“To give beauty for ashes”
Jesus the Differentiator
Is there a more helpless feeling than watching someone you love suffer and knowing you can’t do anything to stop or relieve their suffering?
Is there anything more confusing than being mistreated by someone who says they love you?
Is there any pain deeper than the pain of betrayal, loneliness, being “ghosted,” or of being misunderstood and falsely accused?
All of these questions and more are in my heart right now as I see many beloved ones “pierced with deep wounds” (Jacob 2:35.)
Why so much brutality? Why so much “infuriating unfairness”? Why such seemingly unending unkindness, malice, and corrosive resentment?
Is there no balm in Gilead? (Jeremiah 8:22)
I don’t remember when I was introduced to the concept of differentiation in relationships, but I do remember who introduced me: Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife. For those who don’t know of her or her work, Finlayson-Fife (or as we like to call her, “JFife”) is a sex therapist with a focus on helping Latter-day Saint married couples and individuals to improve their most intimate relationships. Her website is probably the best way to learn more about her work. Much of what she teaches she learned from Dr. David Schnarch, who passed away in 2020. Schnarch employed the concept of differentiation in much of his work with married clients who came to him at the brink of ending their marriages. There are no shortage of good definitions of differentiation out there if you want to seek them out. For my purposes, I will share my own:
To be differentiated is to develop the capacity to stay standing when those you love or who are close to you have fallen or are falling in your presence.
The opposite of differentiation in this clinical approach is emotional fusion, which is just what it sounds like: When someone we love is in an emotional free fall, if we are fused to them we fall with them. This likely eliminates any ability we might have to help them back on their emotional feet which leads to relationship deadlocks. At some point in intimate relationships we are all fused to someone we love. This is normal. The journey of adulthood (and I would add discipleship) is developing the ability to differentiate. It is the work of a lifetime.
Put another way, “All Problems are Interpersonal Relationship Problems.” This statement is from the book The Courage to be Disliked. As you can probably imagine, it’s not an easy read. But who wants easy?
I like what this author said about the book because I think he’s talking about differentiation and how hard it is for us to actually do. Like, the hardest thing.
Adler believed that all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. It sounds crazy at first, but the more I think about it the more I believe this to be true. Fight with your spouse? Obviously, an interpersonal relationship problem. Anxious about giving a presentation? Interpersonal relationship problem: your relationship with the audience and their perception of you. Inferiority complex? Interpersonal relationship problem: your subjective perception of yourself compared to others is negative.
The solution is simple, but not easy. You must separate your “life tasks” — the things you can control — from other people’s life tasks. You can’t control what other people think of you, so why worry about it? You can’t control whether another person cheats or takes advantage of you, so approach relationships with unconditional trust. This boils down to self-acceptance. If you’re comfortable in your own skin and control what you can control, nothing else matters. Have the courage to be disliked and live your life your own way. If someone dislikes you, it means you’re living freely, the way you want to live.
All of this is driving at one thing. One idea that for me is the answer to all my questions (and perhaps yours too) about evil and unkindness and human brutality.
Jesus put it this way in what may be the single most daunting scripture passage in all of holy writ:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.
Matthew 5:43-44
That slaps hard, as the kids would say. Being able to love an enemy, bless one who wishes you harm, do good to one who hates you, and pray for someone who mistreats or even abuses you is almost beyond comprehension. But isn’t the Savior describing differentiation here? The sometimes brutal work of becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ is all about becoming more like Him. This includes responding as He would to mistreatment, mockery, and malice.
The Atonement of Jesus Christ is the ultimate act of differentiation, where the Savior literally traded places with us while maintaining His perfect integrity of character.
He literally swapped places with every single one of God’s children and experienced every pain, sickness, sin, and weakness each one of us would ever experience. To say that such an act is incomprehensible is to state the obvious. But if we stop at this point and don’t take the next crucial but challenging step in our own conversion, we’ve perhaps missed the most important message the Savior’s suffering expressed: We don’t have to struggle alone. We don’t have to try and get through our hardest moments without divine power. Jesus wants us to call out to Him for aid. He is uniquely qualified to come to our rescue.
“Whom seek ye?” With all our hearts we answer, “Jesus of Nazareth.” When He says, “I am he,” we bow our knee and confess with our tongue that He is the living Christ, that He alone atoned for our sins, that He was carrying us even when we thought He had abandoned us. When we stand before Him and see the wounds in His hands and feet, we will begin to comprehend what it meant for Him to bear our sins and be acquainted with grief, to be completely obedient to the will of His Father—all out of pure love for us.
One of my favorite scriptures (and the source of the title of a book I once wrote on this topic) is found in Isaiah 61:1-3:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.
I am moved by the image of what it means to “give…beauty for ashes.” It speaks to what I believe Jesus did when He was “wounded for our transgressions [and] was bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5.) Through His perfect Atonement He came to know each of us and obtained the power to succor each of us.
Our mortal experience is hard. We have and will all know darkness. Jesus will carry us through and enable us to walk our own lonely paths.
He IS beauty for ashes.