Mind Your Head, The Habit of Pain

An old man stands by the side of a road outside a large city. A younger man walks up to him on his way into town and asks the elder, "I'm moving into this city, what are people like here?"

"Well. first tell me what people were like in the city you came from," the old man responded.

"They were great. Very kind. Hard working. They're good people and I'll miss them," he answered.

The old man stared into the city with a smile. "Son, that's exactly how these people are. You're going to love them. Welcome."

"Thanks, old timer," the young man said as he continued on his way.

Not a minute behind the young man, a second came. The second young man stopped where the old man had stationed himself and, with a sigh, asked the same question.

"So, what are people like in this town?"

"How about first you tell me about people where you come from."

"Eh," the young man said with a dismissive snort. "A bunch of selfish, no good, morons. It's good to have them in my past."

"Well son," the old man said with sympathy in his face. "I am sorry to have to tell you, that that's exactly how the people in this city are. Good luck."

We're often creating a world and accusing it of already being that way. And in this projection that we call reality, we shape God and others around our own imagination. Right or wrong, this takes some undoing. As people of the Christ, our goal is to live properly with our maker and others. This is not possible to the extent that we're not actually interacting with them as they are. We don't get any points (or really any sort of ultimately enjoyable life) for living well within the boundaries of a world we made up in the first place.

Thaw

• What are a couple scenarios where you have noticed wisdom having a larger role in your days?
• Have you noticed wise decisions in others that you may have overlooked before?

Read

• Psalm 139
• Thoughts?
• What thoughts, whether extended from the message on Sunday or from this reading, do you have about David's song?

Discuss

• In what ways have you noticed that your past has shaped how you see your present or future?
• In what ways have you noticed that the way you see others has been shaped by the events of your past?
• How does the cross of Christ speak to pain in all its intensity and unfairness?

Read

• Romans 12:9-21
• Thoughts?
• How does God take revenge, and how might this feel dissatisfying at first?

Leader note: This will serve for some as a trick question. Make sure and note that the last sentence, overcoming evil with good, isn't a command that we're told to follow but God doesn't also live by. This is the peculiar, eternal way of God- canceling out evil with goodness. He doesn't answer pain with ugliness like we so often do. This is why it can be dissatisfying: we want God to hate like we hate, and to take our side. But instead, he absorbs pain and evil, ours and "theirs", and offers us a whole new way outside of a reaction to the one we've walked. He answer's pain and evil and sin from his wholeness. His holiness! See Romans 2:4 as well)

• As we reflect on the pain that we've both caused and suffered, how can we learn to get past it through the cross?

Leader note: Some will try and get past it with religious rhetoric and bumper sticker theology. Kindly call that out. We're talking about people sharing actual, lived experience with healing and wholeness through the Christ, not simply parroted phrases.

• Respond as a group to this quote:

“Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, "God, you don't know what it's like! You don't understand! You have no idea what I'm going through. You don't have a clue how much this hurts.The cross is God's way of taking away all of our accusations, excuses, and arguments.The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying, 'Me too.'" ― Rob Bell

Apply

• How do we pray what David prayed at the end of Psalm 139 and mean it?
• How do we expect God might show us the Habit of Pain and us quitting it?
• How can this group help make you more aware of how pain and guilt and regret and anger are shaping the world for you?