avoidance on Self-Deception

John O’Donahue, in his book, Walking in Wonder, shares a story from India that is thousands of years old, but just as relevant today as it was back then. It’s about a man who was forced to spend a nig...

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.

“It’s not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept.

Great and gracious God, we have run after things and others instead of coming home to You. We have lived as though we were the centers of our universe. We have avoided the harder issues in life so o...

A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.”

One’s own heart can be foreign territory, a terra incognita, and this lack of at-home-ness with oneself generates our propensity to run. We still can’t find what we’re looking for because we don’t kno...

Pushing aside emotions only makes them stronger.

Even with the desire for a better life, we can be reluctant to do the work of boundaries because it will be a war. The battle falls into two categories: outside resistance we get from others and the r...

Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.

While the truth that we cannot escape God’s all-seeing eye may weigh us down at times, it is finally the only remedy for our uneasiness. If we wish to hide from the penetrating gaze of holy love, it i...

The avoidance of pain is the beginning of all unhealthy behavior.

“Laws of silence don't work.... When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire...

Death is not ok. By avoiding the subject of death, we act like that’s not true. And we shrink down the scale of Jesus’s victory to fit the world we live in now.

Avoidance doesn’t solve anything; it merely serves as a temporary salve.

Social scientists define procrastination as “delaying a task for a maladaptively long time,” and it bedevils almost all of us. One study found that more than 70 percent of university students procrast...

Emotional intelligence does not mean merely "being nice". At strategic moment it may demand not "being nice", but rather, for example, bluntly confronting someone with an uncomfort...

When we truly need to do is often what we most feel like avoiding.

Leader: God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. People: If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. Leader: But if we walk in the light...

“There’s nothing simpler than avoiding people you don’t like. Avoiding one’s friends, that’s the real test.”

“My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going.”

In his book “Where Is God When It Hurts?”, author Philip Yancey shares an unfortunate, yet central dynamic related to how Americans respond to pain: we do everything possible to avoid it. That means p...

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

What’s the difference between avoiding pain and seeking appropriate comfort? I have a friend who says, “The first episode of my favorite TV show is soothing. But if I’m watching the fifth episode in a...

I imagine that one of the reasons that people cling to their hate and prejudice so stubbornly, is that they sense that once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their own pain.

Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.

Compassion literally means to feel with, to suffer with. Everyone is capable of compassion, and yet everyone tends to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. And the avoidance produces psychic numbin...

People who blame things rarely change things. Blame is an unassailable change-avoidance strategy.

Pastor: Let us then confess our sins to God our Father. People: Merciful God, we confess that too often we have failed to put on the armor You provide.  We try to protect ourselves with th...

A man who worked at an aviary in a bird park went to an outdoor wedding. He kept looking up until a friend finally asked him why. The man replied, “Sorry, I’m used to looking up to avoid falling bird ...