It's funny how life's lessons roll in ...This week I've been reading Rene Girard's Book The Scapegoat, and mused on it previously around here ... and yesterday I had lunch with a friend and the subject of my journey during my suspension came up ... Our conversation ran hard against the many rocky shoals and reefs that are lurking in the context of this community and my directed study programme ...
I found myself frustrated in trying to share my thoughts and reflections and learnings without inflicting further hurt to myself in the process I find myself part of ...
The conversation, not surprisingly, ended badly. My friend maintained their contention that I am too judgemental and am unwilling to consider the perspectives of others ... I tried in vain to point out that I CONSTANTLY consider the perspective of others, and weigh that against my perspective, my understandings, my learnings and things that I've read, and draw my OWN conclusions accordingly.
My friend then said - "yes, but you don't allow people to have their own opinions ..."
I balk at that - and I perhaps always will - because I will always allow and welcome and even celebrate the opinions and perspective of others when they share them and when they are WILLING to engage in a conversation that enriches BOTH of us. If they want to beat me over their head with their opinions and perspectives and maintain that their view is the ONLY one that is right - well ... yeah, my friend is right ... I won't tolerate that, not because I reject the opinion, but because I REJECT the BEHAVIOUR.
I came home from the conversation and as I stepped in the door to put on my biking garb to hit the trails for a quick and very cold bike ride, I said a prayer that God would help me put into words the thoughts and feelings I'm struggling with ...
Later when I came back I laid down on the couch and picked up the book "Generation to Generation" by Edwin Friedman, a book that I had handed to me last summer during my leave, and that radically altered my take on the world and on ministry ... and a book that my friend and fellow blogger The Laughing Pastor has been referring to, and that he and I have begun to discuss ...
I doubt it is a coincidence that I opened the book at random and found myself reading a passage that likened conflict in a family, a group or even a faith community to illness in the body. Friedman compares such conflict to an illness like diabetes that is being badly treated.
Spiralling, uncontrolled blood sugar levels lead to complications and side effects that begin to cause systemic problems ... He cited the failure of the kidneys as a means of understanding the role of the Identified Patient in the psychology behind this ... The kidney fails because of the OTHER disease processes that are running amok in the body ... an the kidney (and the body) requires a transplant for overall health and wholeness ...
He notes though, that if the body fails to amend its behaviour and engage in a healthier lifestyle, the transplanted kidney will soon be regarded as a foreign body, and will be rejected like the kidney it replaced ... Rather than blaming the kidney, a skilled doctor would point out to the patient that is the WHOLE body, that failure was inevitable due to THEIR reluctance to embrace the required change to ensure the success of the surgery and transplant.
Friedman advocates a systemic approach to the illness ... instead of treating miscellaneous symptoms, one should begin to treat the WHOLE body and address the hidden underlying issues to ensure the health not only of the Kidney, but of the whole body as well ...
It's such a basic concept, it says to me - IT AIN'T GONNA WORK !!!!
Nonetheless, I continue to plod my way through Friedman and his thinking ... seeing more than a few parallels to my experiences over the last three years ... The failure of the "kidney" in a body system is too often blamed on the kidney rather than allowing the blame to be posited and bore where it belongs. It's akin the process of scape goating that Girard has so eloquently outlined in his works, and that functions effectively well in too many modern settings.
What really stood out for me yesterday in the passage I read were the words Friedman offered that in so many ways embraced exactly what I was trying to convey to my friend about the frustration I am currently feeling. Friedman's words spoke the sentiment I feel watching as I continue to watch the fingers of blame turn only to me, while the systemic problems and the actions of OTHERS remain outside the focus of discussion and action arising form the 333/363 and everything that has followed ...
Friedman describes the scape goat process quite effectively when he writes:
In a family emotional system, when an unresolved problem is isolated in one of its members and fixed there by diagnosis, it enables the rest of the family to "purify" itself by LOCATING the source of its "disease" in the disease of the identified patient. By keeping the focus on one of its members, the family, the personal or congregational, can deny the very issue that contributes to making one of its members symptomatic, even if it ultimately harms the entire family. ... it is exactly the process of displacement that the coinage of the term identified patient was designed to prevent.
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