Recently, I have been reading through Jefferson Bethke's book Jesus Is Greater Than Religion and he poses the issue that for many the fear of silence is their biggest fear. As I mulled this thought over, I began to realize just how true this statement it.
I believe that we fear silence so much because our culture never allows for a minute of it. We never have to be silent or sit in silence.
We wake up to alarm clocks... Noise.
We turn the T.V. on to watch the morning news...Noise.
We listen to the radio in the car...Noise.
We surround ourselves with people constantly...Noise.
We come home and turn the T.V. on again for the evening news...Noise.
We have sound machines to help us fall asleep at night...Noise.
We have noise surrounding us 24-7.
Have you ever noticed that any store you walk into has music playing over the intercom system? Its so there won't be silence. Silence is awkward and makes us uncomfortable. Honestly, would you walk into a silent store? Would you notice if a store was silent? For me, the answers are yes, I would feel uncomfortable and I would want to know what was going on. We may not even realize we are afraid of silence because we never have to be silent.
Why? Why are we so afraid and uncomfortable with silence?
Because silence makes us think. Silence takes us deep within ourselves to a place we have become so good at masking with noise. This places holds the still small voice that if not quieted will exploit who we really are. This voice exploits our hurts, pains, regrets and failures. It speaks truth about who we really are and we just can't face that.
We have become afraid of our true selves. We fear our true selves because that would mean we have to face our brokenness and our defeats. We want to maintain our glossed over perfect appearances that we have become so good at creating. If we cover everything over with noise our true selves are out of sight out of mind. We don't have to work through the wounds, scars, and the devastation we have created. We think if we quiet our inner voices with noise we will never have to face our true self.
But that is a lie. Slowly, that voice gets louder and cracks in our glossy appearances start showing. Our inner voice gets to the point where we can no longer quiet it and suddenly our outer shell is completely torn off and we are left battered, bruised and picking up pieces.
If we just took 5 minutes a day in silence to listen to our inner voices and to listen to God speaking truth in our lives the fear of silence would diminish and we would learn how to embrace our messed up, beaten up true self. We would no longer need the glossed over image because our true selves would be healthier and we would be able to face ourselves and help others be able to do the same by example.
So turn off the radio in the car and sit in the silence with God and see what you hear and learn.
