Category Archives: Marriage and Family

What do YOU think? Is screen time damaging the kids?

Doing Theology, Marriage and Family, Psychological growth, , ,

I have been doing some thinking about technology again in prepration for the seminarians cohort meeting next Monday. We are inviting everyone to do some theology around the question: Should I buy the Playstation, Iphone, AI device for Christmas?

Image result for fortnite skins

Among the articles that stuck with me is one by Nellie Bowles in the NYTimes: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley. I have grandchildren. She alarmed me, since they love their screens and I love to give them what they want.

Being avoidant is not enough

She says, “The people who are closest to a thing are often the most wary of it. Technologists know how phones really work, and many have decided they don’t want their own children anywhere near them. A wariness that has been slowly brewing is turning into a region wide consensus: The benefits of screens as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high. The debate in Silicon Valley now is about how much exposure to phones is O.K.”

Christians have often been resistant when it comes to technological advances. Many of the people in our church, Circle of Hope, come from Mennonite stock and have relatives or acquaintances who are Amish. The Amish are still trying to keep progress stalled at the pre-industrial level! I admire their stubbornness. But the cool  Anabaptists I know are tired of legalistic ancestors and feel queasy about making too many rules that will stifle their own children like they were stifled. So the debate about information and communication technology gets them coming and going. They have an instinct for avoiding the temptations for the world, but they have no little revulsion for overdoing avoidance.

Sometimes I think they use their resistance to overdoing avoidance to avoid making decisions that might save their kids. They don’t want to be legalistic, so they don’t do anything to guide the family. So their poor, impressionable kids are rolled over by the tsunami of technology without much guidance, much less theology. So the wave consumes their imaginations and they adapt to the worldview stories that justify every new relationship with a machine that comes on the market.

Tech inventors are keeping their kids away from screens

The experts from Silicon valley are beginning to resist the technology onslaught for the sake of their children. Just listen to these quotes.

  • “Doing no screen time is almost easier than doing a little,” said Kristin Stecher, a former social computing researcher married to a Facebook engineer. “If my kids do get it at all, they just want it more.”
  • iPotty: Brilliant, or worst idea ever? Experts weigh in on new potty training deviceSome of the people who built video programs are now horrified by how many places a child can now watch a video. Asked about limiting screen time for children, Hunter Walk, a venture capitalist who for years directed product for YouTube at Google, sent a photo of a potty training toilet with an iPad attached and wrote: “Hashtag ‘products we didn’t buy.’”
  • Athena Chavarria, who worked as an executive assistant at Facebook and is now at Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic arm, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, said: “I am convinced the devil lives in our phones and is wreaking havoc on our children.”
  • Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired and now the chief executive of a robotics and drone company said about screens, “On the scale between candy and crack cocaine, it’s closer to crack cocaine.” Technologists building these products and writers observing the tech revolution were naïve, he said. “We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand.”
  • Those who have exposed their children to screens try to talk them out of addiction by explaining how the tech works. John Lilly, a Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist with Greylock Partners and the former C.E.O. of Mozilla, said he tries to help his 13-year-old son understand that he is being manipulated by those who built the technology. “I try to tell him somebody wrote code to make you feel this way — I’m trying to help him understand how things are made, the values that are going into things and what people are doing to create that feeling,” Mr. Lilly said. “And he’s like, ‘I just want to spend my 20 bucks to get my Fortnite skins.'”

I think we all know by now that online platforms, especially the games, are designed to be addictive. That’s how the inventors profit, by keeping us engaged and selling us virtual products. In case you didn’t know that, it’s no secret

I did not write this post to solve the problems we are all confronting. But I do think we Jesus-followers have the perennial solutions:.

  • A view of who we are and who God is appropriately contradicts the narratives the world offers.
  • Dialogue, like this, and like our meeting to do theology, helps break the power of manipulative lies that hook us into a track we later regret.
  • Questioning the strategies of our spiritual ancestors and having the courage to resist and restore in our own ways allows us the space to make decisions that have some discernment.

We do not need to bend the knee to whatever powerful force comes beaming into family life demanding we organize around it. Like many tech experts, we’d better figure out just what we are going to do about the invasion very soon, since the powers are grooming our kids for future profiteering and shaping their brains and their loves as they do it.

See also, from 2013: Screen time saps resistance

Other articles: How Does Screen Time Affect Kids’ Mental Health?

To weave community: Outdo one another in showing honor

Building community, Film/TV, Marriage and Family, , , , , , , , , , ,

Babies are being born in my circles of the church. They are bundles of disruption who demand their parents and those who love them abandon most self-oriented pursuits. They insist we honor what else really matters: weaving community.

The community helping babies thrive in South Sudan

Community makes regular people ambitious

I have followed my dreams and ambitions my whole adulthood, and I am sure I have been led by God to do so. But the Lord also taught me, early on, that family and friendship — the basic, personal relationships that pull us to develop community, provide a home for the love that keeps my ambitions humming. The momentary revelations of love remind us we are alive.

Here’s an example of a moment. When I was a child I would shake my hands with glee when I was excited – my family never forgot it. (One of my grandchildren paddled their belly with similar enthusiasm  – and probably still does when no one is looking). When my younger sister was brought home from the hospital, I was about 2 ½. I was standing in the driveway jumping up and down and shaking my hands with glee — so eager to meet her! No one ever forgot my joy – or the wild way I showed it!  It was one of those moments people love to recall — a moment when love and joy ruled the family. I suppose we keep going to meetings of the church because, so often, something happens that reminds us that God is with us and love is possible — joy and love rule the family of God.

In the U.S. society, we are so overrun by philosophies of autonomy and individualism we spend all our time mastering them at the expense of weaving the fabric of community together. It’s not that both movements aren’t important. Individuals make up the community and communities make individuals — they always run in tandem. But it is easy to see that individual pursuits often overshadow making relationships.

One example of the overshadow is how often people wait to get married until they have settled their careers. “Millennial men and women are more concerned with establishing their own lives before agreeing to share them with a partner” (Cosmo). Likewise, once those thirtysomethings are having children, the pursuits of their individual families often remove them from their extended family, much more do those pursuits remove them from the life of the church or neighborhood. Very busy people often become very successful in the economy at the expense of their community; this is an old story now.

Weaving individuals into community is a Bible theme

Balancing our God-given uniqueness with the weaving of community  is one of the major themes of the Bible from start to finish. It is a basic story about love. The story about Joseph and his brothers is a great example. The fabric that makes up Joseph’s “coat of many colors” is desecrated by his brothers. But it is his understanding and leadership skills, combined with his capacity to forgive, which saves his family and supplies the strong ties that will keep God’s people together in Egypt. The next big story is about Moses and the themes are similar. Just as the social fabric of Israel is unraveling in slavery, God commissions the uniquely gifted Moses to lead the people into their own country. Over many years on their heroic journey, they learn to weave the fabric of authentic community. The unique vision of Israel and their authentic community go together, or there is no promised land.

