Groupthink

Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. (Wikipedia)

- the practice of approaching problems or issues as matters that are best dealt with by consensus of a group rather than by individuals acting independently; conformity. (Dictionary.com)

I always presumed that groupthink meant that everyone just agreed with everyone else, that the environment was hostile to dissidents, and that people tended to suggest things they already knew would be agreed to.

Focus on the Family suffers from groupthink.

Exhibit A

see Cosondra & Carly’s comments

Exhibit B

see Alexis, and the author.

The issue of whether women should stay at home is a personal one, not an ideal that should be touted as the best way. Whether women should preach is a contentious issue that shouldn’t be glossed over as simply as black and white – so let’s stop patting those who agree with us on the back, with a hearty “Hear! Hear!” and “AMEN!” to remind ourselves that we’ve been right all along and others agree! Let’s acknowledge that sometimes, people disagree, and sometimes, even if we decided how to live, we just don’t know.

Mercy

Mercy is not killing people who deserve to be dead.

When I think about the morons that inhabit this world I wish that I were God so that I could end their moronical lives.

Thus, I think I am devoid of mercy.

(the context, I feel I should explain, is internet commentators – the freedom of speech is sometimes so painful to listen to)

Psalm 8

¹ LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

² Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

³ When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

⁴ what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

⁵ You have made them  a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned them with glory and honor.

⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their  feet:

⁷ all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,

⁸ the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

⁹ LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

We are beings of great worth. Only a little lower than God. Most definitely lower, but as the word says, only “a little lower.” That to me suggests that we have such tremendous potential. It also makes sense that we are designed to love one another. God has given us himself, but he also gave us each other – these are the beings worthy of companionship, worthy of spending this one wild and precious life with. These are whom we are to experience and share great love with. All to give the more glory to God, the one who made us, and taught us to love.

Crowned with glory and honour despite being mere mortals. What a gracious God! Who do I perceive as crowed with glory… honoured by God himself? It’s nice to imagine myself in that seat, but it doesn’t really “stick” in my understanding. I don’t feel the aura of glory or feel particularly honoured… although, when I contemplate what Christ did for me, I do shut up (God has done so much for me, why me?).

Ah, my beloved, you and I were created a little lower than God. Yet sometimes I fear talking to you with complete honesty. Sometimes I do not entrust myself to you fully, I hold back, there are walls I do not even know the extent of. Sometimes I find it hard to hope for things to be glorious, knowing there are already so many things we’re dealing with, and there are more we haven’t even scratched the surface of. I want to be honoured, feel glorious with you. I want to be completely transparent, knowing where you are, having nothing to hide.

The Image of God & You

Reflect on your friends as created in God’s image. How does that perception change your attitude and behaviour toward them?

When I think of humanity as created in God’s image I imagine a great expanse of faces turned upwards reflecting individual pixels of glory. There’s not a face depicted in the reflection, instead it is a beautiful, colourful, glittering sea. Zoom in 1000x into the circle of friends I roll with, and it is still beautiful, but much messier. You see that we’ve got rough edges, we jostle one another and sometimes sparks fly.  If I were to truly keep in mind the understanding that my friends were created in God’s image, I think I would have greater patience, respect, and awe of them. God is looking out for them, his love burns brightly for them, they are his. I need to get in line with that – too often I find myself thinking I’m the only one that cares. How blasphemous.

Go through the relationships in your life. Family…created in God’s image. Or co-workers…created in God’s image. Is it true that those closest to you are the hardest to perceive as created in God’s image?

Those closest to me are the one’s that hurt me the most. In my pain it’s easy to forget about God’s role in each of our lives. It’s easy to forget that we’re both forgiven by God, easy to forget God’s claim on our lives, and that we’re his servants when we get all caught up in our selves…   it’s much easier just to hurt them back, or to withdraw and build walls.

What obstacles keep you from seeing them as a divine image-bearer?

It’s our sin. It’s when they put themselves first, or when I put myself first. When we don’t get our own way. When it’s all about us, you don’t see God, you just see the person, in all their self-serving glory. Pride. Lust. Jealousy. Unrighteous anger…

when they don’t communicate and you feel so powerless to change things

I suppose is also when you forget who we are to ultimately trust and rely on.

