Chapter Three: Episode 14
Resistance to Revelation
Yet not everyone experiences revelation. I’ve seen many older, supposedly wiser folks turn away from these preconditions necessary for revelation. They are not willing to sit with some chaos and live with uncertainty. They deny that they are confused and in conflict. They hold tight to tattered answers that no longer fit changing reality.
They call this, “Knowing what works.”
Jesus likened these signs of resistance to trying to, “pour new wine into old wineskins.” Chaos, uncertainty and not-knowing are like fermenting, volatile wine. Such young wine can’t be poured into stiff, old wineskins. The old skins will eventually explode.
Contemporary scholars speak similarly. Historians of science talk about the way senior scientists resist new discoveries when emerging facts just won’t fit into trusted, older paradigms.[1] Developmental psychologists document the disorientation experienced by those who can no longer “hold” new experiences within their old accommodating structures.[2]
To be truly alive, to embrace the real, demands times of disorientation!
It’s A Wonderful Life – and Revelation
You know how Dad always insists each Christmas season we devote a night to watching, “It’s A Wonderful Life”? It’s not just a Christmas tradition, however. This movie shows the life-and-death stakes for revelation.
In this beloved movie, our hero, George Bailey, dreams he’ll get out of small-town Bedford Falls and become an important man. He desires a life of travel and adventure, but he labors at the family business, The Bailey Brothers Building and Loan. Each evening he comes home to his old house, falling into disrepair. He’s so frustrated and blue, that he can’t pay attention to the antics of his charming children or the affections of his adoring wife, Mary.
One night, in despair, George decides to throw himself off a bridge but is saved by an angel. The angel will grant George one special wish. George mutters in hopelessness, “I wish I had never been born.” The angel takes this as George’s actual wish and carries him on an invisible tour of his town and family, as though they existed without George’s ever having lived.
Without George’s leadership of The Building and Loan, his townspeople are exploited and impoverished by a ruthless businessman. Without George’s love, the beautiful and vivacious Mary lives a lonely, anxious life, never marrying or having children. Without George’s saving his kid brother from drowning in a frozen pond, his brother never goes on to save fellow soldiers in the war and win the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Seeing his world, absent his own existence, brings George’s revelation. His “Aha” moment allows him to see his life in a startling, new way. He now sees that his life is important and successful – but not in the terms he envisioned as a callow, impatient young man.
When authors or screenwriters plot out their story line, they intentionally create that Aha moment, building the action and suspense toward it, and then showing how the key characters’ lives are transformed by that revelation.
Can you see how crucial this Aha moment is to George’s very life? Without it, he would have died, throwing himself off a bridge. So, too, with us. Without our own moments of revelation, we can also “die” – we can grow stuck and embittered by the past, fail to advance in our work, shrink back from new experiences, and abandon relationships that would deepen our humanity.
(To be continued March 17, Chapter Three: Episode 15)
To Eight Trails readers: Does this post suggest a moment you’ve experienced and, perhaps, a photo you took? Share your reflections and photos with me by clicking “reply” to this emailed post. I would be delighted to include them in new posts — of course, crediting you!
[1] Historians of science often cite Thomas Kuhn’s important work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – itself a paradigm-shifting work. (1962, Chicago)
[2] See the widespread use of Jean Piaget’s theory of assimilation and accommodation, based on his work, Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child. (1970, New York)