21 Nov 2011
Grow up and stop blaming people for what you don’t like about your life
Poatina Morning Tea devotion given today
I’ve been enjoying wrestling with Galatians and preparing to teach Gestalt this week, which feels like a responsibility. And responsibility is what Galatians is about. One definition of leadership is: “Helping people to accept responsibility”.
The Galatians weren’t accepting responsibility. They were letting other people set the agenda for them and blaming other people for their actions. Blame is really convenient because it means your inner world doesn’t have to face the anxiety that there might be something within that you need to do.
Erica Jong said
“Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one is to blame. ”
Another anonymous quote:
“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”
Wayne Dyer said
“All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. “
John Burroughs said,
“A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.”
It was helpful for me to see parallel between what Paul was doing in Galatians and what Fritz Perls was doing with Gestalt. As little children we don’t have control, but growing up means accepting the responsibility for our own lives.
Paul spends the first 4 Chapters of Galatians saying, “What are you doing guys?”
In Ch 5 he says, “This is how it works – there are the Fruits of the Spirit and the Fruits of Self Interest. It’s up to you to make your choice!
In Ch 6 v. 1 he says,
“Live creatively friends – if someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out.”
We tend to want to judge those who have stuffed up. Paul says, your job is to care for them, not to blame them.
And he says, in Vs 2, there is another group of people we have to be responsible for, “
Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens. If you think you’re too good for that you are badly deceived.”
“Pedagogy of the Oppressed” is about being in a system where I’m not free to be me. The alarming thing is that Friere say it’s not the system’s fault – it’s our fault – we have a responsibility to do something about it.
In the OT the prophets would come and ask who are the weakest people in the community? And a measure of how Poatina is going, is how the weakest people are going. And as head of case work I have to say, we have some work to do.
My read would be (and this is subjective) we are currently less able to care for the oppressed in our community than we have in the past. What would Paul say to us about that?
He says,(vs 4-5)
“Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given and sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can, with your life”.
I love that. It’s a real challenge. It’s easier just to fill gaps because then you don’t have to do the work of working out who you are. But Paul says, ‘No, that’s a cop out’. Your job is to be you and to know the job God has for you.
I’ve been through some confronting experiences through the Arrow Program. This is a report – you are asked to answer 24 questions (it’s a bit scary how close it gets). The report is saying, “These are what your strengths are. These are things you need to know about Matt if you’re working with him”. (You can do this questionnaire at http://www.ministryinsights.com/ and try it out for yourself!)
It’s useful to have to face the fact that I’m different from you. Our training is remarkable – I’m so grateful for it. But we have a tendency to look at the things that hold us back – we actually don’t focus on gift. We are needing to get better at recognizing strengths and what God is calling us to. I found it really confronting.
A number of people were asked to fill out the a feedback questionnaire for me. Interestingly the responses reflected the difficulties of the past couple of years, with some respondents indicating there was nothing I could do, and at the other end, some who thought there was nothing I couldn’t do it! A generality, which may be true for Fusion, as well as for me, was that I broke their record for marking myself lower than everyone else. I tended to see myself as worse than I actually was. I think there is something Fusion about that! We’re not really good at being confident about ourselves.
In a healthy community I don’t just fill the gaps; I’m in a wrestle to appreciate who I am and who I am called to be. The proverb, “iron sharpens iron” is significant. I think we’ve avoided that hitting up against one another in the last couple of years and that that has not helped. Rumour and gossip comes when people feel powerless. We need to do the work of ’iron sharpening iron’. When we do that, bits of iron rub off, on both sides! We’ve got to do that kind of painful work.
Paul says stop trying to fit into the system of another. Be the person God has called you to be.
Then he said, and this is revolutionary, (v6) “
Be very sure now, you have been trained to a self sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the things that you have and experience.” So now you are as responsible for your leaders as they are for you. Don’t hand your head over to your leaders. You are to enter into a generous common life with them.
(Vs 7-8)
“Don’t be misled, no one makes a fool of God. What a person plants he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others – ignoring God! – harvests a crop of weeds.”
“But the one who lets God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life. So let’s not allow ourselves to get tired doing good. At the right time, we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us, the community of Faith”.
If Paul was saying to us, “You know what, Poatina community, this is not a time to sit back and lick your wounds; it’s a time for the hard conversations.” And in this case these are conversations with the people down the street. This is the work of facing the bit of me that wants to blame other people. Doing the work to face what God has for me to face.
Wow Matt in a positive sense. A powerful reflection. Thankyou for your courage…I need to reread this reflection and keep meditating on it to really identify all the richness in it, as well as accept the challenges within…then ask for God’s help to engage my will and run with it. Thank you so much.
Jenny Murphy
November 21st, 2011 at 11:17 pmpermalink
Kind of get where you’re heading with this reflection, though not sure how it can be applied to Poatina.
I see Poatina as a system, a place that has defined boundaries, vision and as such requires leaders to keep the purpose clear and encourage people to contribute. It is a good project and I sure God sees the heart of each person.
But here’s the contradiction: its still a system of another. As quoted above “Paul says stop trying to fit into the system of another. Be the person God has called you to be.”
This system inadvertently asks people to hand their heads over to the leaders. The boundaries that are set are good for the common purpose of Poatina (a system) and the leaders encourage people to live within them. If people keep the boundaries they are rewarded with approval, responsibility and authority, if they break them they are shamed. Perhaps “blame” is a fallout of the hurt that comes when people have been forced into fitting into a system.
The Bible indicates that leaders are to be servants of all. This doesn’t mean everyone gains a personal slave, but the system (in whatever form it presents itself) elevates leaders to having some kind of authority over man, and in saying this we are asking people to hand over their heads.