Image result for musketeer bowing before a lady

A good way to see God’s people weaving community is in the Ten Commandments Moses delivered from the mountain.  One way to look at these famous sayings is that they install disruptions to individual ambition and personal glory in honor of maintaining community ties. They are all about honor, which is the foundation of life in community. When we honor God and have no other gods, we love the Lord with all our heart, soul mind and strength; we devote our energy to the innate desire of all creation for communion with the Creator.  The obvious extension of that honor is to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

As the list of commands are completed, they enjoin us to honor our parents — being trained to give fundamental respect to others by giving respect to the community who formed us. We are called to honor the Sabbath — to cease our self-directed work and honor who we are and the community that shapes us. The rest of the commandments honor individual rights: to life, to marriage, to property, to honest public affairs and to individuality. The communal fabric is sustained if we have respect for the individual. The individual is sustained if we weave a supportive communal fabric which supports them.

For all my life, people in the United States (and other societies) have been having quite a contest about whether they will be subject to these principles. With all our capacity to be autonomous and an acceleration in our preoccupation with individual rights and the technology to exercise them, we are all experiencing a dangerous unraveling, it is even hard for the church to hold together.

Healthy ambitions spring from extravagant honor

When I am counseling couples, especially before they are married, I often end up using an old metaphor to make a point about honor. If we want to stick together, we all need to “doff our hats” to one another, like a chevalier greeting a lady, or a lady curtsying to another. Such courteous behavior used to be common and it made sense.

It is easy to see the flaws in any society, but most of them have something quite brilliant built in, too. In the 16 and 1700’s the nobility of Europe were trying to hold on to their power in the face of the pressure of individualism and democracy, not to mention capitalism (individualism on steroids). Back then, they developed systems of rank and honored people according to their rank with great expressions of courtesy, which they thought hearkened back to better days. So Alexander Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers in 1844, looking back to 1625, when d’Artagnan was learning the elaborate ways of courtesy. Movies ensued and so we all know about it. Try this one you’ve never seen at ~24:45:

I often tell marrying couples to figure out how to express that great clause in the great Romans 12: “Outdo one another in showing honor” (ESV) – “prefer” one another, “take delight” in honoring the other, “eagerly,” “excelling” at it. If you want to be ambitious, be ambitious about that. When your mate enters the room, bow before them as if they were really something. If you are wearing a hat, ceremonially, sincerely, let it sweep the floor before them. At least put down your phone for a second and look them in the eye!

Honor is the foundation of community. It is the practical expression of our love for God. When the Ten Commandments says “Honor,” it does not mean “obey” and it does not merely mean “respect;” it certainly cannot be reduced to  “sending thoughts and prayers.” Honor is profound regard for the innate value of others before God. It is the life of Christ bowing before sinful humanity with forgiveness and self-sacrifice and then Jesus trusting his followers with his own Spirit. Honor is Joseph finding that his uniqueness is valuable for the preservation of his community even after they had left it unrecognized and squandered it. It is Moses taking on a job he does not want for the sake of the people.

This month, all sorts of things have happened to me and those I love that reveal how important community is. As a result, the fabric of our community has been strengthened. When the baby is born, when the wedding happens, when people change, when we find ourselves in a funeral, we are reminded that our individual pursuits happen within a community. When people die alone (and they increasingly do) it shows how unraveled we have become. God, in Christ, has made us the alternative to dying in general and dying alone in particular. To be that alternative, start with the easy stuff and recalibrate your schedule, if it needs it, to honor our community. Weave the fabric. Your unique contribution is crucial.

If you let yourself do this, be sure you have spent time being prepared by God before you leave the house, because that kind of love can take over your life. You might be drawn to honor each person you meet, not just your mate or friend, with at least a doff of your hat. You might even smile at people who think their headphones make them invisible, untouchable and safe from alarming contact with other humans. You might risk talking to the needy. You might ignore the resentments you think have made a boundary between you and someone. We need to keep weaving, since we all know how fast things can unravel! Often, the weaving is stretched thin just in time for the baby to be born and remind us just how much those relationships mean to us and to the world.

Give the baby a church, for Christ’s sake.

Marriage and Family,

Park FellowshipMy parents did me a great favor when I was a kid, they sent me and my sister to a pretty horrible Baptist Church across the street from Chino High School. I do not know why that was their pick. I do not remember one word from them about why we were there. But even though they never darkened the door unless I was in some kind of performance, one of them usually got up and took us to Sunday school. Usually we even “stayed for church” because we found it quite amusing.

I found out later they had been very burned by a nasty church split when they were first married and it soured them on Jesus and the whole church thing. That is a sad, often-repeated story — repeated by others of course, my parents guarded their own soul-wounds religiously.  There are a few things my parents did not give me that can still burn me if I blow on the embers. But there is one thing they gave me that was inestimably more valuable than they expected: the church.

Protecting kids from the church

Being raised in a family where mom and dad were visibly not Christians and where Jesus was only mentioned in relation to a curse, I have repeatedly felt the need for more education when it comes to what it feels like to have Christian parents. Over and over, I run into thirtysomethings who want to make sure their kids are not bored in church, who are channeling their own bad experience of being obligated to something their clueless parents perpetrated on them, or who have been wounded in many ways they are afraid their kids will experience. I keep listening because I have so little natural empathy, since my recollection of the church  at which I was dropped off is that it was about a hundred times worse than anything Circle of Hope could fall into. Yet it was in that very imperfect, even unorthodox and sometimes damaging community that I met Jesus at a very early age. I can’t imagine why they think depriving their children of the community in which they will learn faith, or even protecting them from it,  is a good strategy.

Most parents I know act like school is inviolable, since getting into better schools on the basis of your past record is supposedly going to give you your best life. If they sign up their child for a sports team it is a covenant they must keep, so no matter when the game is or where it happens, the child must be there. Dance, musical instrument, tae kwon do, all sorts of enrichment activities fill up most of the week and the activity schedules dictate what is happening in the family. It all looks very religious to me. But if the church seems demanding, that’s an obligation that feels intolerable! There are a lot of reasons for that feeling and please know that I understand plenty of people have never felt it. But I keep running into it, which leads me to my main purpose for writing.

Image result for children on Christmas eve in church

Don’t deprive the child of their church

As a follower of Jesus and as a person with my unique experience, I say that the best thing you can do for your child is give them a church. They need to grow up in an environment where they can learn faith. Here are my reasons for saying that, for now:

1) Your family is not enough

I have acquaintances who rely on their parents in Lancaster to come in and sit with their children while they do something together (and it is rare they do something as a result). They are on their way to isolating their kids in their nuclear family instead of training them to live in the extended family of the church. They undermine the sense that the church is a family in Christ by refusing to let it happen. They can’t even work out a mutual babysitting arrangement. I think that is a very practical way they deny Jesus his demand that he be more important than the family from which they came. Their children will likely keep their distance from Jesus and the church, too.  Children need to be raised in a village and Jesus should be the leader of it. It is short-sighted parenting to think you have everything your child needs in the “relative” category. They need to be born into the body of Christ and surrounded with the grace of God, first and foremost.

