Aug 31, 2010
Community of Neighborly Advocacy Part II: Relational Fornication
Posted by Pastor Todd Murphy in | Comments (8)
In my last episode we had a spirited discussion about the nature of community and true friendship. Moreover, what this post really came down to was love. I thought on the whole that the discussion was productive, and intended to move onto another subject this week.
However as providence would have, not so. As much push back as I received, I find myself remaining unrepentant as to my position. (not a spiritual or moral unrepentant, but literally not having a change of mind on the subject). The providence that lead to me returning to the subject matter is nothing less the sum total of various serendipitous theological challenges I was confronted with throughout the last week, most notabley musings of Deitrich Boenhoffer. Interestingly enough, though not ironic at all, I came across a quote from his timeless study of community, Life Together (pg. 34.).
“Human love is by its very nature desire--desire for human community. So long as it can satisfy this desire in some way, it will not give it up, even for the sake of truth, even for the sake of genuine loves for others. But where it can no longer expect its desire to be fulfilled, there it stops short--namely in the face of an enemy. There it turns to hatred, contempt, and calumny.”
Boenhoffer articulates (not surprisingly) with a simple eloquence what I tried to communicate with the subtlety of a rhinoceros. He makes a distinction between human love and that of Christ’s love, and focus’ on the self-centered nature of human love. As he also says on pg. 34, “Human love desires the other person, his company, his answering love, but it does not serve him.”
One respondent appealed to the human desire to be in community as good to which we agree. I am not disputing that we are created for community, it is one of our primary emphases at SJC. But we also believe in the pervasive fallen nature of humanity and with that, no person can love perfectly. It then is not that we may label one person “dysfunctional” in their relationships, but rather, to one degree or another, the fall labels all humanity as dysfunctional in their relationships. It is not to single out, but rather to normalize relational dysfunction. We all suffer the same fundamental relational broken condition. Some are deeper into the effects than others, but nobody is proverbially “out of the water.”
Returning to the human desire to be in community, we must state that real community is the way out, but only if that community is sharing in the self-awareness that every member is prone by instinct to act in the service of self. We can very easily push for as I mentioned a smarmy sense of community that ends in fused relationship where boundaries and truth become blurred. I only implied boundaries in the last post, which were interpreted by one respondent (through a previous church experience) as keeping people at “arms length” I do not want to minimize that, and a very similar experience has compelled me to shape a community around the Gospel lived out, rather than just propositioned. But keeping people at arm’s length where they spiritually “die on the vine” because they are not nurtured is not implied in anything that I suggested in the last post. Quite the opposite. What I am aiming for a a community of real objective love that stands both on truth and principle and yet always facing the other person. It is a covenantal love that is both committed and open on the one hand, and yet disciplined with proper boundaries on the other.
Biblical love never sacrifices truth for sentimentality or romance. Let me offer an example: A young couple are dating and the young man wants to have intercourse (outside of marriage) as an expression of his love. Is the loving thing for the woman to blur her boundary and capitulate to affirm him, or to stand her ground saying, “if we love each other, we will both wait.” Now here is where the truth matters and hurts. In most cases like this, if she stands her ground, the young man will take this position as rejection and can even lead to a great conflict and the dissolution of the relationship. Looking at this example from pragmatic grounds and human love, the dissolution of the relationship could be taken as a bad thing. But from the perspective of truth and self differentiation, it exposed the self-centered human love of the young man. It most likely would rescue this woman from a divorce later.
My point is that even within our Christian community, we can make a mistake of allowing relational fornication on a small scale. When we blur relational boundaries in the church it replaces true intimacy with sentimentalism and usually leads to division and conflict when the expectations are not met as Boenhoffer observed.
This is because this kind of love is really at its foundation a form of narcissism. As Psychiatrist James Masterson has observed, “narcissistic functioning is actually the outcome of low self esteem. It is a defense against insecurity and abandonment. Outwardly vain, the narcissist is inwardly impaired.” Of course I would put all humans in this category (though to varying degrees of severity) including myself. Everybody is to some degree or another in this pool and so redemptive healing toward healthy relationships start with that premise.
So why does it matter? We returning to my example of the dating couple, boundaries are critical to healthy relationships. When those boundaries get blurred, the relationships become blurred and self serving. This is precisely why both myself (in my last post) and Boenhoffer above noted how when the supply or the false expectations are cut off it often leads to hate and enmity. It then matters because true love maintains boundaries because they are best for both.
When we blur boundaries, we create environments for abuse. In a fused relationship, both parties may be manipulating and using each other without even knowing about it because of their lack of self-awareness in regard to their functioning. Homes with blurred sexual boundaries lead to sexual molestation. Narcissistic clergy become distant and at the same time totalitarian in their leadership leading to religious manipulation. I have even seen clergy, out of the desire to do mission, actually practice a subtle campaign of guilt to try motivating their people to be more “missional.” This is actually a form of emotional abuse. This all stymies spiritual growth and in extreme cases can lead to the abandonment of the faith.
Boenhoffer then observes, “Human love has little regard for truth. it makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person.” It is then incumbent upon us to think love and truth, compassion and boundaries. This is the prophetic stance that is willing to correct with the one hand and bear up the broken with the other.
Posted by Pastor Todd Murphy in | Comments (8)
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