The challenge, of course, isn't finding such stories. Lord have mercy, is that not a problem. The challenge is picking and choosing from the great groaning table of human mess woven into our Holy Book of Books, so's it ain't a one hundred and fifty seven week study. I mean, we get one opening chapter in which it's all good, and by the end of the second chapter, Adam's shaming and Eve's blaming and then it’s the healthy sibling dynamics of Cain and Abel and we're off to the races.
As part of that, I went searching for an old book on family systems that I'd read years ago, one called How Your Church Family Works, which somehow had made its way from the pastor's office into the parlor of the manse.
Bowen/Friedman Family Systems work isn't cutting edge these days, as the therapeutic herd has moved on to trauma-centering approaches, but I still find some of the core concepts useful. The operating assumption of family systems therapy is this: we're part of organic systems and networks of relationship that shape our reactions and responses to others in ways that we frequently struggle to understand. That has always made sense to me, and it can be quite useful as a therapeutic process, but digging back into those concepts reminded me of a couple of things that never worked for me about that approach.
First, one of the core ideas behind Family Systems work is the concept of the triad. Meaning, it's not just your binary relationship with your mother, but your relationship with your mother and your father. It's not just your relationship with your mother, but your relationship between you, her and your younger brother. You talk about her to him, he talks about you to her, and you talk to him about her, and everything is emotional triangles and triangulation, as the trifold energies of interrelationship play out. There, the challenge I have isn't that this is too complex. It's that it's far too simple. Most of us are connected intimately to more than just two other people, I would hope, and that means our true relational connections aren't a two dimensional shape. They're more like energies playing across an ever evolving four-dimensional neural network than anything crudely Pythagorean.
Second...and this is a nontrivial problem I have with secular therapy-speak generally...it can get too centered on the dynamics of dysfunction. Everything is seen through the lens of dysfunction. As part of my family systems counseling coursework years ago, one central class assignment was to chart our emotional genealogy. We created actual charts of our family history going back as many generations as we could remember. Then, we had to use a set of labels to indicate the triangulated dysfunctions...the divorces, the addictions, the estrangements, the co-dependencies. That left us with a dark genealogy, a familial tapestry of wreck and ruin. And on that chart, there was no way to indicate the places of health. No mutual care, or faithfulness, or honor, or nurturing, or love. It felt both jaundiced and a weensy bit counterproductive.
There’s a rule in motorcycling, and it’s a simple one: you go where you’re looking. If you anxiously target-fixate on a hazard in the road, you’re going to go right into it. Without a hopeful vision, a clear sense of the good, or anything to orient one’s faithful action towards, things stay broken.
The Apostle Paul describes a very different approach to life in his letter to the Church at Rome. In the twelfth chapter of Romans, Paul talks about how we live our lives. That represents a shift from the tone of Romans up to this point, which has been mostly diving deep into the theology of salvation by grace through faith.
First, one of the core ideas behind Family Systems work is the concept of the triad. Meaning, it's not just your binary relationship with your mother, but your relationship with your mother and your father. It's not just your relationship with your mother, but your relationship between you, her and your younger brother. You talk about her to him, he talks about you to her, and you talk to him about her, and everything is emotional triangles and triangulation, as the trifold energies of interrelationship play out. There, the challenge I have isn't that this is too complex. It's that it's far too simple. Most of us are connected intimately to more than just two other people, I would hope, and that means our true relational connections aren't a two dimensional shape. They're more like energies playing across an ever evolving four-dimensional neural network than anything crudely Pythagorean.
Second...and this is a nontrivial problem I have with secular therapy-speak generally...it can get too centered on the dynamics of dysfunction. Everything is seen through the lens of dysfunction. As part of my family systems counseling coursework years ago, one central class assignment was to chart our emotional genealogy. We created actual charts of our family history going back as many generations as we could remember. Then, we had to use a set of labels to indicate the triangulated dysfunctions...the divorces, the addictions, the estrangements, the co-dependencies. That left us with a dark genealogy, a familial tapestry of wreck and ruin. And on that chart, there was no way to indicate the places of health. No mutual care, or faithfulness, or honor, or nurturing, or love. It felt both jaundiced and a weensy bit counterproductive.
There’s a rule in motorcycling, and it’s a simple one: you go where you’re looking. If you anxiously target-fixate on a hazard in the road, you’re going to go right into it. Without a hopeful vision, a clear sense of the good, or anything to orient one’s faithful action towards, things stay broken.
The Apostle Paul describes a very different approach to life in his letter to the Church at Rome. In the twelfth chapter of Romans, Paul talks about how we live our lives. That represents a shift from the tone of Romans up to this point, which has been mostly diving deep into the theology of salvation by grace through faith.
As the letter ends, Paul takes a step back, and starts grounding all his theologizing in what it actually means to walk the Way of Christ. Here is what that actually looks like, Paul says.
In the first verses of Romans 12, Paul is once again talking about the body as a deep metaphor for the nature of how we participate in Christ, with each of us contributing our gifts towards the good of the church. Our purpose as Christians is to serve the good of one another, just as every part of the body serves the good of the whole. Some lead, some praise, some give, some show mercy and kindness. But all Christians have as their purpose the business of contributing to the joy of all, each part of the other, each serving in their own way as agents of God’s love. This is an important image for Paul, because he presents exactly the same image of the church as the body of Christ for two whole chapters of another letter, in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13.
