell them to be rational; if they could be rational they would. What we are called to do is not possible . . . for us.
We are called to love our neighbors as God loves us. We are called to guide our neighbors as God guides us. We cannot do that; the Holy Spirit can do it through us.
Neighbor: “Kids are not being mutilated, that’s not happening.”
Us: “It’s scary to think of that happening, I was terrified when I heard of it and didn’t want to believe it. May I share with you how my feeling changed?”
Neighbor: “All-cause mortality is not up by ~40% in mass-injection countries, that’s not happening.”
Us: “It’s so frightening to think if such things. I was afraid of people who told me that. May I share with you what happened to change my feelings?
If people aren’t ready to let you share your feelings, they are not ready to hear the facts that inform your feelings. Be patient. Satan thinks he is playing the long game. But, it’s God who has already played and won the eternal game. Be the person in your neighbor’s life who demonstrates empathy for their feelings even if they are based upon lies. If we are trustworthy, if we are patient and kind, when they finally reach a breaking point, perhaps by experiencing “peak ‘trans’”, they will know to whom they can turn to be heard and to hear more. They will turn to us.
When people turn to us after realizing they were in the hallway with the rapist, they made turn to us and see God’s face.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
There is that little voice that if we do not heed, it can turn ugly; the truth is if we always heed and listen for that voice we will never know if things could have gone wrong, but if we do not listen and follow that voice we will find out if we should of listen or it is a false alarm. The Japanese have a word for never knowing it is called YUGEN. The character or kanji is a mountain hidden by a cloud, once you go and see what is on that mountain you are not in YUGEN any more.
This is definitely a challenge. Doing Gods will isn’t always the easy path but it comes with the best results