The Sinkhole Syndrome

Bienhome Muivah *

"I'm so disorganized!"
"I can't get my act together!"
"My inner life is a mess!"
"My private life is a failure!"

The residents of a Florida apartment building awoke to a terrifying sight outside their windows.

The ground beneath the street in front of their building had literally collapsed, creating a massive depression that the people of Florida called a sinkhole. Tumbling into the ever-deepening pit were automobiles, pavement, sidewalks, and lawn furniture. The building itself would obviously be the next to go.

Sinkholes occur, scientists say, when underground streams drain away during seasons of drought, causing the ground at the surface to lose its underlying support. Suddenly everything simply caves in, leaving people with a frightening suspicion that nothing-not even the earth beneath their feet-is trustworthy.

There are many people whose lives are like one of Florida's sinkholes. It is likely that at one time or another many of us have perceived ourselves to be on the verge of a sinkhole-like cave-in. In the feelings of numbing fatigue, a taste of apparent failure, or the bitter experience of disillusionment about goals or purposes. We have sensed something within us about to give away. We feel we are just a moment from a collapse that will threaten to sweep our entire world into a bottomless pit. Sometimes there seems to be little that can be done to prevent such a collapse. What is wrong?

If we think about it for very long, we may discover the existence of an inner space-our private world-about which we were formerly ignorant. It will become apparent that if neglected this private world, will not sustain the weight of events and pressures that press upon it.

Some people are surprised and disturbed when they make such a self-discovery. They suddenly realize they have spent the majority of their time and energy establishing life on the visible level, at the surface. They have accumulated a host of good and perhaps even excellent assets such as academic degrees, work experience, key relationships, and physical strength or beauty.

There is nothing wrong with all of that. But often, it is discovered almost too late that the private world of the person is in a state of disorderliness or weakness. And when that is true there is always potential for the sinkhole syndrome.

We must come to see ourselves as living in two very different worlds. Our outer, or public world, which is easier to deal with. It is much more measurable, visible, and expandable. Our outer world consists of work, fun/entertainment, and a host of acquaintances that make up a social network. It is the part of our existence, easier to evaluate in terms of success, popularity, wealth and beauty. But our inner world is more spiritual in nature. Here is the centre in which choices and values can be determined, where solitude and reflection might be pursued. It is a place for conducting worship and confession, a quiet spot where the moral and spiritual pollution of the times need not penetrate.

The majority of us have been taught to manage our public worlds as well. Of course, there will always be the undependable worker, the poorly organized homemaker, and the person whose social capacities are so immature that he becomes a drain on everyone around him. But most of us have learned to take orders, make schedules, and give directions. We know which systems best suit us in terms of work and relationship. We choose proper forms of leisure and pleasure. We have the capability to choose friends and make those relationships work well.

Our public worlds are filled with a seeming infinite of demands upon our time, our loyalties, our money, and our energies. And because these public worlds of ours are so visible, so real, we have to struggle to ignore all their seductions and demands. They scream for our attention and action.

The result is that our private world is often cheated, neglected because it does not shout quite so loudly. It can be effectively ignored for large periods of time before it gives way to sinkhole like cave-in.

The author Oscar Wilde was one who paid scant attention to his private world. William Barclay quotes Wilde's confession:
The gods have given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease… Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure when it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the house top. I ceased to be Lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace.

When Wilde writes, "I was no longer the captain of my soul", he describes a person whose inner world is in shambles, whose life is caving in. Although his words reach great heights of personal drama, they are similar to what many could say-many who, like him, have ignored their internal existence.

One of the great battlegrounds of our age is the private world of the individual. There is a contest that must be fought particularly by those who call themselves practicing Christians. Among them are those who work hard, shouldering massive responsibilities at home, at work, and at church. They are good people, but they are very, very tired! And thus they too often live on the verge of a sinkhole-like collapse. Why? Because although their worthwhile actions are very unlike those of Wilde, like him they become too public-oriented, ignoring the private side until it is almost too late.

Western cultural values have helped to blind us to this tendency. We are naively inclined to believe that the most publicly active person is also the most privately spiritual. We assume that the larger the church, the greater its heavenly blessing. The more information about the Bible a person possesses, we think, the closer he must be to God because we tend to think like this, there is the temptation to give imbalanced attention to our public worlds at the expense of the private.

More programs, more meeting, more learning experiences, more relationships, more busyness; until it all becomes so heavy at the surface of life that the whole thing trembles on the verge of collapse. Fatigue, disillusionment, failure, defeat all become frightening possibilities.

The neglected private world can no longer hold the weight. Some people are too busy to maintain an inner world. Few people have had to wrestle with the pressures of a public world. We need to jealously guard our private world … One leader in world missions named Fred Mitchell used to keep a motto on his desk that read, "Beware of the barrenness of a Busy Life". He too understood the potential collapse that follows when the inner world is ignored.

The Florida sinkhole is a physical picture of a spiritual problem with which many of us must deal. As the pressure of life grows in the decades of the eighties and nineties, and beyond, there will be more people whose lives resemble a sinkhole, unless they gaze inward and ask themselves, Is there a private world beneath the noise and action at the surface? A world who needs to be explored and maintained? Can strength and resilience be developed that will bear up under the pressure at the surface? If our private world is in order, it will be because we are convinced that the inner world of the spiritual must govern the outer world of activity.

Happy Reading!