One of the mythic literary tales involving liminality and communitas is Richard Adam’s Watership Down. Fiver, a small nervous rabbit, has a premonition something terrible is going to happen to their Sandleford warren. And he’s right; a housing developer is planning to build on their field. Fiver tells his brother Hazel and they try to warn their aging Chief Rabbit, to no avail—he doesn’t believe them. Hazel and Fiver decide they must leave, and are joined by other rabbits in their search for a new home. And no sooner than they have left, the bulldozers come and destroy the warrens and all the other rabbits. To cut the long story short, the adventure takes the rabbits out of the safety of their warrens where they do very un-rabbitlike things; like crossing rivers, fields, and roads. (Rabbits, like the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings, seldom travel far from their burrows.) At nights, out of their burrows, and feeling very insecure, they comfort and encourage each other by re-telling tales of the adventures of the great rabbit hero; El-Ahrairah and they are inspired by his story to continue their journey. They come across many other warrens and they try to warn them. They even get imprisoned and escape, but they eventually do get to Watership Down which becomes their new home, and once they find females to mate with, they settle down and start again.
Once again, this children’s fantasy accesses universally mythic ideas related to adventure, the role of danger in personal growth, leadership, communitas, and the innate capacity of life to adapt when threatened by mortal danger. To my mind, this myth-laced story challenges us to get out of our burrows because of the coming danger (the adaptive challenge) and do things that defy our all too human instincts to burrow down in denial and our middleclass penchant for safety and security. We are inspired for this task by re-telling of the dangerous stories of Jesus Christ, the martyrs, and the great witnesses of the faith who did exactly the same things. All our heroes are people, who refused to settle down, people who lived dangerously, and who by doing so significantly advanced the mission of God.
I was directed to Alan Hirsch's blog in an email from a friend. He said that it was worth pondering .. and it is! I've already found my old copy of the book and added it to the list of books to read in the January break.
Monday 22 December 2008
Saturday 6 December 2008
"Sweet Revenge"
(Must be the end of the week. Another article sent to me)
Many people today (thankfully, not everyone) are experiencing what may feel like the worst of times. Their reactions to this, not surprisingly, include feelings of fear, hopelessness, helplessness and even despair. They want to hit back at those who have hurt them. They want ‘sweet revenge’.
Revenge can be defined as harm done to someone as a punishment for harm that they have done to you first. It’s sometimes called ‘sweet’ because, at least in prospect, it feels rather satisfying. The saying “revenge is sweet” stresses the pleasure you think you’ll feel from harming someone who has harmed you—from paying them back in kind.
Yet punishing others, especially when it’s irrational, is based purely on emotion, not reason. And revenge breeds revenge. The more your brain is activated by the anticipation of revenge, the more willing you become to act vengefully. The same, of course, is true of the person you inflict your revenge upon. You pay them back, they do the same to you and on it goes.
Why is revenge, the act of harming someone, ‘sweet’?
Dr. Edward Hallowell, psychiatrist and author of a book called Dare to Forgive: The Power of Letting Go and Moving On says there’s a simple reason for the rise of revenge. It’s because revenge satisfies. “It feels so good. It’s a wonderfully triumphant feeling.”
Brain-imaging studies indicate the brain centers that ‘light up’ when we experience pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction also light up when we commit, or even consider, an act of revenge.
Brain-imaging studies indicate the brain centers that ‘light up’ when we experience pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction also light up when we commit, or even consider, an act of revenge. We actually feel satisfaction when we punish others for what we consider to be their bad behavior. When engaging in vengeful thoughts or deeds, whether you actually act out your revenge or simply considers it, your brain’s pleasure centers are being stimulated.
Vengeful behavior is reactive and self-defeating
Revenge doesn’t come from thinking, but from the acting out of fear. In meting out punishment and visiting revenge on another, you may believe you are justified, but the rational part of your brain is scarcely involved. It’s your ancient, primitive reptilian brain—all fear-based instinctual reactivity—and your animal limbic brain, which generates ‘reasons’ based on protecting your turf and your emotional sense of selfhood. They’re in charge.
