Dan J. Brennan

Julie Clawson: White Men, Submission, and the Kingdom of God Pt 2

It is not giving up power to accuse those who leave a church of losing any authority or stepping outside of the kingdom of God. That is using power to manipulate and guilt people into submission. 

Julie Clawson

This is the second post reflecting on Julie Clawson's recent FB status. If you missed my first post it is here. Julie is reacting to white men who want us to follow their way of life in the kingdom of God. "Real" community for them is bound up in a tightly connected dynamic of death to self and submission to a local church. 

3. The challenge of not conflating God's authority exclusively with death to self, submission and the local church.

It's a Messy Spirituality 5

In what was undoubtedly "healing relationships" from beginning until the end, Jesus never kept many of the professional boundaries modern therapists, theologians, and pastors are told they must keep in order bring healing to their clients, students, and immediate community.  Jesus ate together with his disciples (both men and women), traveled together with them, slept alongside them, and did ministry with them for three years.  What are some of the core values in professional psychotherapy (modern autonomy, Western separation, and individualism) were never the core values in Jesus' social world or the infant church.

This book, Boundary Wars is a rich compilation of essays were by various authors on the pros and cons on boundaries, ministry, friendship, and community in healing relationships.  Like so many other things on this side of modernity, perhaps we need to deconstruct modern boundaries (not boundaries altogether).  I suggest that no matter how we do it, if we deconstruct modern boundaries in professional relationships, we will enter into a "messy spirituality." 

Forging a Soul Friendship: Areas of Struggle

We continue our series on Mindy Caliguire's book, Spiritual Friendship.  In making the comments I have about finding safe friends, I don't want to be misunderstood: although small, this book is rich and deep.  I highly recommend it. 

The point I am belaboring about flawed people (how about that phrase vs. "unsafe"?) is that patience and faith--the fruit of the Holy Spirit--the intentional practice to pursue the fruit with a particular friend in a spiritual friendship forges the friendship and forms character.  Jesus came to call not the safe people in the world, but the unsafe.  He calls men and women to go deep with each other.  How much patience do you have to exercise with a "safe" person?  It depends I guess, wouldn't you think on the degree of emotional maturity and the degree of intimacy one pursues. 

It's interesting that when Caliguire writes on "matching" she feels compelled to write about accepting unmatched dynamics with: do not get angry or do not judge.  That to me, indicates her intentional audience perhaps, maybe flawed people--and that it is a real temptation and a real wound if you begin to go deep and find someone "unmatched." 

In her chapter on areas of struggle, I resonate with Caliguire's perspective:

Finding Safe Friends 3

When I met Jennifer online, (this is another layer to our story) I had been about three years of wrestling with deep self-contempt from a different place.  When we first started to converse, I shared with Jennifer I thought I was a "wounded healer."  I knew I had been touched by Jesus and Jesus had shown me his love in such a way that self-contempt was not as central in my imagination as it had been.  I couldn't say I was totally free of self-contempt.  I can't even say that today.  Although its been a while, I can "spiral" down into a vortex of self-contempt from time to time.  That's never pretty.  These days I would say self-contempt is background noise for me or "white" noise. 

It's Not the Ultimate Question

Been involved in a conversation over on Greg Laughery's blog: Living Spirituality

Greg asked: How can we protect ourselves from shaming and abuse without being selfish?

In one of the my responses, I commented, "The ultimate question for the Christian, is not how can I protect myself?"  It is a question to be considered.  It's not the ultimate one.  This is a driving question in Western psychology (including many Christian therapists) when you have been sinned against or hurt, by abuse or shamed.  It is a good question worthy of consideration--it's not though, the ultimate question for the Christian. 

Where in the gospel of Christ, do you find that to be the ultimate question in spiritual formation and relationships (i.e. parenting relationships, adult sibling relationships, marriages, friendships, or churches)?  Christians are not going to be missional in any robust sense if they can't find a way to move beyond Western psychological categories imposed on relationships. 

Rick Richardson made this observation: "Healing is not primarily about escape or relief from pain."

May I add that you can insert spiritual formation where "healing" is?

He said, "I think most people pursue their own healing and minister healing to others with the primary goal of finding release and relief from pain."  He adds, "That's the wrong goal, at least from the biblical perspective."  May I add that's the wrong goal (if it is the "ultimate" goal) in spiritual formation and friendship?