2) Culture matters

What is my identity? In Western culture that has become a standard question children need to answer. Queer theorists may talk us out of this before long, but until then children must decide: male/female, gay/straight, what color, what place among the school cliques, even what political stripe. The place they get their Christian character is certainly in your family, but it is actualized in the church. If they never feel like they are part of an alternative community centered on Christ, they will probably join another community that is centered on themselves, or some identity they have adopted.

Making the community of the church is a parental top priority — at least if they want to raise children who can live life with Jesus. I am often amazed at what parents will give their children over to while they lightly visit a church, one they may not even claim as their own. What kind of child will come of that? Will they join the Fortnight community or Eagles Nation?

3) Lifetime assumptions form early on.

What is the meaning of life? That question will eventually be asked by your child. Even if they have consistent, loving Christian parents, they will still have to ask the question and get a decent answer for themselves (or get used to their despair). I thank God Mrs. Elrod often drove out to get me for Sunday school when my parents were indisposed or sick of it all (I can’t remember which caused her to appear). Sunday school was not that great, but Mrs. Elrod making me feel worthy of her effort, her undeserved service, made an indelible impression. I still remember what her front seat feels like! Her behavior spoke to me in deeper ways than her lessons. Children need a lot of opportunity to pick up grace assumptions in the church and plenty of acceptance as they mull  them over.

4) It is your duty as a parent

I have already said this, but I wanted it to have its own bullet. Building the church is the responsibility of everyone who follows Jesus. We are, by our redeemed nature, bricks in the temple of the Holy Spirit. Each of us have value and cannot be replaced. The energy we bring to the redemption project of Jesus is multiplied far beyond our personal efforts by God and by the community we tend. In these times especially, children need to learn community, since they are being trained to sit alone in front of a screen all day, among other things. It is your duty as a parent to give them a chance to be saved from whatever they presently face and what will come. That salvation will come from a deeper place than just a resilient capacity to have their own mind. They will need the strength of a loving, Spirit-filled community to help them

5) You child needs to see mom and dad follow Jesus.

It is great when a child is teachable. But I think they mostly they get what is caught, not taught. Some people think they are wrecking their family because mom goes to her cell meeting once a week and dad puts the kids to bed. I think it would be fine to tell your two year old, “Mama is going to build the church. I follow Jesus and I hope you will too, one day. I am going to make sure I build you a strong community so you can become your true self. There is nothing more important to me than following Jesus. He is the source of all the love I have for you.” I think it is good for a child to know that the family is moving according to something outside the family — namely Jesus is leading them. If Jesus is not making the family, what will the child learn about who makes family? And if they ever read the Bible, what will they make of Ephesians 3?

Image result for body of christ

Start now, even if you don’t have children yet

If the church is not good enough, reform it for the sake of your children, don’t leave it up to someone else. If you end up in a place where there is no church, make one; it is the vehicle for the work of Jesus in the world and your children need it. If you feel overwhelmed and want to hole up in your house with your shower gifts for four years until the baby releases their grip on you, have some vision, that child needs a healthy Christian parent, not merely a servant of their desires. The best time for the child to have a church is when they are 5-8 and forming some very important foundations for their later days. Make sure they have one. If your friend just had a baby and you can’t figure out what to do for them, give their baby a church, for Christ’s sake! I know people use that as a curse, so I am being cute, but it means “on account of Jesus” or “in light of the purpose of Christ.” We’re working with Jesus to prepare the way for the baby to walk into fullness of life when we build her a church.

I am happy Faith Breunle, Charlie Brake and Paul Woodward were around when I was in Jr High to demonstrate to me that Christians existed in the real world. To be honest, they were not that great of teachers or examples, as I look back. But periodically, I met up with their heart – the one that motivated them to keep making this crazy little church to which my unbelieving parents attached me. They opened up my imagination for what I might become and build. By most objective observation, what they were doing was very ineffective. But that ineffective thing was very effective when it came to me. I don’t think Jesus needs a great church. The little church in Chino created and lived in an environment where Jesus was assumed and honored. I wandered into that. They probably thought I was a weird kid, coming from those heathen parents, and all. I’m still a weird kid, only I know Jesus and that has made my life possible.

Maybe your kids won’t all be uniformly faithful. Trust cannot be coerced, can it? But I wouldn’t expect them to know Jesus if they don’t hang out around him. He’s in the body of Christ. It is being built all the time in every era with every new follower. If for no other reason, build it for your kids, for Christ’s sake!

The relationship cutoff: 10 reasons it is so common these days

Building community, Marriage and Family, Psychological growth,

In my 40+ years of counseling and pastoring I’ve heard about many kinds of emotionally distressing situations triggered in all sorts of ways. But one of the greatest sources of pain I hear about is feeling cut off. The cutoff hurts most in a family or an intimate relationship. But it is also probably the main pain people experience and fear in the church – which is like a family and often full of intimacy or the desire for it. Regardless of the reasons, people who are cut off when people leave them or the church (and sometimes when they stay) feel much the same: shame, confusion, stress, and sometimes even depression and a feeling of being disempowered. [Remember Gotye?] They particularly feel these things when no explanation for the cutoff is provided. People may cut each other off for months, years, and sometimes even a lifetime with little or no explanation.

I am experiencing variations on this theme right now. A couple of very significant people in my life have cut me off. So I have felt some of the feelings just mentioned!

by Kseniia Perminova

University of Chicago neuroscientist John Cacioppo told Psychology Today, “The pain of losing a meaningful relationship [that one still wants or needs] can be especially searing in the absence of direct social contact. With no definitive closure, we’re left wondering what the heck happened, which can lead to the kind of endless rumination that often leads to depression.”

In The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Susan Anderson writes, “When a loved one dies, the loss is absolutely final…[but] abandonment survivors may remain in denial and postpone closure, sometimes indefinitely.” Some people never accept the need to grieve and come to acceptance when their pain comes from the loss of romantic attachment or intimate friendship, especially when the loss is extended over time (as in they keep meeting up with the person who has cut them off or they are connected via other relationships).

When there are emotional loose ends — unanswered questions, mistrust, betrayal, disbelief, bewilderment  — it can be very difficult to heal. What makes it worse is that our culture is somewhat hostile to people in this situation. People often judge those who don’t move on right away. Being the one struggling without answers is a difficult experience.

People with abuse and trauma in their backgrounds are especially vulnerable. The breaking of attachments can trigger anxiety, depression and evoke unhealed psychic wounds. Anderson goes on the say: “Emotional experience is more painful when it echoes an episode from the past; that’s especially true when it comes to rejection and loss. The relationship that ended today may be the fulfillment of your worst nightmares from childhood. Grieving over that lost love opens a primal wound.”

The following are some of the most frequent reasons why someone is likely to cut someone off, or to freeze them out of the fold. Before I get there, let me say a couple of things. This is not an exhaustive list. I am NOT suggesting that cutoffs are healthy or even reasonable. I can’t imagine something less like Jesus than cutting someone off. On the other hand, I am also NOT suggesting that people need to put up with abusive, demanding, overwhelming people. We’re not as able as Jesus, for the most part. When boundaries are set and someone refuses to consider them, something’s got to give. So there is another side to what I am about to list and we can talk about that some other time. This time I am honoring people who have been cut off. It can be tough on them. As I enter this confusing set of dynamics that go so dreadfully awry, keep in mind that love is as hard as it is crucial.