Before we reach Romans 12:4-8, the Apostle makes another statement about the body. He suggests that we need to present ourselves as “living sacrifices,” giving ourselves over to the reason for which God created us. Our minds are to be transformed, and the purpose given to our lives is not one that comes from the pattern of this world, but from the pattern of the love that is the Holy Spirit of the living God.
This is a significant part of our reality right now, as our culture stumbles through thickets of violence, chaos and turmoil. The world is on fire, there are unprecedented storms and the spreading blight of war, and none of that is metaphorical. In all of that, we’re obsessed with dysfunction, focused on dysfunction, because that’s what our culture wants us to look at. Obsessing over what is broken is the primary business model of commodified media, eh? And where does that get us? Just deeper into the mess.
What is our task, as disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, in such a time?
It is not to be conformed to that world. We are not to yield to the disorder that comes from the human hunger for control. We are not to hunger for power, spread fear, or expect others to serve us. We are not to succumb to slander and innuendo, eagerly passing along gossip and misinformation. That does not mean “the gossip and misinformation spread by the people we disagree with.” It means our gossip and misinformation. It means the lie we tell ourselves about others to reinforce our bias against them.
As the apostle Paul writes elsewhere, true followers of Jesus do not seek to tear down, but to build up. They do not deconstruct, but construct. We are children of the God who brings order from nothingness. If we wish to build or rebuild, that creative act rises from having developed a deep sense of the gifts and graces God has given you, and knowing what makes the world good. Know what is broken and why, sure. But it requires grace and wisdom to heal that broken thing.
For all of the wisdom in that family systems book about church as a family...and let it be said, there are very valuable sections in there...there was a third thing that I found challenging. The last part of that "triad," so to speak.
In the first verses of Romans 12, Paul is once again talking about the body as a deep metaphor for the nature of how we participate in Christ, with each of us contributing our gifts towards the good of the church. Our purpose as Christians is to serve the good of one another, just as every part of the body serves the good of the whole. Some lead, some praise, some give, some show mercy and kindness. But all Christians have as their purpose the business of contributing to the joy of all, each part of the other, each serving in their own way as agents of God’s love. This is an important image for Paul, because he presents exactly the same image of the church as the body of Christ for two whole chapters of another letter, in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13.
Before we reach Romans 12:4-8, the Apostle makes another statement about the body. He suggests that we need to present ourselves as “living sacrifices,” giving ourselves over to the reason for which God created us. Our minds are to be transformed, and the purpose given to our lives is not one that comes from the pattern of this world, but from the pattern of the love that is the Holy Spirit of the living God.
This is a significant part of our reality right now, as our culture stumbles through thickets of violence, chaos and turmoil. The world is on fire, there are unprecedented storms and the spreading blight of war, and none of that is metaphorical. In all of that, we’re obsessed with dysfunction, focused on dysfunction, because that’s what our culture wants us to look at. Obsessing over what is broken is the primary business model of commodified media, eh? And where does that get us? Just deeper into the mess.
What is our task, as disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, in such a time?
It is not to be conformed to that world. We are not to yield to the disorder that comes from the human hunger for control. We are not to hunger for power, spread fear, or expect others to serve us. We are not to succumb to slander and innuendo, eagerly passing along gossip and misinformation. That does not mean “the gossip and misinformation spread by the people we disagree with.” It means our gossip and misinformation. It means the lie we tell ourselves about others to reinforce our bias against them.
As the apostle Paul writes elsewhere, true followers of Jesus do not seek to tear down, but to build up. They do not deconstruct, but construct. We are children of the God who brings order from nothingness. If we wish to build or rebuild, that creative act rises from having developed a deep sense of the gifts and graces God has given you, and knowing what makes the world good. Know what is broken and why, sure. But it requires grace and wisdom to heal that broken thing.
For all of the wisdom in that family systems book about church as a family...and let it be said, there are very valuable sections in there...there was a third thing that I found challenging. The last part of that "triad," so to speak.
There was a minor missing piece on the church front: God.
Oh, the concept of God was present. Scripture was cited. Here and there God would be included as one of the persons in a dysfunctional triangle, like some absent uncle or neglectful parent.
Oh, the concept of God was present. Scripture was cited. Here and there God would be included as one of the persons in a dysfunctional triangle, like some absent uncle or neglectful parent.
But God at work among us, as the one that stands above our mess, and that can transform our mess? That was entirely missing. All we got is systems on systems on systems, and no sense of engagement with the higher power and startling grace that heals and transforms the wreck we make of things.
So, sure, we must accurately observe the things that don’t work, the shredded quiltwork of the pain we inflict on one another. There are good uses for family systems thinking, as there are for so many of the myriad other approaches to surfacing our brokenness. Being aware of how we sustain and maintain our pain is a vital step in that process.
So, sure, we must accurately observe the things that don’t work, the shredded quiltwork of the pain we inflict on one another. There are good uses for family systems thinking, as there are for so many of the myriad other approaches to surfacing our brokenness. Being aware of how we sustain and maintain our pain is a vital step in that process.
But what heals? What transforms? That comes from knowing that God is above that dysfunction, and that Christ’s path leads us to something very, very blessedly different.
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