Comfortably Numb

I love that song: Comfortably numb by Pink Floyd. I love the guitar in it. And the sentiment: sometimes it’s good to be comfortably numb. Well, it is isn’t it? When I go the dentist, I certainly want to be comfortably numb. I went once and they gave me an injection so I could have some treatment. I had to go and sit in the reception area while my mouth went numb. When I got back into the dentist chair, I was asked if my mouth was numb. Before I could answer the dentist said, “Well let’s start, we’ll soon know!” Comfortably numb is all I wanted to be at that moment. But, being comfortably numb might be not so good a thing at times. I can become comfortably numb to the needs of others around me. Not so good. I can become comfortably numb to the needs of a struggling world full of starvation, injustice, violence. Not so good. We can become comfortably numb about a world that doesn’t know about the God of love we do. We can become comfortably numb to their needs. Not so good. I can become comfortably numb to my own needs. Not so good. But I think far more common than we might be prepared to admit. How often I wonder, do we as followers of Christ deny our real and human emotions? Perhaps more often then we’ll admit. We do it because we think we have to “spiritual” and to be spiritual is to somehow deny our humanness. I spend a lot of time with people who are struggling with very human emotions and feelings. It’s called grief counselling. And one of the things I’ve witnessed is just how hard we work at not being honest about what’s really going on in us, particularly when we facing, or dealing with, loss and grief. It’s not that people are trying to be dishonest. It’s that we want to be comfortably numb. We don’t want to feel the pain. It’s too painful. We think we must “be strong” by which we usually mean we can’t show emotion or express the deep pain we feel. Somehow that’s makes us less human. And that’s tragic. Really tragic. Because the truth is we are human and to express human feelings and emotions is a good thing to do. Actually it’s essential to be truly human. Right now I’m a mix of lots of conflicting feelings and emotions. And it’s a hard place to be. Sometimes I’m simply not sure what I’m feeling. When Jesus met with his disciples on the beach one morning after his resurrection, the first thing he did was to cook them breakfast. They’d been out fishing all night without catching anything until he turned up and helped them. They were tired, cold, confused. And the first thing he did was to cook breakfast. He attended to their human needs. He didn’t hold a prayer meeting, or a worship time, he gave them fish to eat. Right now, with all that’s going on, being comfortably numb would be not so good. Being human would be better. And God perfectly understands being human and he chooses to come to us in our very humanness.