So why is the cutoff so common these days?

Modeling

Some people grew up in families that have a history of cutting off members when they are disappointed, angry, or experiencing other less-than-pleasant emotions toward them. Perhaps you witnessed your mother do this to her mother-in-law while you were growing up. You then learned that cutting off relatives is an option. You may follow the pattern when you feel similarly disenchanted with someone. We all learn from what we see modeled at home.

Trauma specialist Hala Khouri says, “If it’s hysterical, it’s often historical.” People who have experienced trauma often don’t differentiate between the person triggering them and the original source of trauma. When difficult emotions arise, they may feel real feelings of threat and anxiety. Their brain may shift toward fight-or-flight mode. A cutoff can be a flight response that helps keep difficult emotions at bay.

Power and Control

In all systems, there are dominant and less-than-dominant members. The dominant may lead the whole group to cut someone off simply to exert their high level of power and control (or for any of the other reasons on this list). Where do children learn the playground dynamics of bullying? At home, a bully may be exerting the same kind of power and control.

Not long ago our pastors warned covenant members about a “wolf” among us (who is still threatening people!). That was a necessary use of their power. But cutting someone off from the church is so rare it seems like it never happens among us. In Christ, people should generally need to prove they are untrustworthy. Our love does not overlook sin, but it does not demand perfection before we give it.

Exhaustion

Sometimes people simply get exhausted and depleted by a person who seems difficult to them. They may feel that they have put up with certain behaviors for too long, and they may feel hopeless about things ever changing. They may start by phasing out a person and then handily place them on the “do not interact with” list. Everyone has their own pain tolerance level and can only handle so much.

People who are addicted or mentally/chronically ill often end up over-the-tolerance level, a warning our church often notably ignores – but we can get tired too. If you are truly exhausted, maybe you shouldn’t ignore it. Thank God we live in community and someone else may not be exhausted at all.

New life stories

There are many people who know a lot about your history and your younger self. Perhaps you don’t want to be reminded of your past. How do you go about rewriting your history and changing your narrative when those people won’t let you outlive it? One way is to shut them out. Eliminate them from your life, and you can rewrite your story without anyone letting the proverbial cat out of the bag. Avoid those people, and your past is more likely to be left right where you feel it belongs — in the past.

Maybe you moved to Philadelphia to make a new story possible! When we had our “divorce dialogues” this year, a few of the divorced felt shamed because people talked about their history; but we were just trying not to participate in their cutoff narrative. We were not avoiding. Instead, we were acknowledging that a new story was being written.

Loyalty

Some of us have felt forced into situations in which we had to choose between people who were cut off from each other (like in a divorce). Or maybe you feel coerced into choosing between pastors, or even a former pastor. These are dreadful situations, but we all know someone who has been in this position. Is the situation common? Yes. Is it easy? Not at all.

In our church, where we have formed a nice, often tight community, people who cut off sometimes hover around the edges and ask for collusion, even ask for a pledge to cut off the same people they have. This kind of power play tends to hurt everyone. Sometimes relationships break; it never feels good. But we can make it worse when we try to get people to join in our sense of being cut off or join us in getting even with someone who has cut us off.

Avoiding slighting and being slighted

Sometimes a set of misunderstandings occur between people in a community, like the church. If the misunderstandings don’t get discussed, understood, and forgiven they can build up, and eventually break down relationships. It is tragic when such build-ups lead to breakdowns.

I often feel like avoiding things, but I also feel like it is an obligation to God not to do so. But for many people, “discussion” is synonymous with “confrontation,” and so avoidance is their go-to choice. When a new person wanders into a set of relationships in which people are covering up their distress with avoidance, it all feels rather inauthentic.

Why cut someone off without saying why? For one thing, explaining opens a conversation, implying you want to work things out, which you don’t. But there’s another reason, too. Many of us find it hard to say anything “negative” outright, so we swallow our hurt—until it chokes us. Ghosting means still not saying anything negative.

For those who are pondering what they did to cause them to be ghosted, it may help to know the answer may be: nothing. For instance, a woman was relieved when–-decades later— a friend who had disappeared reconnected and explained that she’d been going through a tough time and had cut everyone off. Another woman recalled her own habit, when she was younger, of cutting friends off: she’d pursue a friendship, then feel overwhelmed by the closeness she’d created — and flee. It might be you, but it might not be.

A person doing the cutoff may benefit from taking a deep breath and asking, “What am I trying to avoid here?”

Money

Financial issues are often the source of relationship difficulties. Money may not always be able to buy love, but it sure can lead to lots of bad feelings. Consider the dynamics of the church dividing up a diminishing income, or imagine the bad things that often happen when a family system is also a business (like Circle of Hope!). People sometimes flee the pressures.

In the church (and families and roommate situations) people can cut themselves off by not paying their share or get cut off because others feel like they are freeloading.

The demands of the needy

Do you want to see a church disintegrate? Watch what happens when people try to share the responsibilities involved in caring for people who can’t care for themselves – sort of like the need to bring grandma into the home of one of her kids. There are certainly family systems that come together and handle these sorts of situations beautifully, but putting a needy person in the middle of the system is also high on the list of reasons that relatives get disenchanted with one another — and sometimes cut off.

In the church, people sometimes get cut off because they are not functioning up to standards; they are too needy. Sometimes people cut off because they are overwhelmed with people who can’t contribute and they feel they don’t have enough to give what is required.

Abuse

Unfortunately, many people have been emotionally and/or physically abused in their past – even by relatives, as I already mentioned. This damage cannot always be completely repaired. In many cases, people cut off because they have painful interactions with people that are reminiscent of the abuse in their past. The repeat feels intolerable and often the system (like your cell) does not acknowledge it, so it again feels like the secret trauma they experienced before.

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Lack of Elasticity

Some communities simply lack elasticity. They lack the ability to recover from difficulties and, like a rubber band, snap when stretched too far. Flexibility takes confidence that we are not cut off from God and that, no matter what trials we face, Jesus has and will overcome them with us. Even when someone cuts us off, Jesus is with us as we recover and find our way into what is next. If a group does not have the character to bend and grow, people cut off or get cut off.

Every day we wake up ready to effect reconciliation in the world. We are all about helping each other mend relationships. Sometimes there is so much history and damage that there is little desire and energy to do the mending. Yet Jesus continues to highlight the need to plant and grow love in the world. And he promises to not leave us orphans in the process – he will never cut us off; we’ll have to do that ourselves. We’ve been cut off enough times to have trouble believing that. So we will need to meditate on what we have been given. We will need to leave what we DON’T have to God and move with what we have been GIVEN.

The Shape of Water: Enough already!

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Film/TV, Marriage and Family, , , , , ,

My one-line review of The Shape of Water for Facebook

I went for the beautiful. Stayed for the overlong, derivative, pig in lipstick movie. Del Toro snoro.

