Chapter 8

Spiritual Ignorance, Apathy, and Denial

If our spiritual needs are so critical, then why aren’t we more aware of them? Our responses to other needs are sometimes instinctive or involuntary. Shivering when we’re cold isn’t even something we control. It’s simply an involuntary response that protects us. If spiritual health is so advantageous, why isn’t its benefit more apparent to more people?

There are three reasons needs aren’t met. The first is ignorance. The second is apathy. The third is denial. Let’s take them one at a time.

It’s difficult to have a sense of urgency about correcting something when you have no idea it needs correcting. It’s equally difficult to satisfy a need if you’re unaware of its existence. As medical technology progresses, we diagnose and define new diseases. But in many cases they’re not new at all. They’ve simply never been diagnosed and documented before. Because they hadn’t been, we couldn’t treat them. We were ignorant of their very existence. That wasn’t because we weren’t concerned about physical health, but because we weren’t aware of the nature of the illness. Many people are simply not aware of the need for spiritual health. They’re unfamiliar with both the symptoms and the treatment.

Ignorance is not limited to diagnosis. It can also be found in the area of treatment. We may diagnose a physical illness perfectly. We may be knowledgeable of the symptoms, the progression of the disease, and the inevitable consequences of it. But we could still be ignorant or uninformed about how to treat it successfully. We may be in the position of simply throwing up our hands and saying, “Beats me.” Or we may, with absolute confidence, apply the wrong treatment, erroneously but confidently expecting to cure the patient. Those who are aware of their need for identity, security, and worth have accurately diagnosed their condition. Their treatment will fail, however, if they simply believe the messages of those who would promote their personal dependability in validating that identity, security, or worth.

It should be noted that ignorance, in neither case, implies lack of concern for health. The person who is ignorant of the condition could well be concerned if they were aware of its existence. The person who is applying the wrong treatment is at least concerned enough to attempt to cure the patient, no matter how errant that attempt may be.

The second reason needs aren’t met is apathy. I suppose it could be described generally as inactivity. It’s not necessarily that apathetic people don’t care. It’s just that they don’t do anything about seeing that the needs are met. While uninformed people may be seeking to learn more about the illness, the apathetic ones are unwilling to help.

Although unwilling to help, they will most certainly be willing to participate in the benefits of what is learned. While uninformed people may seek an adequate treatment for the disease, the apathetic people, again, contribute nothing. But, as before, the apathetic people may gain the benefit of the newfound treatment.

Apathy—or inactivity—can be the result of various attitudes. One is pure and simple indifference. If the need that must be met is not of immediate personal concern, the apathetic person may truly be indifferent to both the condition and the cure. No one who is indifferent to spiritual needs will be spiritually healthy. Spiritual nourishment isn’t force-fed.

Another reason for apathy is the fear of risking vulnerability. There were, no doubt, those in Nazi Germany with grave misgivings about what was being done by their government. It didn’t take them long to realize what would happen to them if they opposed it, however. So they kept quiet and went with the program, looking forward to the day when it would end. While these people were not indifferent to the holocaust, you couldn’t tell it by their actions. No one who is afraid to risk the vulnerability of questioning social convention and challenging social values will be spiritually healthy. The healthy perspective is so significantly different from that of the beliefs we commonly hear that they cannot be made compatible.

Apathy also may be the result of feelings of inadequacy. These feelings may prevent a person from attempting to satisfy a need. At times we can be overwhelmed with the enormity of the world’s needs. When we see the millions who are starving and then look at our limited personal resources, we may ask, “What could I possibly do that would even make a difference?” Those who refuse to do anything because they can’t do everything cannot be spiritually healthy. Spiritual health, like physical health, requires both nourishment and exercise. Whatever the motivation behind apathy, its very presence inhibits spiritual growth and prevents spiritual health.

Denial is, to me, the most interesting of the reasons for not pursuing spiritual health. While ignorance is simply lack of accurate information and apathy is merely lack of activity, denial is inherently argumentative. By its very nature, it has to be. People build a case for denying a truth that they, for whatever reason, don’t want to accept.

It’s a normal part of the grieving process. When we hear that a loved one is terminally ill or has died our immediate reaction is often to deny it. We simply don’t want to believe it. We may try to convince ourselves that the diagnosis is wrong. We may try to find reasons to believe it’s a case of mistaken identity. As we try to deny the truth, we are frequently reminded that it can’t be denied. Each reminder affects us as though we’d just heard it for the first time. Days later, we can find ourselves breaking down again as though we’d just received the news. Open caskets at funerals and visitations help us accept the reality of what’s happened. Our tendency toward denial in those situations is both normal and expected.

The tendency toward denial is also common among those who are addicted to something or display compulsive behavior. While they may or may not deny the facts of their addiction or compulsion, the behavior generally feeds on denied feelings. For a variety of reasons, we sometimes find our feelings hard to accept. We don’t want to deal with them. The problem is that we can’t pack them in. We can smother our feelings, we can deny them, but we can’t make them go away. Denial does absolutely nothing to eliminate or even diminish the intensity of those feelings. It merely prohibits us from dealing with them in a healthy manner. It also guarantees that if they’re expressed at all, they’ll be expressed in an unhealthy and inappropriate way.

Denial takes place whenever one of our components—physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual—tries to deny a truth that relates to another component. Intellectual conclusions have absolutely no validity as they relate to emotional truths. They are two completely separate and distinct areas of jurisdiction. The emotional pain, anger, and guilt cannot possibly be dealt with satisfactorily by the intellect. Nor can our spiritual needs be dealt with satisfactorily by the intellect.

As I mentioned before, denial is inherently argumentative. Because of that, it needs something with which to argue. Before denial can take place, there must be some provocation. It is, by definition, a response rather than an initiator. It’s an unhealthy response to a truth we don’t, for whatever reason, want to believe. The truth might force us to question the dependability of something or someone in whom we had placed our trust—our dependency. It’s a truth we don’t want to address because it threatens our sense of identity, our sense of worth, or our sense of security. So, instead of accepting the truth, we deny it. In denying it, we prevent ourselves from responding to it in a healthy way.

Acknowledging the truth about our spiritual needs requires the abandonment of primary dependence on conventional wisdom and the faulty beliefs that erroneously attempt to satisfy our needs for identity, security, and worth. Having examined the ignorance, apathy, and denial that keep us from having our needs met properly, it’s important to remember we are composite people. It’s entirely possible for people to be apathetic about their physical needs, denying their emotional needs, and ignorant of their spiritual needs. It’s also possible for someone to be healthy in one or more areas and unhealthy in others.

The journey toward health is just that. If people have been starved, one meal is not going to make them healthy. It’s just a beginning. If people have been too sick, they may never completely recover to perfect health. But they can improve. By acknowledging our spiritual needs and vigilantly seeking to have them met, we can become healthier than we’ve ever been. For that to happen, we need to hear and accept accurate judgments from a judge who is qualified and authoritative in giving them.