Dissonance

There is so much sound that there is no sound.  It’s like background noise, but a deafening sort of background noise.  I am trying to focus on my coach.  He has something to say, but there is nothing but chaos in my mind.

I see only narrowly.  My hood is over my head, trapping the heat and sweat from my warmup rounds.  I flex my hands, feeling the tape and the gloves that were painstakingly prepared.  I see the curtain in front of me.  There is light beyond it—the dancing colors of the production.  There is a DJ, too.  His beat is synchronized with the lights.

I hear the deep baritone of the announcer.  I hear my opponent’s name spoken with authority.  I hear the crowd roar with excitement.  My opponent has a lot of fans here.

I feel a hand on my shoulder.  It’s one of my coaches.  I see him looking at the show coordinator.  The coordinator gives him a nod.

“Let’s go,” I hear my coach’s voice in my ear.

The coordinator throws back the curtain, and I step forward to the other side.  I feel my coach’s hand still on my shoulder—some of that touch is reassurance and some of it is guidance.  He doesn’t want me to go the wrong way, and his mind is probably thinking better than mine.  He gently pushes me forward.  I start to walk.  My corner is close behind.

I see the cage waiting for me, there in the short distance.  I move down the aisle as every face in the venue turns to me.  Some are familiar—a vague recognition that registers distantly while my heart pumps an obscene rate.  The blood of my own pulse thunders in my ears.

I can feel every step, and I can feel every doubt.  I trained hard for this one, but did I train enough?  Do I know enough, do I have enough, have I learned enough that I can beat him?  What if I get injured?  What if I get embarrassed?  What if everything goes right and my hand is raised at the end of this…I love that feeling.

I pause just outside of the cage, at the base of the steps.  I take off my sweatshirt.  I slip out of my shoes.  One more check by the referee…gloves, cup, mouthguard, then Vaseline.  He motions me up the steps and into the cage.  I hear my name in that deep announcer baritone.  I hear some cheers.  I hear some sounds that aren’t cheers.

I make way to my corner of the cage.  My eyes find my opponent where is waiting opposite of me 26 feet away.  I don’t know him well, but I know about him.  He’s tough.  So am I, I think.  I was told this is going to be a good fight.  We’ve been matched for this because we were both tough and we both fight hard.  People pay money to see that sort of thing.

The referee joins the announcer at the center of the cage and motions both of us forward—my opponent and I.  We join them there.  Last minute instructions and we touch gloves.  I like to keep things classy like that.  I always touch gloves.  It’s respectful.

I’m back to my corner for a few words of encouragement and advice from my coaches.  Everyone else is leaving the cage.  The announcer exits.  The media people follow.  The referee turns to his partner on the outside of the cage and nods.

The cage door closes.

I hear it. Even all these years later I can still feel that sound in my dreams.  The door closes.  The pin drops.

I can’t escape.  The door is locked.

I don’t want to escape.  This is where I want to be.  I came here to fight and it’s time to fight.

The cage door has closed.

I look up and across the cage where my opponent waits.  In this moment he is the only thing in my vision.  I can barely discern the referee at the edge of my peripheral.  He’s important, but he’s not what matters.

My opponent is what matters.  He took this fight because he wanted to fight me.  I took this fight because I wanted to fight him.  We came here to fight each other.

Now the cage door is closed and there is nowhere to go.  There is no more doubt.  There is no more fear.

There is just me and there is just my opponent.

Here on the other side of that closed door.

I once worked at a school where one of the students got into trouble for calling another kid a hypocrite.  Honestly, I was quietly impressed by the insult—it was pretty advanced for a 4^th-grader.  I was a little disappointed that the kid got in trouble.  He understood the idea of hypocrisy better than I did.  He recognized it and called it out.  He offended the other kid—it made that other kid uncomfortable.

There is a certain tension that lives inside of me.  In the time when professors were trying to educate me, I learned to call it “cognitive dissonance.”  It’s that friction inside of my mind where I am forced to acknowledge the ways of doing and thinking that are incompatible with the values I espouse.

He answered them, "Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written: These people honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. (Mark 7:6) 

My dissonance is deeper than simple hypocrisy.  I wish it were as easy as dealing with duplicity, but it’s never that easy.  If I look—when I have the courage to look—at the deeper places in my heart, I tend to find myself inflicted with beliefs and falsehoods about myself that have established a beachhead of sorts in my heart and mind.  Those beliefs and falsehoods take up residence in my ways of thinking and in the ways I don’t think—in the ways I act without thought.  They are false impressions of me that the essence of me has transformed into an identity of me. 

I’ve heard them called strongholds. 