I suppose daring to put out negative reviews on Facebook invites conflict. I did it anyway, since I rarely leave a movie so irritated. Maybe I was just in a bad mood. But probably not, since I usually even like the bad ones (like Downsizing!). But I needed to say something lest everyone run out expectantly when it wins some Academy Award.

A lot of reviewers think this movie is great.

The most welcome and notable thing about The Shape of Water is its generosity of spirit, which extends beyond the central couple. Full review

Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water elegantly blends whimsical fairy tale with a fresh spin on classic monster movies for a delightful experience. Full review

However, the Observer called it

A loopy, lunkheaded load of drivel.

It won two Golden Globes and was nominated for five more.  Like the foreign press noted, it does have a wonderful score and it is a feast for the eyes. I think the acting is a credit to the actors, who were given one-dimensional characters to play. I almost decided to suspend my criticism when [spoiler alert] the souped-up creature from the black lagoon mimicked Fred Astaire in black and white. (I am one of those people who brakes for Fred and Ginger on TCM). But I guess I was already homaged to the breaking point.

Instead, I ended up with two reactions:

Enough already with the magical alternative family!

Del Toro with cast. Watch out for the plaid dude, family.

Once again we have lonely lost souls creating an alternative family. Wasn’t this done to the saturation point with Friends? We’ve had fourteen more years of saturation since that show ended. OK, we get it. There are a lot of brave, lonely souls out there who can’t seem to be accepted for who they are. We are all like that and society stinks. But here we go again anyway.

The family clings together in the middle of a rotting 60’s city, rundown apartments and an overwhelming, secretive, cold war, government installation. The villain is not only a bureaucrat, he’s a suburban lunkhead and a Christian fundamentalist. I share your prejudices, but enough already!

Beauty and the Beast made $1.2 billion dollars last year. Weren’t we saturated with that story when the Disney gave us the first movie in 1991? (I was). But here we go again. Del Toro wants to take it a bit farther so his nonhuman monster becomes the romantic hero. Even they are worthy of love and acceptance. The audience is invited to kiss that beast.

I am down with love, acceptance (and I will add the crucial forgiveness). They are basic to the message of the gospel. And I understand alternative family, I have been living in Christian community since I began to follow Jesus. I never submitted to silly men and the damaging institutions they create, at least not for long. I appreciate artists expanding my vision. You’d think I’d love this thing. But this redundant messaging from filmdom borders on propaganda and us autonomous souls relating to the screen are its victims.

Enough already with the magic of romantic (mainly sexual) love!

Surely everyone interested in this film knows this, so I won’t consider it a spoiler. At the end of the movie there is a violent scene in which the lovers, mute girl and amphibian, are shot. The creature heals, gets up to slice the shooter’s throat, picks up his dying lover and dives into the water with her. In his natural element, he not only revives her, he gives her gills.

To be fair, Del Toro, steeped in religion as he is, says of this ending, “A very Catholic notion is the humble force, or the force of humility, that gets revealed as a god-like figure toward the end. It’s also used in fairy tales,” which he loves. “In fairy tales, in fact, there is an entire strand of tales that would be encompassed by the title ‘The Magical Fish.’ And [it’s] not exactly a secret that a fish is a Christian symbol.” That should make me feel better, shouldn’t it?

But I missed that symbolism completely. If you go see the movie, it will probably help to see it in that light. What I got was the final, summarizing voiceover from the narrator.

When I think of her, of Elisa, all that comes to mind is a poem. Made of just a few truthful words… whispered by someone in love, hundreds of years ago…:

Unable to perceive the shape of You,
I find You all around me.
Your presence fills my eyes with Your love,
It humbles my heart,
For You are everywhere.

That would be a great prayer, wouldn’t it? Instead, it was pictured as a moment when the male sea creature gives his mate the capacity to become one with him after she saves him to do it. That’s one problem. More generally, it is a moment when love becomes all. It shows us that the magic of our love is beyond us; it is where we find our shape. When it is actualized, we are created. The words could be straight from a Christian mystic, which I appreciate. But the visual container is free of God content. It reinforces the repetitive teaching that we must find a lover who accepts us as we are and magically makes us who we can become. They are god-like. Their presence fills us. Enough already!

I have a good marriage, but as godly as my wife is, I know she is not God. I am glad we know we are not gods and love the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ so we do not kill our relationship with expectation and despair. This movie would be a great reason to never get married.  Because we know the beasts do not always get beautiful enough to look good at the ball. The monsters do not all turn out to be healers. Magic does not begin with or reside in sexual attraction. Life is not really the way the movie taught us AGAIN.

Like the movie, this short post brings up more to talk about than it attempts to answer all the questions. The film tells a story. It is a love story on many levels, which is nice. I have a story of my own in response. And I link my story to Jesus, not hidden in the fine print, not symbolized in the fish, but Jesus right out there for everyone to see, the one who can truly remake us into the shape to love and who is present with us when we can’t or don’t, too.

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Life management: Meeting Jesus at the heart of it.

A life in the Spirit, Marriage and Family, , , , , ,

Getting serious about one’s life might start with time management, but it needs to end with eternity. Having enough personal value to keep a schedule of our time is a good starting point that many of us never reach. But we are much more valuable than our schedule and there is a lot more to our time than what is passing by so quickly.

Good management hopefully leads to the greater good

I briefly taught the Leadership Team the other night that time management is not just in one’s mind, as if following the laws of effectiveness will really result in getting what needs to be done accomplished. “Good time management” can also lead to burn out and joyless toil. Lots of good managers are resentful, put-upon people who don’t feel like they have a life, just a schedule. For our purposes in the church — and where else is there but “in the church,” since we are in Christ?, time management is from the heart, not just the head.

I was drawn deeper into my heart to meditate on my time not long ago. I was praying about what I should do. I always have a million things to do, but almost every day I wonder what I should be doing. I was thinking about the limits of my time (for one thing, the social security trust fund is dying when I am about 80, so that’s one limitation!). While I was praying, a surprising word came to me: “keep building.”

I somehow connected that word to Nehemiah and discovered that he probably began the walls of Jerusalem when he was in his thirties, but he kept rebuilding the city until he was in his 80’s, or so Josephus implies.  I did not think I needed to keep building things — on the contrary, I hope I never get into another building project! But as I meditated, I realized what the Lord was telling me was about the process of building, not the results of building.

More things and more buildings could be important, and more well-built Jesus-followers is certainly a worthy goal. But there was something deeper. I needed to be encouraged when it came to the building that builds me. “Keep building” was about the verb, not the noun. The joy in exercising the gifts God gives me feeds my heart. At the heart of me, I am a builder. What is happening in my schedule doesn’t really change that.

Jesus exercising time management

Jesus feeds our true selves to live our truth

I don’t think I will efficiently build things unless I find joy in building. My mind may be kind of useless if my heart is not in it, and even deeper, if my soul is not in it. I don’t think you will manage your time for the greatest good, unless you have a heart that loves the greatest good. The greatest good is God. We are going for being like Jesus when he said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Does saying that mean Jesus was working too hard? His schedule might suggest that. Or is he just working out who he is? What Jesus does doesn’t make Jesus who he is. Neither does merely doing our assignments efficiently and most profitably makes us good workers. We are works of God who need to work out what we have been given to be, like a tree needs to grow.