Passionate

I am constantly torn

between a desire to be authentic and honest with my struggles so that others might know that I am not  Christian because I’m perfect already but because I need a saviour

and a desire to keep constant guard, even at my weakest moments, of my tongue, that others might not know the depths of my hatred and consider me a hypocrite or the power of Christ ineffectual.

Spiritual Temperament Test

I took a “Spiritual Temperament Test” on a retreat recently. I’ve compiled my results here so I can throw out the paper I used. I’m not sure where you can get this test but on the bottom it says “This test has been compiled from Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul’s Path to God by Gary Thomas (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996)”.

Here are some of my higher-ranked answers.

• I feel closest to God when I’m surrounded by what He has made – the mountains, the forests, or the sea.
• The words, lover, intimacy, and heart are very appealing to me.
• I feel close to God when I participate in several hours of uninterrupted study time, reading God’s word, some helpful Christian books and then perhaps having the opportunity to teach or participate in a small discussion with a small group.
• I feel closest to God when I am alone and there is nothing to distract me from focusing on his presence.
• The words celebration and joy are very appealing to me.
• I get frustrated if I see apathetic Christians who don’t become active. I want to drop everything else I’m doing and want to help the church overcome its apathy.
• I would enjoy attending a workshop on learning to worship through dance, or attending several worship sessions with contemporary music. I expect that God is going to move in some unexpected ways.
• I feel closest to God when I learn something new about Him that I didn’t understand before. My mind needs to be stimulated. It’s very important to me that I know exactly what I believe.
• I enjoy listening to worship CDs.
• I would enjoy developing a personal rule (or ritual) of prayer.
• I spend more money on books than music.

Here are some of my lowest ranked answers:

• The words tradition and history are very appealing to me.
• A book on church dogmatics would be very appealing to me.
• I don’t mind worshiping God in a group but I’d much prefer to be alone.
• I would enjoy reading the book Windows of the Soul: A look at Dreams and their Meanings.
• I would prefer to spend an hour beside a small brook rather than be involved in a group service.
• Confronting a social evil, attending a meeting to challenge the new curriculum before the local school board, and volunteering on a political campagin are activities that are important to me.
• I would rather nurse someone to health or help someone repair their house than teach an adult Sunday school class.

My top ranking spiritual temperaments are:

Contemplative – Contemplatives refer to God as their lover, and images of a loving Father or friend predominate their view of God. A true contemplative is not going to seek the spotlight. If you fee a kindred spirit with Mary – who sat at Jesus’ feet – you may be a contemplative.

Enthusiast – Loving God with Mystery and celebration. Enthusiasts are inspired by joyful celebration. These Christians are cheerleaders for God and the Christian life.

Intellectual – “Faith” is something to be understood as much as experienced. They are likely to be studying, and feel closest to God when they first understand something new about him.

My lowest ranking spiritual temperaments are:

Sensate – Sensate Christian want to be lost in the awe, beauty, and splendor of God. They are drawn particularly to the liturgical, the majestic, the grand. They want to be filled with sights, sounds, and smells – incense, intricate architecture, classical music, and formal language.

Ascetic – Ascetics want nothing more than to be left alone in prayer. They live a fundamentally internal existence. They are uncomfortable in any environment that keeps them from “listening to the quiet.”

I also ranked low on the Naturalist temperament (feeling close to God in nature) which doesn’t seem quite right. It tied for third-lowest with “Activist,” which is very clearly, not me. I was actually surprised Sensate rated the lowest – it’s probably because I don’t have a lot of experience in incense, high architecture and liturgy. I’ve only ever really been in those sorts of churches as a tourist.

A good ol’ quote or two

“The ultimate purpose of marriage is the greater glory of God — and God is most greatly glorified when His gifts are rightly celebrated and received, and His covenants are rightly honored and pledged.”

- from this dreamy eyed fellow, Albert Mohler, via the marriage blog

“Marriage is the source of great and unspeakable happiness. Yet because of sin it is not unmixed happiness. But marriage is not first and foremost about making us happy. It is for making us holy. And through the covenant of marriage two Christians pledge to live together so as to make each other holy before God, as a testimony to Christ.”