The dissonance I encounter is not purely cognitive—a thing of my mind and intellect.  It is also—predominantly—spiritual.  There are so many times when the spirit speaks to my heart and I begin to realize that there are conflicts between the ways I act, the ways I believe, the ways I speak, the ways I live, and the ways I choose to represent myself.  The spirit inside of me is challenging those things in me.

Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. (1 Corinthians 2:10) 

There is an enemy of my soul—an enemy who absolutely despises my soul.  He hordes all  the things known about me.  He sees my dissonance.  He sees my hypocrisies and shines dark lights on them that I cannot escape.  He tells me that they are things that I cannot change.  They are the things that are the way I am.  They are part of me and there’s nothing about them I can do.  I can never be free.  Shortcomings, failures, character defects…he gives them labels that I adopt for my own.

My proclivity is to choose a path of passivity.  I subtly adopt the enemy’s definition of me and decide to own it.  After all, it’s just the way I am and there’s nothing I can do about it.

You are of your father the Devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of liars. (John 8:44) 

The dissonance grows louder.  It grows louder in my heart, in my head, and in my mind.  Every ounce of my existence strives against this definition of me that I have accepted.  The spirit inside of me contends—it fights—against the lies that  live in my mind.  And, in time, the passivity is no longer an anesthesia.  It is a pain of its own.

I am created to live with purpose, and I am not living according to my purpose.  To live without—or outside of—purpose is a pain without compare.  Confronted with that pain—the pain of purposelessness—I find the dissonance screaming in my ear.  It tells me that something is not right and that something needs to change.

For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10) 

Sometimes I have to pick fights.  I have to pick them for my own good.  I have to pick fights with myself because I’m my own most difficult opponent. 

The choice is to make the hard choice or to make the easy choice—the choice is absolutely binary.  The easy choice is the way of passivity.  I can choose to allow me to be defined by lies and mistruths.  It’s strangely easy, almost comforting. 

The hard choice is the choice to fight.  I can choose to contend against these shortcomings, lies, and strongholds that live within me.  It’s not an easy path but it is a fulfilling path.  It’s going to be a fight, but God built me to fight.  He designed me to confront the lies inside of me.

For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens. (Ephesians 6:12) 

So, I choose this fight.  I choose it because the alternative is indifference and I refuse to accept weakness in myself.  I see the fallacy inside of myself and I know the time has come to face that untruth.  I accept this challenge.

But I cannot win.

My dissonance is not the sort of thing I can easily escape.  It’s not the sort of thing that I just stop doing.  It is engrammed on every corner of my thinking at a near cellular level.  I have spent a lifetime lying to myself and making excuses. Those things don’t end just because I want them to.  They have become a part of me even if they are a part of me that I despise.

Still, I need to accept this fight.  I cannot live in a way that is limiting to life.  That is no life at all.  I was made to live.

Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7) 

In time—in the right time—I choose to accept this battle.  I make the decision to go to war against myself and the enemy of my soul.  I know I cannot win, but I can walk to this battleground with confidence.  I know I don’t fight alone.

For the LORD your God is the One who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.  (Deuteronomy 20:4) 

I’m going to have to do some fighting, and the fighting is not going to be easy.  I accept it because there is no other way.  I could ask for this fight to be taken from me—I have a champion on my side who could easily defeat the enemy.  He could win without my help.  I’m probably more of a hinderance than an aid.  But He chooses me for this fight, so that I can fight alongside Him.  My shield-brother is my God.

When I’m doing this right I invite others to fight my fight with me.  They are my friends and my family.  They are the ones who know me and know my fights.  Because, when I truly desire to win this fight, I reveal my struggles to others.  They choose to fight at my side because of their love for me—they will go to war for me.  Their love truly humbles me.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The urgent request of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect. (James 5:16) 

It won’t be an easy fight.  Fights worth fighting are never easy.

I’m not going to fight alone, though.  That gives me great comfort.  When I walk into that cage and when that door closes I will be face to face with my dissonance and with my shortcomings.  I will be locked into struggle with every fault and failure.  My enemy doesn’t fight fair, and I know he’s going to make it ugly.

That’s all right.  This is where I need to be. 

I choose this fight.

I chose this fight.

And I choose who fights at my side.

I know this fight must be fought.  It’s time to face myself and the dissonance inside.

I turn to that door—I see a way out there.  I can leave this fight.  I can avoid the pain and the anxiety.  I can return to the way I was and the way I have always been.

But that’s not how I’m built.  God built me for the fight.  He built me for this fight.

I turn away from the exit and turn to the center of the battlefield.  That’s where the fight is so that’s where I need to be.

I can still feel that sound.  The door closes.  The pin drops.

I can’t escape now.  The door is locked.

I don’t want to escape.  This is where I want to be.  I came here to fight and it’s time to fight.