Are you Reactionary or Responsive?

I have lately been thinking about reaction and response, and what determines either or both. We grew up in those days where teachers caned us for any reason. Your shirt is not tucked in, your hair is not combed, you failed a number in math, you did not greet the teacher or even you get beaten without attributing any cause. This teacher would slap you and ask you, ‘was it you I heard shouting in class’? if you say, ‘no teacher, it was not me,” he slaps you again and says, ‘then who was it?’ By now you are wondering why you should say the person, since you have already been punished.

The caning or slapping is not what I am thinking about, I am thinking about the boy that never cried after a heavy caning, about another that would scream even before the cane touches him, or the girl that just stopped school running away from these beatings.

However, beyond these reactions or responses to pain, I am thinking about what determined these responses or reactions. Who will cry? Who won’t cry? Who will abandon school? Who will commit suicide? Who will hope? Who will succeed in life?  What is triggering their reactions and eventually their long-term response?

I was discussing with a psychology student friend of mine, and she told me, screaming after a cane is a reaction, its reflex, but what you do to stop being caned or to prepare for future caning comes after contemplation and forms your response. I have concluded that life is a can of troubles; they come in physical or even emotional pains releasing immediate reaction.

Hey, do not judge anybody for their reactions, its reflex, join them if you can provide comfort. People at the stage of reaction, do not care about reason, the reflexes are louder than your logical diagnosis. Your ability to enter their emotional space and hang in there with them is good enough. Very few people will actually be permitted to cross into that emotional space, its guarded by fragile feelings. Sometimes there is no need for you to speak or to prescribe what needs to happen.

My deeper concern though is response. Pain and trouble can destroy marriage, career, and character.  People will ease their pain by drugs, excitements, omissions, and commissions of certain things, these are merely reactionary and if we build on our reactions to inform our long-term responses, we go down the rabbit hole and get trapped in there. What then helps us make proper response? And my answer is The Bedrock!

By Bedrock here I’m looking at the innermost basis of your belief system, that will allow you to have faith and hope against hope. Your World view is everything, if to you the world is self-propelling and things just happen, then you lose to trace any place for hope. If it’s all about medical science and facts, then you lose the place for a miracle where science stops. If you believe in miracles but deny the role of science, then even Malaria with all the available drugs will kill you.

Most of what we see on land are deposits; this is why anybody that wants to build a strong foundation will scrap off all these deposits till they hit the rock or the bedrock. From that bedrock, the builders begin to put other stones for the foundation.

Jesus told a story of two builders; one who built on the sand, the other who built on the rock, strangely they both got their cans of troubles, floods, rain, and wind. I am sure they both reacted to the sound, the cold, the lightning, etc. However, the story tells us, the builder upon the sand could not respond appropriately or withstand, he/she fell and shattered. The one on the rock on the other hand withstood, they were strong at the core, and they were built on a firm foundation.

Let us get out of parables, if you are faced with a terrible illness, either upon you or your loved ones, your reaction can range from sorrow to sadness or worry. Your response though can be to trust God, seek professional medical help and be a source of encouragement. These build hope and strong faith and a peace of mind that allows you to withstand. Jesus told Peter that he will build his church on Petra or Bedrock and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. If you go on the sand, then you usher in panic, anxiety, and frustration.

Troubles have a tendency to wash away debris in form of temporal sources of joy and happiness, and if you don’t build on the rock that the builders rejected, you stumble and fall.

Come on now, it is raining hard and flooding a lot. Let us remove the surface deposits, the things we have been taught by bad culture or peer influence, physical challenges or even worldviews. Let us dig it out and return to the foundations of repentance and faith towards God. Isaiah said, ‘Behold, I lay a foundation, he who believes will not be put to shame’.

To all of you my young friends, this is another sage, dig deeper, find the rock, the cornerstones which are the timeless truths, and build on those. Unfortunately, I don’t have a package that is pain and trouble free, Jesus could not find any either.  He thus submitted, ‘In the world you will have trouble’. To these troubles, react according to your reflex, cry if you must, mourn the losses, but turn around and count your loss, scan your options, assess what is left, and make a comeback, respond in the second half with strategies that come from believing that even reality is shaped by faith and trust, in the bedrock from which you were cut.

I do not judge the reactions, I do not agree with keeping reactionary, I do suggest, that we respond, respond with faith and trust. For some it takes longer, that’s okay, to others they are quick to turn around, but to all who would want to overcome, there is one option, reactionism must be a season not a lifetime. In that season we come up with a response, a response that is richer, that carries the experience of pain and trouble, that brings out our better version. We are building on a bedrock, trouble cans hit it and curve in, they are softer than the bedrock itself.