To use our time well, we need to feel our value and respect the value we bring to the greater good. No amount of scheduling will solve the problems of lack of heart, not hearing from God, and not feeling your true self. Choosing how to allot our time will always be hard, but it is only when our food is to do the work of the One who sent us that we can face the challenges with our jobs and commitments and not just bend under the load of our anxiety or fatigue.

Our twenties and thirties are crucial for developing our hearts as we refine our schedules.

I often run into a lack of vision with married couples. They are strangely in their heads, even when they are trying to connect heart to heart. They want solutions, not redemption. They want a road map, not a Guide. For struggling couples, the question is usually less about how to make the little changes in relating that make life pleasant. The question is, “Do you have a heart that intends to present your mate complete in Christ?” Deeper understanding, better behavior and changes in the schedule will definitely improve things. But when it comes down to it, love that comes from Christ saves the world, not one’s love for what someone else is doing. Life is not about being pleased or being pleasing, that’s good, but the greater good is pleasing the Lord and enjoying the food that is eternal. Like Jesus told the woman at the well, “Thanks for the water. But if you asked me, I would give you water from an eternal well.”

What organizes our time? It is a big question when people are making decisions about their lives — and what 20 or 30-something person is not doing that? Are we really going to be like all the people I follow on the freeway who are reading their phone while driving? Even when we are sitting in our prayer chair, we can’t look up from our GPS and be steered by a deeper instinct! Are we more obsessed with taking the perfect next step when we could stride across the landscape, confident that we are eternal? Is time a threat or do we redeem it?  The apostle Thomas was troubled that Jesus was going to His father’s house and he did not know the way. Jesus told him:  “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Thomas may have immediately asked Siri for answers Jesus would not tell him! Even so, the truth remains: knowing Jesus provides us with a deeper sense of direction than GPS or a perfectly managed week.

When I get to talk to people about their time and having more heart than mind, they usually want to know what I am talking about. That’s nice. But when they leave the office they often fall back into their rut; they are steered by some “best practice,” or by the invisible hand, or by whatever their friends are into at the moment. I can relate to that. I have been thinking about how to use my time well for decades. But when it comes down to it, what I really need, beyond better technique, is God speaking something  into me that transcends the worries I bring to my day. One day, it was “Keep building.” I’m glad I had devoted time with God in my schedule because that was really helpful!

What will Wonder Woman do to the children?

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, Marriage and Family, , , ,

Gwen and I went to see Wonder Woman — ALL of it.  I even sat through the credits at the end because they were just so beautifully done. I found it to be a lavishly and lovingly produced piece of art. I’d go see it again just to enjoy the production values. But it also contains a surprisingly compelling story. See what you think.

As you can tell from the trailer, the movie keeps getting bigger,  louder and more frenetic as is moves toward its conclusion. My lingering impression from the experience was, “This thing is HUGE!” As we watched the credits we were in awe. I said, “There must be 1000 names on this list!” There were actually over 1500, I found out, and that does not include the 5600 extras that were hired.

Wonder Woman came out on June 2 and has already grossed over $300 million dollars worldwide. That’s BIG. It may make way over $100 million dollars in profit.  Isn’t it amazing how we have gotten used to such large numbers attached to comic book movies? This one took about 12 years to write and 4 years to make. What does a ten year old do with all that hugeness that keeps beating down on him or her? What am I going to do with it? But, more important, what will Wonder Woman do to the children?

The movie is such a big idea crammed into a couple of hours. What does a child do with it all? Here are just a few of the themes: ancient myths,  being a god, problems with mom, leaving home, first love, losing your virginity, experiencing a new world, finding your power, sensing your destiny, losing your mate, confronting evil, being an alien. When a giant story beats down on you, what do you do with it?

Speak, Hear, See No Evil — Sonrise Ministries Uganda

I kind of wish we all blocked the appropriate sense, especially the children. Instead, I think the kids are swallowed. They adapt. They conform. They become acclimated and develop traits that allow them to survive in the presence of the machine.

The experience of Wonder Woman was such an overpowering noise! — part of the anti-silence in which we live.  We saw it on a very big screen and were surrounded by sound: thundering hooves, whizzing WW1 bullets, titanic explosions — by the end, too many explosions.  Maybe we are all used to such things by now. But we should probably notice that watching these movies could be another little dose of the PTSD that soldiers get in battle that dulls their senses and makes them anxious the rest of their lives (this has been studied). Some of these movies may be like taking your kid to work — in Afghanistan.

I look over my precious collection of grandchildren and wonder what the machines will make them. We considered our plan for children as a church last Saturday. I watched Wonder Woman on Friday. It was quite a juxtaposition. I wonder if we will have enough community in Christ to counteract the 1500 people who rammed Wonder Woman into our consciousness and threaten to trample it into submission.

Marriage advice: Don’t take Trump to bed

Marriage and Family, ,

The desire wells up in me to pass out unsolicited advice. I think it is because I have counseled quite a few couples this past quarter, and quite a few of them should have solicited some advice!

So here is some advice for blue staters, especially, as we head into the inauguration ordeal: Don’t take Trump to bed.

Trump showing off his home furnishings line

1) When you go to bed, it is better to wind down than to ramp up.

Even if you have not seen your spouse much during the day and you are itching to complain to someone who is committed to listening to you, resist. I know several spouses who regularly complain that once it gets to be about 11:30, their spouse rolls over and asks them the big questions of the day:

  • “What do you think about a vasectomy?”
  • “Why did your mother treat me like that?”
  • “Why didn’t you know what I wanted for my birthday?”
  • “Did you hear about Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State?”

None of these are good intros to a goodnight kiss. Please show some restraint.

2) When you go to bed the last thing you drink should not be poison.

This goes for everyone, but just because someone offers you poison to drink does not mean you have to drink it. Just because something is on the TV does not mean you have to watch it (you don’t even <gasp> need a TV! Or any of your screens). Just because Breitbart prints it does not mean you have to discuss it for pillow talk. I suppose it is possible, but I have not heard that “Trump” is an enticing thing to whisper in someone’s ear. He’s a divider, not a uniter. Don’t invite him to bed.

3) When you go to bed, it is better not to invite the four horsemen of the marriage apocalypse to join you.

Trump is all about everything that is bad for relationships, unless you like to be dominated (and some people do, let’s face it). He loves to tweet criticism. He pours out contempt. He is well-known for how defensive he is. A “stonewall” is part of his policy-making. Unfortunately, all us humans are kind of spongy when it comes to our atmosphere. We find what is going around hard to resist. Thus the media is normalizing the Donald and we are all-too-likely to begin thinking his deadly behavior is normal for us, too!

Do not take him to bed. I doubt any of us consciously wants to. But many of us have done it already — at least he got as far as the dinner table! He has separated intimate friends, even family!