Its a dilemma.
The freedom I’ve discovered hasn’t come from following the rules even if they are good rules. It hasn’t come from serving others or contributing to a good cause. It hasn’t come from choosing to engage my will or thinking I’ve gained victory in an area of my life. It even hasn’t come from putting my whole self into loving God.
Its come from understanding the power of the cross and the love of an intimate Father God. Its his love that compels me. Its his love that has healed me. Its his love that has freed me.
For me to be the person God has called me to be, means I live in his love, grace and freedom. Then I know I’ll be at the right place at the right time for the right person. The freedom I have discovered with God has no boundaries, and I’ll do my best not to submit to any systems that might try to contain where God would have me.
Rosa Koster
November 22nd, 2011 at 6:37 pmpermalink
Hmm.. Not sure I agree with a few parts of what you are saying. I think we both agree that for anyone the job is to live in loving relationship with God through his son, and that anything that gets in the road of that is a problem.
My experience of Poatina is quite different to yours. I don’t feel like its a system of another but a fellowship of people trying to live faith in a practical way by creating space for people who need it. I certainly don’t think it’s perfect though and think its been through the most complex two years of its history.
What I was getting at with the blame thing is the same thing Paul was trying to say to the Galatians, that we are each responsible for our own lives, and if we find ourselves in a place where we don’t feel free it is because we put ourselves there.
Over the past few years I have heard a lot of blame, and it seems to me that the more people blame, the more they give away power over their own lives.
I love the God Journey podcasts and have read some of their stuff, but I get a bit worried about some of what sounds like an over focus on personal experience.
I think Paul was also addressing that in Galatians with the fruits of the spirit… They were not something you needed to try to do but are a list of outcomes that are behavioral. The fruits of the spirit are observable to those around you…
The other problem Paul raises with the over personalization of faith is the responsibility we have for each other like Galatians 6:2
Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
Anyway they are a couple of thoughts…
Matt Garvin
November 22nd, 2011 at 8:34 pmpermalink
Quite agree with your comment about blame and people being responsible for their own lives.
“…give away power over their own lives” – could that be part of where our problem lies? Yep there is one element of allowing people to have power over you; there is another element that if I think I have power over my life, then I will use my wisdom to live my life. Isn’t that the same problem as Adam and Eve had? They used their wisdom to be like God and plunged the world into sin. Both elements don’t have happy endings.
Power of the cross is the other side to them both, and unless I understand the cross and the intimate love of an affectionate Father, I won’t be able to love others.
The essence of what you’re describing Poatina to be has some truth. That’s the part of Poatina I like, and I know its not perfect nor expect it to be so. What the hurt people are healing from isn’t due to what happened two years ago though, it was the 5 years prior. If truth telling of these earlier years could happen then healing and reconciliation could begin. Yep its owning my stuff and dealing with it, but its also letting people know how they’ve been hurt.
My understanding is Paul’s letter to the Galatians was to draw them back to the revelation of the cross; somehow they had been “bewitched” and were being bound by laws again. The power of the cross is what draws me back to God, to be in relationship with him, to learn to hear his voice, to be loved so he teaches me how to love others.
Oh I can so much see people not being able to find healing unless they’ve been touched by the love of a generous Father.
Rosa Koster
November 23rd, 2011 at 9:41 ampermalink
Hmm..
There’s a few things you are raising….
Yeah I agree completely that neither blaming others for our own situation is ever going to be healthy, nor wresting control and trusting ourselves. Yep I think Paul was communicating something pretty profound with Galatians. Absolutely it all comes back to the cross for him, and a living relationship with Jesus.. I like how the message puts 6:15 and 16 “It’s not what you and I do… It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life!”
I get worried though that there is a danger in the position you seem to be advocating, of a self absorbed kind of faith that keeps looking for personal experience.. A large part of Galatians is also about the outworking of the relationship with Jesus in the real world… I think Paul warns against that with verses like 5:13-15 “It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom”.
In terms of truth telling about the previous five years, I have no question that truth ultimately brings healing but the challenge from my perspective is that peoples experience is so subjective. I think crisis seem to bring up lots of stuff and I’m not sure it is as clear as being able to point to a time period as the issue… certainly I have heard people talking about that phase but also I’ve heard people speaking with venom about things that happened 30 years ago, and for others the main issue is the way things have developed in the last 2 years.
I think we need to keep reaching for truth, but that truth needs to take into account the truth for other as well. My read is that we have been avoiding the tough conversations thinking that somehow it will get easier to have them after time passes.. I’m not completely convinced that’s true. I was reading the Irish saying today “The more you run from a ghost the bigger it gets”.
I’m interested at the lack of feedback that key people in the middle of everything have received, even though they have had so many people talk about them… I find it hard to see how that helps. I was struck by a quote today from Carl Rogers “The incredible fact experienced over and over… was that when negative feeling was fully expressed to another, the relationship grew and the negative feeling was replaced by a deep acceptance for the other”.. I wonder whether we will get there…
I absolutely agree, and I also think that’s what Paul was reaching for with the end of Galatians, about people not ultimately being able to find healing unless they discover life comes from a real relationship with Jesus and not from anything else… Doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will then find it easy to get on.. The Apostle Paul seemed to have numerous falling outs with people… dunno what that says..
hope its OK to be this honest.. I took the decision to leave the dialogue up on the blog because although its messy and painful and also particular to a journey we are traveling as a village and a movement,. I think these are the kinds of discussions we need to be having and I also think there is general truth in what we are reaching for..
Matt Garvin
November 23rd, 2011 at 10:15 pmpermalink