Regressing toward weakness (Friedman Series)
Another entry in a series of reflections from Ed Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix [1999 The Edwin Friedman Estate, Bethesda, MD].
One of the interesting things about Ed Friedman is that before his death he advised clergy of all kinds as a Rabbi, he challenged the thinking of family systems therapists as one who trained with Dr Murray Bowen, he also advised leaders in corporate America as well as government and military. I can’t help but wonder about his thoughts in the current state of things in the Beltway and our society today. But his book gives some help in that direction. Today’s reflection quote comes from a series of concerns he has as he looked at American society on page 10 of his Introduction.
A regressive counter-evolutionary trend in which the most dependent members of any organization set the agendas, where adaptation is constantly toward weakness rather than strength, thus leveraging power to the recalcitrant, the passive-aggressive, and the most anxious members of an institution rather than toward the energetic, the visionary, the imaginative, and the most creatively motivated.
This isn’t really about evolution it is about maturity. I think he captures the important value of being in the process of growing and maturing and taking more responsibility in our life.
I confess that I am generally a supporter of the ACLU and while a centrist and independent politically, I do tend to drift to the left on issues while trying to stay out of the muddy waters of the extremes. Yet, if I have any quarrel with the ACLU and with the litigiousness of our society it is related to Ed’s point about being oriented toward weakness. The cases we usually hear about in the media are the ones where people are easily offended and think that is injury. Offence is not really being hurt. True oppression can sometimes masquerade in that way, but if we let the weaker members of our systems call the shots we truly stop growing only at the level of the weakest link. In another part of his book he has a problem with empathy. However, challenge and strength does not truly hurt and destroy people (torture and abuse is ALWAYS wrong). There comes a point where standing up for one’s self will “offend” some people, but we have to live our lives, not someone else’s.
As I read that, I find it hard as a preacher of the Gospel of grace that calls Christians to be bringers of hope and healing to people who are poor in body and spirit to write that, but I think there is a difference between being compassionate for people who are lost and being pulled into their wilderness with them.
The image I like to use is one where you have fallen into a deep hole. Who would you need to help you? Someone who empathizes with your situation and crawls into the pit with you to feel your pain, or someone who sees your need and goes to get a rope which they then use to pull you out of the pit.
Being oriented to the weakest in our families, churches, communities, societies (or even the weakest part of my own spiritual life) allows them to determine the agenda. In every church I have served it is a struggle to keep focused on helping people grow toward their strength, which always involves responding to challenge and struggle. It is far too easy to let the pain (real and perceived) determine what we do.
When I worked out, the fitness center I used shared space with the physical therapy department of the hospital. In talking with the therapists, we shared a commonality: without the therapist (preacher/spiritual director/counselor) there to push people beyond their pain point, people will not get better and will not grow.
Maturity is about raising our threshold for pain and going just a little bit further then we went before. That is the challenge of the creative visionary: to go further in our thoughts and living then we have gone before (or at least for a while). And that is why it is so hard to seek to be one: it is just so hard to keep on pushing people beyond where they are comfortable.
The only way I find to be able to do that (and at the moment I am in a low tide part of the cycle for this) is to be very focused on the living relationship with the Creator who is seeking to grow ME. As God works in my life (through meditation on the Word and a growing contemplative life in prayer) I will be stretched and supported so I can continue to invite others to be a part of what God is stretching us all toward doing. For our good, and for the good of all the levels of community we find ourselves to live in.
