The real problem is not that we dislike change. It is that we often choose to refuse to accept that change is necessary.
Episode 19 of the Make Saints podcast: “Accept”
Who doesn’t love a new restaurant opening up? I remember how crazy the line was at the brand new Taco Bell when it opened back home. Even now, when some new place opens, the whole town flocks to check it out.
We are insane for something new.
But when a beloved restaurant closes, we weep. We also lose our minds over this thing that is never, ever allowed to leave us.
Or when a beloved brand changes the recipe or gets rid of our favorite menu item. We are willing to boycott until they bring that junk back!
But if they offer us something new, we go ooh! I’ve got to try it!
We are absolutely crazy about change. Not because we don’t like it. But because we only accept adding things. In other words, we refuse to accept the need to sacrifice.
Loss
Obviously we can see the difference between loving something new and mourning what has gone away. I’ve offered the two as a paradox, but none of us really has trouble seeing them as different.
In the one, doing something new is fresh and exciting. Here is something we might find that we love.
In the other, we are losing something that we already know we do love.
When we’re honest to ourselves about change, we are willing to admit this truth. That we don’t so much hate change as we fear loss.
And being honest about this fear of loss is so important in the era of COVID and the increase of white nationalism. It helps us understand why people are reacting to things in ways we hadn’t expected.
For many, the nature of change is coded as loss. They anticipate that any kind of change will lead to their losing something/everything they love. It isn’t just McDonald’s taking away the McDLT and it makes us sad. It is what if somebody else gets a say and decide up is now down.
The level of fear is off the charts. And it is treated as inevitable. So A leads to B which leads to C and so on all the way to J or K. And most of us are back here and saying, we’re back here at A. I’m not granting you B, let alone half the alphabet.
This seems like catastrophizing. But it is more than that.
It is making level upon level of assumption: assumption based on assumption based on assumption. All the way up, building a skyscraper of assumptions none of us has agreed to.
It feels like the anti-slippery slope because it isn’t someone who has followed a logical conclusion to its endpoint and gotten stuck. It’s a kind of willful construction of that very slope in reverse assuming the whole thing is inevitable.
But all of this built on a more basic issue:
An unwillingness to accept a change.
Whether anything is inevitable is ultimately irrelevant when the action attempts to head the inevitability off at the pass.
As tactics go, this makes a lot of sense. And I’m not here to argue about that. What I want to explore is how this tactic reveals so much about us.
When we refuse to accept.
Changing our socks is pretty simple. So is changing our meals. We all eat different things throughout the day.
Changing paths to work is a bit harder. But, if invited, we are more or less willing. At least most of us don’t look at a detour sign and go, Welp, I guess I’ll turn around. I am NOT going to take 13th. May as well go back to bed.
Of course I am specifically talking about neurotypical brains here. People who really don’t struggle with change, but choose to refuse.
Rejecting an invitation to change usually requires something significant that is also seen as threatening. And some of these are easy to spot. We all know that revising the Book of Common Prayer, for instance, or a film adaptation of a favorite novel dramatically changing a major character will lead to significant pushback.
But let’s get a little more timely.
How about the refusal to accept new people in?
We know that this is us jumping to conclusions and letting our fear of loss run wild.
Bringing new people in doesn’t necessarily mean that we must give up everything we hold dear.
However, in a sense, this works out to be an elaborate lie built on a foundation of truth.
When we invite new people into an established community, we naturally presupposed that they will learn to adapt to fit into that community. This is pretty normal.
And yet, we also know what adding a new person to a group does. It always changes the chemistry.
And, we also want that person to bring their whole selves to the group. We don’t actually want them to be just like us. We want them to be them.
Opening our hearts to new people changes us.
Re-opening our hearts to those who have hurt us, changes us.
This is the challenge offered to Christians in the season of Lent.
We prepare ourselves to welcome the changed into our midst. And therefore, to be changed by them.
The point is that we’ve got to get used to the idea of change—and that change isn’t just for other people. Welcoming the changed into our midst necessarily changes us.
But the true invitation of Lent is even more clever than that.
Lent invites us to prepare to be changed—which, in a way, invites us into changing now in anticipation of being changed later! We change from our closed-off selves to an open-hearted and generous child of God so that we might accept others into our midst.
And to accept others, we must accept that we are accepting.
Because, in the end, the desire is not for us to be an unchanging, rigid people, but to be a people of reconciliation. A people who both welcome newcomers and the outcasts. People who haven’t belonged and those who once belonged.
And to do that, we need to get in the mindset for it. And this is the real challenge.
Mental Gymnastics
It isn’t that change is necessary as some abstract, metaphysical concept. It is way more personal and present than that. It’s that usually, we cast someone out for a reason. And we don’t want to give that up. Or we reject the idea of letting anyone in—or letting them change us.
For many, the idea of accepting newcomers is OK, but the changing is not. They are willing to take the first step, but not the second.
Of course, this is precisely why we prepare to accept and welcome newcomers and the penitent sinners. Because it isn’t only these people who have work of acceptance to do. So do we!
We have to accept that this is our work. That we are supposed to be changed. And that we must learn how to accept others. And this is the time in which we figure out how.