Not being conscious of complaining, consuming, and carousing with Trump will cost us all. So take a tip from Stephen, since today is the Feast of Stephen. He endured some rather unsavory rulers himself. He was dragged before the ruling council when he performed wonders, argued with upstanding members of synagogues, and questioned whether Moses and his law were God’s last word. Most of all, he gave Jesus his proper place. He quite consciously held on to himself as they we about to murder him and said, “Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One.” He knew what was Trump and what was not. Let’s do likewise. We’ll have to differentiate rather than just go along or just rebel.

Be yourself in Christ when you go to bed and let Trump lie in the bed he has made for himself. You can respond to the messes he makes tomorrow, as you feel moved. But for those precious moments when we can connect and rest, beware of Trump. He’s not a connecter and he apparently doesn’t rest, since he tweets at 3am.

Lifelines for drowning marriages (and whole societies)

Building community, Marriage and Family, , , , ,

Kindness and so much moreI feel like I have a new friend after reading Katherine Willis Pershey’s book: Very Married: Field Notes on Love and Fidelity. We have only exchanged one email, but I already hope she moves here, or at least comes over to inspire us.

I would like to quote you the entire book, in case you do not buy it immediately, but I will just do this one part today. It feels urgent that I get you to think, feel and pray about marriages, since several are falling apart as we speak, and, I think, the partners in them don’t really want them to fall apart, but they are floundering. They did not do what the following quote suggests we do and the resulting injuries feel insurmountable.

Pershey is talking about John Gottman’s book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (another recommendation). Specifically, she boils down his work into one very Christian exhortation: be kind. If you need a Bible verse, it could be Ephesians 4:32 (memorize it): “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” I agree with her. That about sums it up.

“There are two ways to think about kindness. You can think about it as a fixed trait: either you have it or you don’t. Or you could think of kindness as a muscle. In some people, that muscle is naturally stronger than in others, but it can grow stronger in everyone with exercise.” …This is the muscle Benjamin [her husband] and I continue to strengthen, little by little, day by day.

We still fight. But we fight far less frequently and far more gracefully. We are learning the art of restraint and the craft of forgiveness. And I suspect that all the hard work we have done in this relationship has effects well beyond our household. Despite the uniqueness of marriage, lessons learned within this singular covenant translate into other relationships. Marriage has required me to face the very same insecurities and weaknesses that dogged several other important relationships in my life. To be sure, I can still get defensive and petty and critical. (You may now picture my dear old dad nodding enthusiastically). But I know myself in a way that only the mirror of marriage could have shown me.

Kindness is a muscle. Marriages are places for inner development. Covenant is a mirror that leads to a deeper understanding of the truth about oneself and the world. If you know people who are struggling because they have not grasped these principles like life preservers as their marriages drown, maybe sending them this post would help. Pershey goes on with something just as practical:

Not long ago a friend shared a link to an article….the article is short and sweet; in it, a mother asks her young daughter to read 1 Corinthians 13,

[Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.]

swapping out the word love for the name of the cute boy she likes. The girl realizes that the cute boy isn’t, in fact, patient and kind. He is arrogant and rude, and all the other things Paul says love is not. The mother goes on to ask her daughter to consider her own name in the verses. And this, for me, is the key. It is easy enough to ask if Benjamin is irritable or resentful. But am I? Am I patient and kind? Do I keep a record of wrongs? If I flunk all those biblical tests of love in my own marriage –my own marriage! – then I flunk them outright.

Camel kindness

I could apply this thinking to the church, of course, where our covenant love also sets up this test (and I will later do that, no doubt). I could talk about how we can’t make the impact on the world we need to make in this trying time if our love cannot even survive our own covenant! Like Pershey says, a demand for justice is easy, but a willingness to put our love to the test by comparing it to the Lord’s: “love one another as I have loved you,” is what gives us the authenticity and authority to speak into the darkness around us.

But let me not go completely there and just stick with marriage. For those of us in  sanctioned marriages or cohabitation (no matter how ill-defined), you are undoubtedly facing the challenge to be kind and to not just demand justice in the face of your hurts and confusion – especially if you are thirtysomethings. I hope you will not punch this screen or punch yourself as you read this, but just rest in God’s understanding and favor — and learn. God became a human in Jesus to enter into your pain and heal it. He saved you once and for all on the cross and he is saving you now, resurrected, in the power of the Spirit. “God’s kindness is meant to lead [us] to  repentance” (Romans 2:4) — lead us to learn and grow.

These simple thoughts do not solve all your problems or all the problems of your mate, nor are they the antidote to all the poisons that might be infecting your relationship. But Pershey’s summary of the great truths about living in love is such an important lifeline! I would make sure to hold on to them as you paddle toward someplace better.

Power struggles and how to get beyond them

Building community, Leadership, Marriage and Family, , , , , , , ,

When a marriage relationship or a church community seems to be stuck or even falling apart, it is probably because we are not listening. We must be having trouble hearing one another.

There are often many reasons  for our lack of hearing. But the biggest reason of all must be not listening to Jesus. He is calling us into a transformation that allows us to listen, hear, and love like He does.

It is a strange problem. Jesus wants to nurture us into our true selves, which sounds great, but we resist going there. We have trouble letting Him get through a sentence without feeling threatened and either butting in with an objection or turning away. We have a power struggle with God and everyone else.

Friend or servant?

I was pondering a few power struggles I had identified last week when Julie reminded me of John 15. I have been thinking about our conversation ever since. In that account, Jesus calls his disciples into an intimate relationship with him, like branches in a vine. He warns that a disconnected branch will wither and die. But He assures the disciples that withering is not the destiny for his friends. He tells them he is no longer going to call them his “servants,” as if they were people who merely fulfilled a master’s bidding. They have matured into His “friends,” someone who knows His business and can bear the fruit of love that comes from a renewed life. Most of us have a hard time hearing what Jesus is saying, just like we have a hard time with our other intimates — there are reasons for this.

The main reason for our muddled hearing is that we should have outgrown the servant/master kind of relating a long time ago. I think many marriages and most church communities are still working out of the “lower” level of relationship Jesus describes in which one person is the master and one the servant. I call it a ten-year-old’s sense of righteousness. Pre-teens spend a lot of effort getting things right and understanding how things work. They can be very black and white, dependent on getting praise or punishment by achieving harmony with whatever is dominating them. In Christian terms, they might spend a lot of time in the Old Testament — organized by laws, mastering the rules. But, as Paul says, that process is just a tutor for following Jesus. If they never get out of that stage, they will have constant power struggles with all their intimates trying to get things “right.”

In a church like ours, dedicated to cells and teams, everyone is called into the Lord’s “friend” category. They are responsible for love that overcomes a multitude of sins; they are given the keys of forgiveness and grace to unlock the restored image of God in everyone. But some people persist in the “master” or “servant” category, demanding that the master be followed or getting by with as little obedience as possible. The “master” could be principles drawn from the Bible or the latest cause that becomes holiness for them. The service they do or resist could be sharing money or showing up to a meeting. You might be more familiar with this in your marriage, when one of you is furious over an injustice that consumes all your feelings and you lash out at or withdraw from your loved one who is making you serve their demand.

