https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200512/lust-the-long-haul

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The Top Four Reasons Relationships Fail | Psychology Today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201503/the-top-four-reasons-relationships-fail
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Pain Partners
// Leadership Network

By Samuel R. Chand

Our secrets will kill us. They will haunt our dreams, cloud our plans, and distort our relationships. We may harbor secrets because the truth about a single evil past act or a continuing bad habit is too shameful to tell, or we may keep our secrets hidden because we don’t have any real friends who will genuinely listen. Either way, we remain alone, isolated, and desperate to stay hidden.

Kill us? you might object. Surely it’s not that serious. Sometimes it is. When leaders have no place to vent their frustrations and no one to understand their pain, they internalize all the hurt, fear, confusion, and anger. Some experience severe physiological problems that can result in prolonged disease and premature death. And others give up completely. Suicide can become an attractive alternative for leaders who can’t see any light in their future. They feel utter isolation and abject hopelessness. When I need gas for my car, I go to a gas station. When I need food, I go to a grocery store or restaurant. Every leader needs to ask: “Who is filling my emotional tank? Who is giving me the sustenance of hope, joy, and understanding?”

Leaders in business, nonprofits, and churches desperately need to find someone who has no agenda except to listen without judging and love without any strings attached. The existential angst of hopelessness and despair can only be addressed in community—close relationships with at least one, preferably a few, who genuinely cares for us. Nothing less will do.

Almost three out of four pastors say they regularly think of leaving the ministry,[1] many because they don’t have a single close friend. Only a few have been loners all their lives. Most of them had wonderful, meaningful connections in the past, but something happened: people moved away, the stress of the job sucked the time and life out of one or the other or both, people got too busy and stopped calling and having coffee, a simple misunderstanding grew into an irreparable schism, or betrayal shattered a trusted bond. Whatever the cause, most pastors have no one to lean on, no safety valve, no understanding ear, and no shoulder to cry on.

Pain can only be effectively managed in a trusting, affirming, honest community—not necessarily a large community, but at least a few people who genuinely understand. Most leaders have to endure seasonal storms that last for a while and then subside. For pastors, however, the storms never stop. The torrents keep coming. Without a strong, supportive community, pastors wither away under the pressure. Consider the following questions:

• Who in your life “gets you” and doesn’t think you’re weak or strange when you wrestle with the complexities of your role?
• Who listens to you without feeling compelled to give you advice?
• Who asks second and third questions to draw you out instead of giving pat answers, simple prescriptions, and easy formulas?
• Who is your safe haven so you can be completely honest and open?
• Who fills your spiritual and emotional gas tank?

The answer to these questions identifies your pain partner—a most cherished friend. In my consulting, I strive to be a safe person with whom people can honestly share their pain.

Stressed-out people are fragile, brittle, and prickly. They aren’t usually the most patient people, but keeping friends requires the trait of bearing with people when they are annoying, difficult, and defensive—people just like us! We need wisdom to know when to call a friend on his foolishness and when to let it slide. If it’s a recurring problem or one that can cause irreparable harm, we need to step in and speak up and then bear with our friend while he processes what we’ve said. But more often we need to let mildly offensive words evaporate in the warmth of our love and understanding. If God nicked us for every foolish, selfish, or offensive thing we thought or said, we’d never have a minute to think about anything else. God bears with us all day, every day. His Spirit very carefully picks the moments to convict us. We should do the same with our friends. A lot of the time, we just need to shut up and be supportive. That’s bearing with those who are hurt, brittle, or annoying.

We need to invest our hearts and our time in rebuilding a relationship that has been broken. And if we’re friends long enough, misunderstanding and conflict are inevitable. Healing doesn’t just happen. In the human body, red blood cells constantly carry nutrients to every part of the body, and when there’s a sickness or a wound, the white cells rush the body’s healing properties to the site. We invest in the friendship by focusing now on what’s good and admirable about our friend—instead of clobbering him in our hearts like we did before we starting the healing process. Remember what brought laughter and meaning before the break. Camp out there again, and see if the fires are rekindled.

When we’re in pain, the last thing we may want to do is pick up the phone and call someone to ask for help. Everything in us screams, “Hide! Don’t be vulnerable! Protect yourself at all costs!” That voice sounds reasonable, but it leads to further isolation, misery, and despair.

When you’re in trouble, don’t wait. Pick up the phone. Call someone and ask for help. It’s essential for your mental and emotional health, and it’s necessary for you to be the leader, spouse, and parent you want to be.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s354/sh/a39b291a-6a78-4a10-9d4b-2726b9b87476/fcb1673f714d2b4f7fe6f2ee76f08922

Radical Theology Cliff Notes – Home-Brewed Christianity

Radical Theology Cliff Notes VISIT WEBSITE ➜

Radical Theology Cliff Notes

Sometimes you stumble into something so wildly different than anything you have encountered before that it can give you a bit of whiplash.

When this happens in the realm of theology – it can cause a level of trauma to your faith that it feels as if it will never recover.

This is where translators and apologist can come in and play a healthy role.

I am not a practitioner of Radical Theology per-se. I am more of a practical theologian who is in dialogue with ( or informed by ) schools of thought that might challenging to the population as a whole ( or at least those who occupy the pews ).