Angry, hurt people can easily come to feel like helpless victims, harmed by people and forces ‘out there’. That’s why, as they being sucked into the quicksand of victim consciousness, they feel the need to hit back at those they blame. Viewed from this emotionally-charged standpoint, revenge seems to be the only strategy that will give them back any sense of self-worth.
Many who seek revenge (in mind or in deed) live in an “if only” world. That is: “If only I could punish, remove or even annihilate (fill in the blank with an individual or individuals, a group or groups), then I would experience some happiness or satisfaction.”
The truth is that revenge is like a drug: the more you use it, the more of it you need next time to feel even mildly satisfied.
The truth is that revenge is like a drug: the more you use it, the more of it you need next time to feel even mildly satisfied. The ‘high’ it provides is fleeting. It offers no true peace or security. It’s needs are never-ending, like drug addict who needs to score one more fix, and then another. Revenge soon becomes a way of life—an endless, miserable, self-sabotaging, self-limiting obsession.
What’s real here?
When you feel angry and hurt, your perception easily gets disconnected from reality. You may project your feelings of hurt and outrage onto people ‘out there’ although the problem has been inside you all along. Maybe that person you so long to ‘pay back’ has nothing to do with your pain. Harming them may well gain you nothing. Unless you take the time to explore your inner feelings and emotions to look for the root causes of your anguish, you may be aiming at the wrong target. It’s all too easy to blame others and spend your energy fantasizing about revenge instead of curing the problem and getting back on track.
James Baldwin explains it well:
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with [their own] pain.”
Moving towards a better solution
As Charlotte Bronte wrote: “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong.” No one was born seeking revenge, so how do people come to indulge so much in blaming and being vengeful? How did they learn to want to punish others for their unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life?
Rather than blaming others and seeking revenge, you could choose to get in touch with your needs and deal with your issues yourself.
Rather than blaming others and seeking revenge, you could choose to get in touch with your needs and deal with your issues yourself. When you choose to take your life in your own hands, there’s no one to blame, no one to punish, no one with whom to get even. Only by moving from a place of vengeance to a place of taking back your power and control of your life will you ever stop experiencing yourself as a helpless victim.
Once you move your mental processing from the amygdala and limbic brain to the cortex—the level of the brain involved in thinking, problem-solving, goal-setting, and planning—you’ll be able to be less reactive and see the consequences of vengeful decisions before acting on them. The cortex also allows you to distinguish between feelings and facts. You’ll be able to let go of negativity and be more understanding and considerate: to act from having a conscience, not from emotional, unintelligent urges to violence.
Many people today (thankfully, not everyone) are experiencing what may feel like the worst of times. Their reactions to this, not surprisingly, include feelings of fear, hopelessness, helplessness and even despair. They want to hit back at those who have hurt them. They want ‘sweet revenge’.
Revenge can be defined as harm done to someone as a punishment for harm that they have done to you first. It’s sometimes called ‘sweet’ because, at least in prospect, it feels rather satisfying. The saying “revenge is sweet” stresses the pleasure you think you’ll feel from harming someone who has harmed you—from paying them back in kind.
Yet punishing others, especially when it’s irrational, is based purely on emotion, not reason. And revenge breeds revenge. The more your brain is activated by the anticipation of revenge, the more willing you become to act vengefully. The same, of course, is true of the person you inflict your revenge upon. You pay them back, they do the same to you and on it goes.
Why is revenge, the act of harming someone, ‘sweet’?
Dr. Edward Hallowell, psychiatrist and author of a book called Dare to Forgive: The Power of Letting Go and Moving On says there’s a simple reason for the rise of revenge. It’s because revenge satisfies. “It feels so good. It’s a wonderfully triumphant feeling.”
Brain-imaging studies indicate the brain centers that ‘light up’ when we experience pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction also light up when we commit, or even consider, an act of revenge.
Brain-imaging studies indicate the brain centers that ‘light up’ when we experience pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction also light up when we commit, or even consider, an act of revenge. We actually feel satisfaction when we punish others for what we consider to be their bad behavior. When engaging in vengeful thoughts or deeds, whether you actually act out your revenge or simply considers it, your brain’s pleasure centers are being stimulated.