I'm not advocating that we must live with people who physically abuse us.  I'm not advocating that you stay forever in a marriage where there is physical abuse or rape.  I'm not advocating status quo in "abusive" relationships (marriages, families, or friendships).

Justice, the Kingdom of God, Your Money and Your Story 7

Paul Waddell writes that one of the foundational virtues of justice is a vision of interdependence and solidarity.  "Interdependence suggests not only that we need and depend on one another, but also that unity exists between us is so penetrating and extensive that there is no way any of us can exist apart from everyone else."

"Instead of envisioning us as ioslated and utterly disparate individuals who have little connection to each other besides theconnections we choose or are willing to accept," Waddell writes referring to Pope John XXIII, "John saw that human beings are morally and spiritually connected to one another and, therefore, responsible for one another.  Solidarity makes justice both intelligible and imperative because it recognizes that human life, from first to life, is shared life;  as Daniel Maguire wrote, 'Everything about us is social." 

Martin Buber's I and Thou and the Emerging Conversation

In a recent essay in the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, Nick Watson explores the implications of Buber's I and Thou for Christian psychotherapy.  Whether you agree with him or not, Buber has had a profound impact on psychotherapy, particularly in relational schools of thought.  Since Jennifer has immersed herself in a school influenced by Buber's personalist arguments, we have had some rich discussion and I thought I would pull this article out.  "In line with other thinkers, such as Protestant theologian Paul Tillich and Catholic existentialist Gabriel Marcel, Buber was unhappy with the idea of God as an 'object of human experience" according to Watson. 

Something to Think About: From the Mouths of Fifth Graders

Dee Brestin, mother of fifth grade daughter at the time of this conversation, is "worried" that her daughter is "too dependent" upon her fifth grade friend, Tricia.  Brestin is concerned her daughter doesn't get caught up in the "dark side" of "feminine dependency."

Christian Male-Female Friendships and Unfulfilled Longings

eclexia posted this respone to Lust, Sexual Attraction, and Christian Spirituality:

"The other thing I think is missed is that life outside the garden is FULL of unfulfilled longings. When there is the thought that I must do what it takes to have this longing fulfilled, I think we are headed for trouble. Not just with sexuality, but any of the beautiful desires God has created in us."

The rest of her response is posted below.  If you have already read her response, this will be a repeat for you--just to give you that alert.  I think this is an articulate response about unfullfilled longings and male-female friendships.  It's such a good one, I wanted to highlight it and put it into a separate post for dialogue and conversation.  I plan to respond but I wanted to post it separately and give others and chance to engage it, too. 

Thank you eclexia, for stopping by and articulating such a thoughtful post. 

A Theology of Romance: Loves Me, Loves Me Not

Laura Smit's Loves Me, Loves Me Not: The Ethics of Unrequited Love grabbed my attention when I read "Theology of Romance" in the table of contents.  The way the table of contents is parsed out, part one of the book looks like this with the first five chapters:

1. God's Nature
2. God's Plan of Creation
3. God's Plan for the New Creation
4. Sin and Our Romantic Lives
5. Virtuous and Nonvirtuous Romance

This was strikingly familiar to the path I had imagined a book on spiritual cross gender friendships to look like in the first part:

I had imagined something like this:

Part One Theology of Cross Gender Friendship

1. Jesus and Cross Gender Friendship
2. The Trinity and Cross Gender Friendship
3. The New Creation and Cross Gender Friendship
4. The Kingdom and Cross Gender Friendship

I find it fascinating that Smit's book almost follows the same "path" I would follow in writing on a theology of cross gender friendship.  For those of you who are single, or have single friends, or you minister to singles, or parents of singles, this is a thought provoking book with much relational depth on romantic love, virtuous romantic love and unvirtuous romantic love with an in-depth discussion about the ethics of unrequited love.

Ponder this thought on the value of nonmutual love relationships: "When we find ourselves in love with someone who does not return our feelings, friends and family are likely to be united in urging us to move, to stop wasting time on this fruitless relationship, and instead to work at finding a meaningful (i.e. mutual) relationship.  But is it true that only mutual relationships are meaningful?...Is it true that love is not real if it is not returned?  Given the Christian conviction that God's love is powerful precisely because it is not dependent on our response, it seems to challenge this idea, making room in our understanding of romance for a love that has value even though it is not returned."

Her chapter on "Sin and Our Romantic Lives" should be read by every single or anyone who knows single.  I look forward to blogging on this book.