Deal With It, Get Over It, and Get Help Romans 8:26,28,31-39
In 1973 a gang of bank robbers held up a bank in Stockholm, Sweden. The police interrupted their heist, but the bank robbers took a number of bank employees hostage for six long days. When at last they were rescued, these kidnap victims, who had been terrorized and abused by their captors, stunned the authorities by demonstrating an emotional attachment to their captors. Some of the victims even publically defended the very ones who had held them at gun point and threatened their lives.
You know what we call this phenomenon. You may not have it on the tip of your tongue, but it’s called . . . the “Stockholm Syndrome.” . . . . That’s right.
Since 1973 this strange sympathetic behavior — a hostage showing loyalty and concern for the hostage-taker — has been repeated and recognized both by such infamous names as Patty Hearst and by tens of thousands of unnamed/unknown domestic, spousal, and child abuse victims. The captives get their own identity so wrapped up in that of their captors that no matter how bad their reality, it seems better than facing the fear of an unknown, undefined future.
I want to make the case this morning that one of the dominant sicknesses facing our world today is the “Stockholm Syndrome.” There are many of us who are suffering from a kind of cultural “Stockholm Syndrome,” blindly defending and claiming as good for ourselves the very things that keep us captive. Or to put it more philosophically, we embrace the powers to which we are so willingly enslaved.
In 21st century America, the most abusive captors of our hearts and souls are consumerism and materialism. We work longer and longer hours, get deeper and deeper in debt, take more and more time away from our families, all in order to enable us to consume more material goods. We are slaves to wanting more “things;” We are slaves to wanting more “stuff;” We are slaves to more goodies, more clutter, more junk;
We wrap more and more chains around our lives, chains draining our time, our attention, our money, our love.
There is a less well-known behavioral syndrome that has been dubbed the “Stockdale Paradox.” Admiral Jim Stockdale was a prisoner of war at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” during the Vietnam War. He remained a prisoner there from 1965-1973, eight endless years. He was the highest ranking US military officer imprisoned during the Vietnam War and was H. Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1992 presidential election.
During his imprisonment he was repeatedly beaten and tortured, but he refused to be “broken” by his captors. He devised mental exercises to keep his mind resilient and created ingenious tapping codes that allowed all the American prisoners held captive with him to secretly communicate with each other.
The “paradox” Stockdale is famous for is his unflinching attitude of utter faith embraced by absolute realism. When asked how he managed to continue day after day for eight years Stockdale explained,
“I never lost faith in the end of the story,” he said . . . “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”
When asked by the reporters if he could describe those who failed to survive under the same torture and mind-breaking abuse, Stockdale’s reply was quick: “Oh, that’s easy, he said. The optimists.”
“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
Then who were the ones who survived? What was his key to survival. Stockdale said it was one word: “Faith.”
Stockdale’s final reflection, his key more-than-survival skill was just this.
Faith enabled him to truly LIVE in & through his grueling ordeals.
“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, faith which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
Did you hear it? Did you hear the message of our Epistle lesson reverberating in these words?
Faith is not optimism. Faith is not foolish naïveté. Faith is not pretending bad times or genuine suffering are not real. Faith does not insist that everything’s coming up roses, or that stinking circumstances smell like strawberry shortcake.
Faith is best expressed in the words of a 17-year-old I heard recently: “Deal with it, get over it, and get help.”
The Stockdale realists faced the facts “We’re not getting out by Christmas! Deal with it, Get over it, and Get help!”— but they faced the facts with faith, faith in the ultimate “end of the story,” which enabled them to survive in some of the worst circumstances the mind can imagine.
In today’s epistle text, Paul is speaking to Christians who have experienced real suffering, Christians being persecuted by a power no less than Rome, the greatest empire ever seen. And in these verses, Paul is giving the message we often need to hear: the Stockdale Paradox of “Deal With it, Get Over It…and Get Help!”
The Apostle did not sugarcoat or rose-tint their sufferings. Instead in Romans 8:35 he carefully & precisely enumerated them: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword (that means death). Unlike the New Age proposal that “evil is an illusion,” Paul did not make light of evil. Paul did not say “Let’s not talk about these things. Let’s find our peaceful harmonic space.”
Rather, Paul said these things are real. Pain, suffering, rejection, abuse, neglect, and death are coming at us. They may even be with us throughout our entire lives. But these things are NOT the “end of the story.” Not even death is the end of our story.
We can deal with it and get over it at the same time because we’ve got help. In our Psalter reading this morning, we heard these words: “Our help comes from the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth”.(Psalm 124:8).
None of these things can ultimately prevail against us, because our “Helper” has already overcome the worst that can happen to us. Paul boldly itemizes all those powers that are doomed to failure when they rise up against us….
“neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”(38-39).
The Apostle puts the “Get Help” most simply in Romans 8:31: “If God is for us, who is against us?”
Paul’s good news is more than just a “hang in there,” atta-boy pep talk. For those who genuinely seek to live “in Christ,” the finish line is not the only important part of our story. God is not sitting at the end of the race, waiting to catch us when we collapse – torn and tattered across the finish line. The diamond-hard center to Paul’s faithfulness is not that God’s plan will prevail at some eschatological end, but that God’s presence and power are with us every step of the way . . . to help us deal with it, to help us get over it, and to give us all the help we need to be “more than conquerors.”
Divine concern and compassion are not being saved up for some climatic conclusion. God’s presence and power are unfolding, revealing, expanding, embracing us in everything we do, in all we experience.
Do you know, as Paul knew, that God works “all things” for the good?
Notice that I did not say “all things are good.” I said that God works all things for the good for those who love God, and those who are called according to God’s purpose(Romans 8:28). “No-thing” can separate us from God’s love.
“All things” . . . We live in a world that is suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome.
“Nothing” . . . If we are to free ourselves from the Stockholm Syndrome, we need the faith found in The Stockdale Paradox.
Face the facts . . .with faith.
ALL THINGS work together for good. NOTHING can separate us from the love of God in Christ.
All things . . . Nothing . . .
Face the facts . . .with faith.
You already know the “end of the story.”