Vengeful behavior is reactive and self-defeating
Revenge doesn’t come from thinking, but from the acting out of fear. In meting out punishment and visiting revenge on another, you may believe you are justified, but the rational part of your brain is scarcely involved. It’s your ancient, primitive reptilian brain—all fear-based instinctual reactivity—and your animal limbic brain, which generates ‘reasons’ based on protecting your turf and your emotional sense of selfhood. They’re in charge.
Angry, hurt people can easily come to feel like helpless victims, harmed by people and forces ‘out there’. That’s why, as they being sucked into the quicksand of victim consciousness, they feel the need to hit back at those they blame. Viewed from this emotionally-charged standpoint, revenge seems to be the only strategy that will give them back any sense of self-worth.
Many who seek revenge (in mind or in deed) live in an “if only” world. That is: “If only I could punish, remove or even annihilate (fill in the blank with an individual or individuals, a group or groups), then I would experience some happiness or satisfaction.”
The truth is that revenge is like a drug: the more you use it, the more of it you need next time to feel even mildly satisfied.
The truth is that revenge is like a drug: the more you use it, the more of it you need next time to feel even mildly satisfied. The ‘high’ it provides is fleeting. It offers no true peace or security. It’s needs are never-ending, like drug addict who needs to score one more fix, and then another. Revenge soon becomes a way of life—an endless, miserable, self-sabotaging, self-limiting obsession.
What’s real here?
When you feel angry and hurt, your perception easily gets disconnected from reality. You may project your feelings of hurt and outrage onto people ‘out there’ although the problem has been inside you all along. Maybe that person you so long to ‘pay back’ has nothing to do with your pain. Harming them may well gain you nothing. Unless you take the time to explore your inner feelings and emotions to look for the root causes of your anguish, you may be aiming at the wrong target. It’s all too easy to blame others and spend your energy fantasizing about revenge instead of curing the problem and getting back on track.
James Baldwin explains it well:
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with [their own] pain.”
Moving towards a better solution
As Charlotte Bronte wrote: “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong.” No one was born seeking revenge, so how do people come to indulge so much in blaming and being vengeful? How did they learn to want to punish others for their unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life?
Rather than blaming others and seeking revenge, you could choose to get in touch with your needs and deal with your issues yourself.
Rather than blaming others and seeking revenge, you could choose to get in touch with your needs and deal with your issues yourself. When you choose to take your life in your own hands, there’s no one to blame, no one to punish, no one with whom to get even. Only by moving from a place of vengeance to a place of taking back your power and control of your life will you ever stop experiencing yourself as a helpless victim.
Once you move your mental processing from the amygdala and limbic brain to the cortex—the level of the brain involved in thinking, problem-solving, goal-setting, and planning—you’ll be able to be less reactive and see the consequences of vengeful decisions before acting on them. The cortex also allows you to distinguish between feelings and facts. You’ll be able to let go of negativity and be more understanding and considerate: to act from having a conscience, not from emotional, unintelligent urges to violence.
Missional vs Attractional Church debate
(Another interesting piece sent my way)
So the whole missional vs. attractional church debate has risen to the bloggy surface yet once again sparked by Dan Kimball’s recent post on the Out of Ur blog. In the piece he questions the fruit of so-called missional churches because a few that he knows of anecdotally haven’t grown while attractional churches are making converts in droves. Since they aren’t making converts, they therefore are ineffectual. Being missional means squat apparently unless you are growing in numbers and the sins of attractional models are incidentally absolved since they are making converts. Others have questioned the reality of such conversions, and I especially liked Dave Fitch’s response on that account. But to the specific accusation that missional churches are ineffectual, I have to ask - at what?
