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relationships, boundaries, and skating lessons

Once again, I appreciate the honest blog post here about being stripped of all things churchianity – the Christian subculture – and rediscovering an honest relationship with God, and letting him lead us himself. It has spurred more thoughts of my/our own trek that I’d like to share.

I want to talk more about relationships among people and God. This has been a recurring theme with my wife and I, and I believe this topic is common to anyone truly on the detox journey out of the church business ways to something real. After 20+ years in the church business way of doing relationships, my wife and I came to the hard realization that we didn’t really know how to do them well, and that we had allowed others to do our thinking. It wasn’t good enough anymore to know someone who knew God (or thought they did). God wanted us himself – the thrill of a lifetime!

We didn’t know how to take time with relationships – the years it really takes. Taking time to gradually go deeper rather than rush in head long. And how to recognize good indicators that the risk was going to be a good one, and be in touch with the desires of our own hearts. Did I want this relationship? Was there truly a sense in me that God was doing something in it? David prayed like his desires and God’s desires were one and the same. There was once a season I prayed each day, “Lord, help me feel today.” It seemed like I had spent all my life dialed in to what others indicated was the “right” thing to think and feel, that I had very little idea what God was really saying me, now that I was coming to know he speaks to us mostly through our own guts.

We didn’t know how to have honest, meaningful conflict resolution. Where you say the hard stuff without shredding the other person (though you wanted to). And they get to say the needful things, and maybe you actually come to new understandings together over time. Or maybe not, even after many years. But you don’t violate yourself in this process, yet be as generous as you can toward the other person’s prosperity. So many relationships in the church are based out of a man-made hierarchy positioning, which Jesus banned from the body of Christ. Thus, boundaries were mowed over so much that we had no concept of where they even used to be.

We had very little idea how to be peers, egalitarian, co-heirs in Christ with others in the body. How to truly live like the playing field is level, and only Christ is above the rest.

We didn’t know how to live like the imaginary relational boundaries we had around church businesses were just that – imaginary. To think that we actually lopped off relationships when people left our “church” (business), and felt nothing for it. Ludicrous! Same thing goes for the imaginary relational boundary between the man-made church subculture and those not yet among his followers. What? You can actually have FRIENDS that aren’t saved?! And even allow yourself to learn things from them that Jesus-followers are supposed to own the corner market on – such as grace, generosity, integrity?! Oh yes.

Indeed, this epidemic of relational violations is the primary driver for us getting off the church business merry-go-round to rethink all things church, which led to rethinking all things Christianity. A frightening, yet invigorating journey! I think a serious detox from the church business way brings you face-to-face with the horrendous handling of relationships there. In the end, I came to believe that, as an adult, I had no one to blame by myself. I mean, what was I thinking doing these things? But that’s the point, I wasn’t thinking. Hardly anyone in my Christian circles was. I guess we just didn’t suspect the violations there, but it was the same for the Lord and his first followers. We’ve had to essentially learn from scratch how to do relationships with God and people.

I would say we’re seeing two things these days: one is that as we’re learning, in the midst of safe, “go-slow” relationships with 5-7 other families, how to do healthy boundaries with relationships, we’re finding new boldness to be appropriately vulnerable again. The other thing, of course, is we’re sensing the Lord leading us to take more risks, gently nudging us beyond our comfort zones. It’s like so much of the kingdom of God revolves around relationships, so pressing in to them appears to be important to him.

I’m doing ice skating lessons with my daughters (5 & 7). I never had a lesson before, had no clue what I was doing, and it showed. So I’ve been avoiding ice skating all my life. My wife, however, is pretty good at it and takes our girls now and then. Lessons came available nearby, so it was my chance to have Father-daughter time and try to eliminate some embarrassment on the ice so I could skate with the family. About the 2nd or 3rd lesson they taught us how to stop. It’s kinda like a snow-plow action, and with some practice, it works! The unexpected result was that I was finally bold enough to risk some skating moves because I knew I could bring myself to a stop without having to fall down or slam myself into the boards. I see a correlation to doing just about anything in life, including relationships.

By Page

Aspiring to follow Jesus, married, dad to two young girls, work in IT industry, living in the Pacific Northwest. I enjoy playing acoustic guitar, home projects, building stuff, even yard work.

13 replies on “relationships, boundaries, and skating lessons”

Gordon – your story confirms what I have found to be true – that real accountability is something that is a natural byproduct of good relationships where Jesus is the shepherd. Thanks for sharing.

Page wrote, “So many relationships in the church (as a business) are based out of a man-made hierarchy positioning, which Jesus banned from the body of Christ.” Page wrote the truth, in terms of Jesus’ revelation of Truth. Page also wrote of the experience we’re certain to have in any group of professing Christians who disobey the Lord in regard to hierarchy which is, without exception, “lording it over.” Hierarchy among followers of Christ is anathema. Even the most seemingly benign hierarchy. If hierarchy exists, then “lording it over” exists. Anathema. Poison. Flee.

This post also refers to “accountability.” Now there’s a modern powerful church buzz-term. But is it one of our Father’s terms, a heavenly term? May it never be! In blog context, the sense is accountability to brothers/sisters in Christ. But do His Word and His Spirit lead us to a discipleship system of such accountability? I think not; I cannot find it anywhere in His perfect revelation of Himself and His will for us. What he does reveal is the opposite: rather than each of us taking the initiative to “be accountable”, our God and Father exhorts us to take the initiative to admonish, correct, exhort, encourage one another. His way is for me, instead of holding myself accountable to brothers, is to trust His Spirit to cause brothers to admonish, correct, exhort, encourage me. I am to do the same for them.

Neither of us is called to hold ourselves accountable to men. By His definition we are accountable to God; we don’t have to take any initiative to make ourselves accountable to Him; He’s taken care of that for all time. When we see our brother sin, we are, with the love of Christ, to remind him of who he is in Christ, and, avoiding any hint of judgment or condemnation, help him to see that in his current practice of sin or omission or commission he is not glorifying God, having taken care to remove the log from our own eye first.

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