"If you speak, you disturb the dream. If you remain silent, you disturb your soul."
If you speak, and if you dare to name what others deny, you risk being cast out, and not always gently.
Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else)
I recently came across these words which I have used as the title for this post:
If you speak, you disturb the dream. If you remain silent, you disturb your soul.
They come from this rather longer quotation:1
Once you perceive what lies beneath the surface, once you glimpse the truth behind the polite illusion, you are faced with a terrible choice: do you speak or do you remain silent?
If you speak, you disturb the dream. If you remain silent, you disturb your soul.
This is not a simple dilemma. It’s an ancient tension between truth and belonging, between authenticity and acceptance. When you speak, when you dare to name what others deny, you risk being cast out, and not always gently.
Since I first encountered those words, I have found them hard to put out of my mind.
The context, as the quotation makes clear, is “perceiving what lies beneath the surface” and “glimpsing the truth behind the polite illusion”. And that is, in multiple ways, an apt description of my experience over the past few years.
The nature of the “terrible choice” — whether to speak and “disturb the dream” or to remain silent and “disturb my soul” — also resonates with me.
It is indeed not a simple dilemma. I know all too well the “tension between truth and belonging, between authenticity and acceptance”. And I can certainly identify with being the notion of being “cast out” when “daring to name what others deny” — which on one level seems to me to be encapsulated in the words of 1 John 5:19: “the whole world is under the control of the evil one”.
The words of the quotation also make me think of Jesus Christ.
Jesus claimed not merely to speak the truth but to be the truth. He knew what lies beneath the surface. He saw, and presumably still sees, the truth behind every polite illusion.
He came into this world to speak, although he did sometimes remain silent. And his words of truth often met with hostility, not least from the religious leaders of his day.
But the Son of God consistently chose truth over belonging, and authenticity over acceptance. He spoke truth like no-one else. And he knew better than anyone what it means to be cast out in the most ungentle way.
And given that those who believe and trust in Jesus Christ are called to follow his example, it is hardly surprising that the words of the quotation bring to mind aspects of the Christian life more generally.
For those who have perceived something of the true nature of the extent of sin and who have glimpsed the truth of the gospel message, there is a choice as to when and where to speak (or not) of what God has revealed through the Bible and in the person of his Son Jesus Christ.
I have long felt the tension between “disturbing the dream” of those who think that they can live life without reference to God and “disturbing my soul” by keeping quiet about the need to seek him.
This too is not a simple dilemma. There is a time to be silent and a time to speak. And the tension between truth and belonging, between authenticity and acceptance is all too real. Moreover, when we speak for Jesus, the name that so many others deny, we should not be surprised if, one way or another, we find ourselves being cast out.
I am reminded of these words of the apostle Paul…
15 For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life.
…which resonate not only with my experience as a follower of Jesus, but also with what has happened during the past few years as I have sought to alert others to some of what I now perceive to be lying beneath the surface: truth hidden behind the “polite illusion” that I had previously barely noticed.
It is of course important to beware of perceiving things that are not really there, and of making mistakes. There is no shortage of pitfalls in seeking to discern truth of any sort, let alone that which is hidden, albeit sometimes in plain sight. I thus try to remain sceptical and open-minded.
But my experience since 2020 bears more than a passing resemblance to my previous exploration of the Christian faith: in both cases it was when I began to ask more questions and to seek to better understand the way the world works that I started to find patterns emerging and, by the grace of God, pieces of the bigger picture falling into place.
Related
Testimonies such as these:
And:
Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else) homepage
Some posts can also be found on Unexpected Turns
Revealing Faith: Seeing and believing the revelation of God
The Big Reveal: Christianity carefully considered as the solution to a problem
The words are from the late Alan Watts, whose worldview was in many ways very different to mine