I received this week’s notes from one Mr. Tripp Fuller that he intended to utilize on the most recent episode of the High Gravity reading group co-hosted by the incomparable Peter Rollins. I took one look at them and thought to myself:

“Self… folks may not know what some of this stuff means. This is sad because much of it has deep implications on living out faith in the 21st century and even deeper implication on the cultural conversation that each of us finds ourselves caught up in the middle of.”

SO I thought it might be interesting to throw a few of the notes out there and to attempt to attach a helpful note on a few items.

Here is what I am up to: if you feel like you are interested in a Radical approach but find it out of reach or unclear … please respond in the comment section and we can either A) figure this out together or B) I will point you in a helpful direction if I know of one.

Before we start – couple of overly-simplistic definitions:

Radical Theology – a theological approach that is not tied to a congregation, denomination or other sanctioning body. The freedom of not being anchored in a confessional approach allows thinkers to interact with daring, innovative and contemporary schools of thought without consequence of consideration of how the outcome will impact faith communities (at least not primarily).

Confessional Theology – a theological approach rooted in both historic tradition and local expression. Confessional theology takes classical perspective and either tries to update it for the current context or attempts to return to some previous incarnation with the hopes of a purer expression or acceptable orthodoxy/practice.

Theo-poetics – born out of an awareness that all of our god-talk is both perspectival and provisional. When we speak of god/the divine we do so in imagery, metaphor, and symbol. This awareness of our limitations of language release us to confess that our signifiers (symbols) can never fully or truly represent that which they signify. The result is a freedom to explore, innovate, ratify, renovate and adapt our god-language in order to both expose idolatry and inspire creativity in how we express our beliefs.

Big Other – As Tom explains below “(in very simple terms) the set of customs and rules that regulate our horizontal social interaction and belief”. One way of conceiving of this is “That is to say, ‘the big Other’ is the ambience of the situation that comes through human ways of following situational “rules.” That is, without human beings, there is no ‘big Other.’” Addressing the Big Other is often manifest in a critique of a projection of a watcher in the sky sort of conception of god.

Here are some of Tripp’s notes:

Radical Theology v Confessional

1) Radical Theology is parasitic to Confessional Theology… on its behalf. Radical Theology is being faithful to what is harbored in the name of ‘God’ – the event & not the tradition on the tradition’s terms.

2) Radical Theology reserves the right to ask any question. Because Confessional Theology is accountable to a tradition & its institutions there will be places where questionsconversationsoperating conclusions will serves as “conversation stoppers.” Places in which that activity of critical thinking puts one out of the building. (ex. Trinity or Same Sex Marriage)

3) Radical Theology seeks to be EXPOSED to the Event w/in the Confessional Theology tradition but not PROPOSE a new articulation of the tradition.

4) Radical Theology rejects both the apathetic silence about the Big Other & the theistatheist debate about the Big Other. The Big Other does not exist.

5) Radical Theology displaces the boundaries & certainty of ‘belief’ w/in Confessional Theology – the “how” w/out articulating another ‘what.’ Why? Whatever the ‘what’ is w/in a tradition doesn’t correlate to ‘how’ it is enacted.

6) Radical Theology affirms the Event contained IN but not BY Confessional Theology.

7) Radical Theology is a material (therefore a political) theology. God’s insistence is about our existence, here in the world, in relationships, & not about our continued or reanimated existence elsewhere. Radical Theology is about faith enacted for this world, not faith in another.

8) Radical Theology leaves the logos of Confessional Theology behind for theo-poetics. For the Radical Theology there is no divine-logic to be learned or sacred syllogisms to be mastered. When ‘words’ are used to close the circle around the truth, the poet protests ‘words’ enslavement… their demonic possession of the impossible possibilities that vanquished on behalf of the actual – the certain – the final – the verdict of Confessional Theology.

I thought it would be helpful at this point to outline how Caputo frames the turn from Confessional to Radical Theology in his amazing and short book “Philosophy And Theology” . In chapter 5 he illustrates 3 turns that converge together to make the BIG turn.

First up is the Hermeneutical Turn – this a confession we each read a text or interpret our experience from an angle. We all have a location and that means that we all see things from an angle.

Second is the Linguistic Turn – this is a recognition that every discipline and every tradition has its own set of vocabulary and concepts that form the ‘rules of the game’. Just as one can not play ‘Sport’ but plays A sport (football or baseball) so one can not speak ‘Language’ but A language. One can not practice ‘Religion’ but A religion. One must learn and abide by the rules of language game that one is playing.

Third is the Revolutionary Turn – this is an admission that things change… or rather that the way we see things changes. Working off of Kuhn’s idea of ‘paradigms’ and scientific revolutions, we readily admit that even where the data does not change (the universe) the way that we conceptualize it does periodically alter in radical ways.

These three come together to form the Postmodern Turn . They are also helpful for illustrating the sort of thing that Radical Theology is up to.

If you have any questions or comments I would love for post them below!

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I also want to acknowledge that I left out references to Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Tillich, Descartes, and Kant. We can do all of that in a subsequent post if you want.

Immanuel Joseph

Radical Theology Cliff Notes – Home-Brewed Christianity

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