The five horsemen

Where the power struggle gets exhausting, in a marriage, a cell or a team meeting, is when the parties bring our what John Gottman names “the four horsemen of the apocalypse” to fight for their “rights.” These behaviors are what destroy marriage relationships and undermine any hope of hearing one another. They also destroy cells, teams and whole congregations. Consider them briefly.

The first horseman of the apocalypse is criticism. This is different than offering a critique or voicing a complaint! The latter two are about specific issues, but the former is an attack on your partner at the core.

  • Complaint: “I was scared when you were running late and didn’t call me. I thought we had agreed that we would do that for each other.” (Note the “I” message).
  • Criticism: “You never think about how your behavior is affecting other people. I don’t believe you are that forgetful, you’re just selfish! You never think of others! You never think of me!” (Note the “you” message).

If you find that you or your partner are critical of each other, don’t assume your relationship is doomed to fail. But do pay attention to the danger. Because criticism, when it becomes pervasive, paves the way for the other, far deadlier horsemen. It makes the victim feel assaulted, rejected, and hurt, and often causes the perpetrator and victim to fall into an escalating pattern where the first horseman reappears with greater and greater frequency and intensity.

The second horseman is contempt. When we communicate in this state, we are truly mean -– treating others with disrespect, mocking them with sarcasm, ridicule, name-calling, mimicking, and using body language such as eye-rolling. We shame them. The target of contempt is made to feel despised and worthless.

“You’re ‘tired?’ Cry me a river. I’ve been with the kids all day, running around like mad to keep this house going and all you do when you come home from work is flop down on that sofa like a child and play those idiotic computer games. I don’t have time to deal with another kid –- try to be more pathetic…” 

In his research, Dr. Gottman found that couples that are contemptuous of each other are more likely to suffer from infectious illness (colds, the flu, etc.) than others, as their immune systems weaken! Contempt is fueled by long-simmering negative thoughts about the partner – which come to a head as the perpetrator attacks the accused from a position of relative superiority. Contempt is the single greatest predictor of divorce (and of team failure, church dissolution). It must be eliminated!

It might not be so easy to eliminate contempt (as U.S. political discourse has been demonstrating for years and especially this past week!). We need the Lord involved. We are powerfully motivated to maintain consistency in our thoughts, feelings and actions and to minimize conflict among them. (We don’t like “cognitive dissonance). We even have a place in the brain that researchers have identified as a key mechanism in mediating conflict-reduction. So a marriage partner or team mate may feel a need to control a relationship to satisfy their cognitive dissonance. When they are behaving badly, they might find another way to solve their problem rather than changing. For instance, they might see themselves as a decent, liberal-minded person, and that leads to dissonance between their self-image and their unseemly actions. Since we are all strongly motivated to reduce dissonance, they might unconsciously do so by developing a contempt for their mate or partner which is more in accord with the humiliating way they are treating them.

The third horseman is defensiveness. We’ve all been defensive. This horseman is nearly omnipresent when relationships are on the rocks. When we feel accused unjustly, we fish for excuses so that our partner will back off. Unfortunately, this strategy is almost never successful. Our excuses just tell our partner that we don’t take them seriously, are trying to get them to buy something that they don’t believe, or are blowing them off.

  • She: “Did you call Betty and Ralph to let them know that we’re not coming tonight as you promised this morning?”
  • He: “I was just too darn busy today. You know just how busy my schedule was. Why didn’t you just do it?”

He not only responds defensively, but turns the table and makes it her fault. A non-defensive response would have been:

“Oops, I forgot. I should have asked you this morning to do it because I knew my day would be packed. Let me call them right now.”

Although it is perfectly understandable for the man to defend himself in the example given above, this approach doesn’t create connection or even the safety he would like. The attacking spouse does not back down or apologize. This is because defensiveness is really a way of diverting one’s guilt by blaming one’s partner.

The fourth horseman is stonewalling. Stonewalling occurs when the listener withdraws from the interaction. In other words, stonewalling is when one person shuts down and closes himself/herself off from the other. It is a lack of responsiveness to your partner and the interaction between the two of you.  Rather than confronting the issues (which tend to accumulate!), we make evasive maneuvers such as tuning out, turning away, acting busy, or engaging in obsessive behaviors. It takes time for the negativity created by the first three horsemen to become overwhelming enough that stonewalling becomes an understandable “out,” but when it does, it frequently becomes a habit.

I think we need a fifth “horseman”: unfaithfulness. This is not a behavior as much as an incapacity to change. Gottman and other therapists assume we can change our minds and move with new feelings, which is true, to a point. But like Jesus tells his disciples, they will not bear fruit that lasts unless they are faithful to Him. Without Jesus we are desperate, withering branches longing for but despairing of connection. We will always be trying to get something and never quite get it. We won’t have a true self to give. We will be drawn into perpetual power struggles, seeking to preserve ourselves or achieve what we want. We need to relate faithfully to our faithful God in order to be faithful friends, mates and partners.

Being able to identify The five horsemen in conflicted situations is a necessary first step to eliminating them, but this knowledge is not enough. To drive away destructive communication patterns, we must replace them with healthy, productive ones. That’s what Jesus is teaching his disciples. They are going to be a community in mission, threatened from without and way over the capacity of their inner resources. If they are not intimately connected with Him, they will just dissolve into feuding factions like the rest of the world.

Four ways to help defuse a power struggle

Without the healing, comforting friendship of Jesus, whatever is pushing our buttons just keeps pushing them. Our unresolved hurts and beliefs continue to scream for attention and healing. As James teaches: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from the desires that battle within you? You want something but you do not get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want” (James 4: 1-3). Our faith may not have matured much beyond the 10-20 year old era. But no matter how distant, angry or closed we may feel right now, we are called into a safe place with Jesus where we can stop reacting and start reflecting on the source of our disconnection.

Here are four suggestions for creating connection in your marriage, friendship, cell or team:

  1. Listen to your partner’s point of view with patience and respect. You might have heard it all before but try to understand why the situation has become so loaded.
  2. Look for the important things that are not being said. A useful prompt is: “Can you explain why you feel so strongly about this?”
  3. Behind nearly every power struggle is fear. Resist the temptation to placate, rationalize or dismiss these fears. Instead acknowledge them out loud. When someone feels truly heard, they will be more likely to listen to your concerns.
  4. With everything out in the open, you have an opportunity to look for a compromise or for next steps and to move with how God is leading someplace beyond what you presently experience.

Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. Connected to him we can hope to bear fruit that lasts, the fruit of love given freely and nurtured in mutual relationships of empathy and vision. Julie (and Jerome) can see their newly-formed community coming together as everyone re-forms around Jesus — it is a productive new vineyard! But it is also painfully easy to see where people just cannot bear that fruit yet. There will be power struggles. I’m sure they will keep listening with patience and respect, but also with an honest awareness of what it takes to love like Jesus.

[Gwen White adds some good things to this subject in her speech The Narrow Way]