The UMC is gridlocked in a polarized state of disharmony. [true for U.S.A., too]

In ‘A Failure of Nerve,’ Edwin Friedman writes:

“There are three major, interlocking characteristics common to any relationship system that has become imaginatively gridlocked:

  • an unending treadmill of trying harder;
  • looking for answers rather than reframing questions; and
  • either/or thinking that creates false dichotomies”

I would suggest that the ground of the gridlock is that the UMC is caught in the liminal space of an epochal transition in ascendancy between binary and plural worldviews. [again, true for U.S.A., too]

This movement of persons/culture in history is simply the divine pattern/process of death/resurrection, i.e., development of greater-inclusive consciousness and relational systems. We are dying to the exclusive identification with a binary worldview and rising within a transcendent plural worldview.

The Biblical and historical records lend witness to ever greater-inclusion in God’s life: widows, orphans, foreigners, lepers, Samaritans, gentiles, slaves, women, and so on.

No amount of legislation [or legal obedience] will ultimately be able to prevent or control this transformation as it is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Note: the binary is not being jettisoned. The binary has become simply one voice, of many, within a plural worldview. Binary thought has been accustomed to being THE voice, but that is passing. Actually it’s mostly already passed, all the hubbub is institutional paradigms moving past denial and trying to catch up.

I want to suggest that with this understanding of the divine/historical arch of ever greater inclusion, minimizing the harm to persons during this redemptive process of transcendence is a worthy goal of the compassionate.

Time and again Jesus chose persons over systemic precepts, will you choose compassion?

Thoughts?

 

4 thoughts on “Jesus wept: a plea for compassion”

  1. From one with a different ecclesiology and different language may I say you make your case well and the sincerity is clear.
    Observations:
    1) I suggest that a false dichotomy is inclusion vs exclusion. Acts 15 wasn’t about whether to include but how.
    2) Not every binary choice is a false dichotomy. Starting with a plurality of choices we will work our way to a binary choice. After a generation of discussion I suspect we have arrived at that binary choice.
    3 ) On point: “No amount of legislation [or legal obedience] will ultimately be able to prevent or control this transformation as it is the work of the Holy Spirit.” Yet, as I am willing to affirm that your direction is Spirit led, I expect that you would not deny that my choices are Spirit directed. Still we are going in opposite directions.
    4) We can cooperate with the Spirit and send each other on our way with all the resources, prayer, and goodwill so that each be used somehow in the mystery of God’s good purpose, or we can try to restrain one another with legislation, trials, and, litigation. After all, “unless a seeds falls to the ground…”
    More at https://revsweat.wordpress.com/2016/05/26

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    • Timely illustration of another important point. Urgency. My words must sound hard and hurtful, and I truly regret that. On every side it is becoming more difficult to discuss. There are those who can no longer hear any kindness in the others voice or allow that there is any charity in their positions. We are not just wrong. We are either Pharisee or pagan…heartless or heretic. I fear that tone will soon prevail on every side and there will not be enough of us still talking to each other to matter.

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