In some of my own processing lately I’ve uncovered my decades long commitment to be instrumental in the healing of those people and institutions that use or ignore me. Let me give a couple examples.
Many years ago, I dated a young woman. I nearly married her, but God woke me up to the ways the relationship was undermining my own health before we made it to the aisle. To cut a very long story short, she struggled with anxiety. Nothing wrong with this except that I entered into the relationship as one who would save her from that anxiety through my special connection with God. (This was before I moved away from spiritual warfare heavy Pentecostal upbringing.) As a result, the relationship was entirely unbalanced—I spent myself trying to fix her with God’s love and did not see her as healthy enough to provide meaningful to support to me. I didn’t even recognize that I needed support at all—I had a lot to learn at that point! Long story short, I had committed myself to the healing of someone that I wanted to use me because I had enough love and spiritual power for the both of us.
My relationship with the church is another example of this. I spent years of my life and well over $100,000 on an education that culminated in a MA in Theological Studies. I walked away from this education with more than a degree—I also had a strong sense that the American church was desperately ill and in need of reformation. I had learned something from my previous experiences and did not think that I was capable of bringing this change, but I did believe that I was capable of influencing those people who could make substantial changes. I also believed that I was called to ministry and could provide leadership for a local community of Christ followers in the broadly evangelical tradition. (I still felt connected to these communities as they had deeply influenced my formative years and been the setting for the early growth of my relationship with God.)
I began to pursue relationships with church leaders and licensure for ministry. I attempted to pursue licensure in several different denominations, but soon found that my commitments not only caused friction, but were unwelcome. I had committed myself to a self-critical approach to spiritual claims and practices that at least tried to take into account the human capacity for self-deception (as opposed to self-congratulatory reflections on the one’s most recent efforts at ministry). I had also committed myself to a Christianity responsible to the poor and the outcast (as opposed to the survival of the church as an institution). These commitments left me unfit for ministry in these denominations. Even so, I found plenty of opportunities to spend my free time teaching small groups, playing on worship teams, and even providing pulpit fill when “real pastors” were unavailable.
Churches were happy to use me and I was happy to be used in the hope that I would be instrumental in their healing. But I soon found that, when push came to shove, I would be forced to choose between enabling leaders more committed to institutional survival or right wing American politics than what I understand to be the gospel. These differences ultimately have led me to leave several communities.
I’ll give one more example. I have spent the last five years of my life running a company providing supervised visitation and other parenting supports to families working through concerns regarding child abuse and neglect. My intent has been to not only to run a company, but improve the child welfare system in my local community. Over the last year or two it has become abundantly clear that the system is happy to use me, but has no intention of giving me a platform to create change in the system.
More to the point, the state sponsored training in a visitation model—Visit Coaching—that emphasizes building a community around the child(ren) to ensure that their needs are met during visitation. However, as we’ve attempted to implement this model, we have found that local child welfare workers seem to see our attempts to bring parents and foster homes together around children’s needs as encroaching on their role. My staff and I find ourselves continually pushed back into the role of observers responsible for safety and providing accountability for parents instead into the role of coaches supporting families to meet their children’s needs that we have been trained for. The frustration is that they aren’t doing what is needed to build that community—they remain mired in an approach to child welfare that emphasizes parents jumping through the right hoops (and hiring the right lawyers) instead of one that operates in the reality that child wellness is rooted in family wellness. Of course, in this case family is not defined by courts, but by whatever children experience as their family system. Long story short, once again I find myself working for the healing of a system that is happy to use me even as it functionally ignores what I’ve trying to say. (The great irony here is that the content of my speech literally comes from training that they sponsored.) So, I find a pattern in myself—it seems I’m consistently trying to heal people and systems that a.) do not come to me asking for support and b.) ultimately are happy to use me in ways that fit their existing patterns but deny me influence to change the bits of those patterns that I see as problematic.
The point here is not to rag on the church or the child welfare system—and even less on my long ago girlfriend—but to identify and confess this pattern in my life. I’m constantly trying to save people and systems that haven’t asked for help. These attempts betray a reality within myself that I’m growing more and more attuned to. I do not respect so many of the communities and systems I choose to build my life around. I do not respect the evangelical church and yet I continue to attend services and involve myself in communities. I (along with nearly every other professional in the system) believe the child welfare system is deeply dysfunctional and yet I have given the last five years of me professional career to its improvement. And so my basic orientation toward much of my life is not only distrust and world-weariness, but disdain. And still I invest myself for the healing of those who use and ignore me. This feels dysfunctional!