According to Dan, effective churches are those which make (and continue to make) a lot of converts. I’m all for conversions, but what exactly are they being converted to? Is a conversion that professes the name of Christ, but is consumeristic and “me-centered” really the sort of conversions we want? It may be easy to attract people to that sort of faith, but to pull out the old phrase - what you call people with is what you call them to. What’s the point of “converting” people to American consumer culture with a Jesus veneer? Even if you desire that they will eventually change, why the bait n’ switch? But to write off the people who are attempting to give up all that in favor of self-sacrificial living because not enough people want to jump on that bandwagon simply astounds me. When did Christianity become a popularity contest? I know I’m being extreme and harsh with those questions, and in many ways I am a both/and sort of person in regards to this issue, but I was just really shocked to hear the missional church dismissed in such a way.
And of course I’m saying all this as a “failed” missional church planter. Failed in terms of numbers and money. We couldn’t attract enough people willing to give enough money to pay our salary and so the church failed. Yes, that’s crass, but that’s what happened. And it also totally misses the entire point of what the church actually was. We were a bunch of messy people working our butts off serving each other. We had people attending who really weren’t welcome in other churches because they were “too much work” or because they “asked the wrong questions” or because they just weren’t cool enough for the attractional churches. Our church became family to each other - opening our homes (literally) and seriously caring for each other and for our community. Throwing parties for the “poor” and the mentally disabled, working to improve the local environment, helping the struggling get back on their feet. No - not one person I know of “converted” because of the church, but a lot of people made decisions to follow Christ because of it. Decisions to not walk away from the faith, decisions to return to the faith, decisions to not just go through the churchy motions any longer, decisions to devote their lives to service. That failed missional church made some serious impact for the Kingdom.
So Dan, I just want to throw my anecdotal evidence right back atcha. Missional churches are effective. It all just depends on how you define effective.
So the whole missional vs. attractional church debate has risen to the bloggy surface yet once again sparked by Dan Kimball’s recent post on the Out of Ur blog. In the piece he questions the fruit of so-called missional churches because a few that he knows of anecdotally haven’t grown while attractional churches are making converts in droves. Since they aren’t making converts, they therefore are ineffectual. Being missional means squat apparently unless you are growing in numbers and the sins of attractional models are incidentally absolved since they are making converts. Others have questioned the reality of such conversions, and I especially liked Dave Fitch’s response on that account. But to the specific accusation that missional churches are ineffectual, I have to ask - at what?
According to Dan, effective churches are those which make (and continue to make) a lot of converts. I’m all for conversions, but what exactly are they being converted to? Is a conversion that professes the name of Christ, but is consumeristic and “me-centered” really the sort of conversions we want? It may be easy to attract people to that sort of faith, but to pull out the old phrase - what you call people with is what you call them to. What’s the point of “converting” people to American consumer culture with a Jesus veneer? Even if you desire that they will eventually change, why the bait n’ switch? But to write off the people who are attempting to give up all that in favor of self-sacrificial living because not enough people want to jump on that bandwagon simply astounds me. When did Christianity become a popularity contest? I know I’m being extreme and harsh with those questions, and in many ways I am a both/and sort of person in regards to this issue, but I was just really shocked to hear the missional church dismissed in such a way.
And of course I’m saying all this as a “failed” missional church planter. Failed in terms of numbers and money. We couldn’t attract enough people willing to give enough money to pay our salary and so the church failed. Yes, that’s crass, but that’s what happened. And it also totally misses the entire point of what the church actually was. We were a bunch of messy people working our butts off serving each other. We had people attending who really weren’t welcome in other churches because they were “too much work” or because they “asked the wrong questions” or because they just weren’t cool enough for the attractional churches. Our church became family to each other - opening our homes (literally) and seriously caring for each other and for our community. Throwing parties for the “poor” and the mentally disabled, working to improve the local environment, helping the struggling get back on their feet. No - not one person I know of “converted” because of the church, but a lot of people made decisions to follow Christ because of it. Decisions to not walk away from the faith, decisions to return to the faith, decisions to not just go through the churchy motions any longer, decisions to devote their lives to service. That failed missional church made some serious impact for the Kingdom.
So Dan, I just want to throw my anecdotal evidence right back atcha. Missional churches are effective. It all just depends on how you define effective.
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