I enjoyed reading this article a lot. To see you write in a such a way that makes sense to me about complex human relationships has helped me a lot. The line “forgiveness is not forgetting, but remembering without resentment. “ is something I have been thinking about ever since I first read it. It going along with broken relationships and healing from them is something I wanted to think about and that line has helped me focused that healing. Thank you Joel.
Your note on sin is especially transformative, I think. If sin is a moral failure, it's *because of* how it affects our relationships with others and our treatment of them. There is no morality in a vacuum; it's all relational.
I'm gonna be chewing for a while too on how my family experience affects the way I show up in my faith community. Most of that influence has been good, but since having my own kids I've also had to reckon with the maladaptive, overcompensating parts of my family system of origin and recognize/adapt/outgrow those things for the sake of my own home. I hadn't yet thought about how that work would extend into my church, but I'm glad to be thinking about it now...
One of the ways in which I teach the intro to Church history is through family systems. The Church is the extended family of God, with its good, bad, and ugly. That is another reason why the nuclear family was such a mistake.
I enjoyed reading this article a lot. To see you write in a such a way that makes sense to me about complex human relationships has helped me a lot. The line “forgiveness is not forgetting, but remembering without resentment. “ is something I have been thinking about ever since I first read it. It going along with broken relationships and healing from them is something I wanted to think about and that line has helped me focused that healing. Thank you Joel.
I am glad you find it helpful! Thanks for engaging my content.
Your note on sin is especially transformative, I think. If sin is a moral failure, it's *because of* how it affects our relationships with others and our treatment of them. There is no morality in a vacuum; it's all relational.
I'm gonna be chewing for a while too on how my family experience affects the way I show up in my faith community. Most of that influence has been good, but since having my own kids I've also had to reckon with the maladaptive, overcompensating parts of my family system of origin and recognize/adapt/outgrow those things for the sake of my own home. I hadn't yet thought about how that work would extend into my church, but I'm glad to be thinking about it now...
One of the ways in which I teach the intro to Church history is through family systems. The Church is the extended family of God, with its good, bad, and ugly. That is another reason why the nuclear family was such a mistake.
That is *fascinating* and now I want to explore that more with you. "The nuclear family as a stumbling block to ecumenism."