- not sure who this is from, but I think it’s the same guy

The Crazies

Why do we like horror films?

There’s a formula for some horror: something bad happens which results in ordinary people becoming murderers. Those who aren’t affected, are now the victims or fighting to survive.

I’m not sure if horror is a product of our society – because we haven’t had war on our lands for so long, because so many of us live in perfect little suburbs, because we isolate ourselves from people who are hurting and we can’t stand how harmless our lives are so we shock and horrify ourselves in order to feel….human?

I’m just speculating.

But I do think there’s something about horror movies that makes tangible our hatred. The hatred we’re in denial of, the hatred we keep hidden if we can.

For example, let’s say two in three people in a town become murderous due to a toxin in the water. Well, in the movie version, they’re physically killing folks, especially those closest to them. While in real life, the toxin isn’t in the water, it’s in our hearts. It’s anger, greed, pride, jealousy, and over a much longer period of time,  it harms the most those closest to us.

We hate each other – we murder each other in our hearts. A life with impatience, unkindness, unforgiveness, is in some ways more destructive than a shotgun. It’s not an hour and half’s worth of rip roaring fun, it’s a slow death. This is the narrative of our broken world. We are being destroyed, some quicker than others, by the one who is trying to destroy us. And he is using us against each other in his schemes.

In that way, the horror film is less escapist than the romantic comedy.

What makes the horror film oddly comforting (when it’s over) is that there’s no denial that there’s good and evil, and the evil is the disease/signal/death-inducing VHS, and the good is surviving/life/being alive. You leave the theatre afterward reassured that you’re “good” because you’re not stabbing people.

People are messed up and we refuse to admit anything is wrong. So we go on being gluttons and lechers and greedy and consider ourselves alright. We destroy ourselves, and those we claim to love, but we still consider ourselves “good people.”

We are the zombies. We are the Dark Seekers. We are the sick.

We need salvation.

Matt Tapley’s Blog

You may or may not know of Matt Tapley.

He is a pastor and worship leader, and one of those guys that I would love to be able to preach like one day. His daughter is currently going through what I can only presume to be treatment for cancer. He started a blog October 4th when she was diagnosed, and as of today it contains six posts. It’s mind-blowing and shutting me up and making me think.

You should read it.

MattTapley’s Blog

They’ll get theirs

Sometimes when I hear of incredibly successful people, I just assume that life isn’t as beautiful and glossy as it seems for them and that if they’re not suffering or struggling now in life, they will undoubtedly later.

*sigh*

Recently I signed up to “Focus on the Family“’s web community, Young Married Life. I figured it could be helpful see as I am, young, married, and breathing. I heard about this site from Boundless Webzine, which isn’t that well branded as a “Focus on the Family” sub-site so  I’ve never read it within that frame. I just liked some of their articles (to be honest I haven’t read much from the site). But I’m starting to realize just how “Focus on the Family” and “conservative” really means as I read on.

My first clue to its conservative authorship was Rachel Starr Thomas, the author of this awesome article on Bible readin’. I read the article before I knew anything about the author. I didn’t think much of the relation between her lifestyle and the site she was publishing on. I passed it off as an anomaly. Or diversity.

My second clue? This review of “Whip It” and “The Invention of Lying”. This is currently on their front page. Again, I didn’t think too much of the old man (sorry, dude) talking about how there was “too much language and too much inappropriate dialogue”. I just figured – ok, he’s a dad, trying to be cool yet … well, for lack of a better word, conservative.

But here, for me, was the Conservative Clincher.

This response to a blog about the first year of marriage…

The first year [of our marriage] was very blissful and seamless! I was worried, because all the Christian literature I’d read had scared me into thinking it would be “unbelievably tough.” We loved learning how to live with each other. I think we’re both very pliant and laid back, so that probably helped. It also probably helped that I was living with my parents before, so I never became heavily opinionated about how “my life” should be. I think it is also beneficial to recognize the distinction between the different domains of husband and wife, and to know how to respect each other in their domains. For example, I don’t whine at my husband to do the dishes because I don’t see them as his responsibility. He works  hard at work all day, and the dishes are my job (among other things!). I think marriages become tougher when the line between roles is blurred. Just like in any partnership, the responsibilities of each party should be very clear– and each party should respect the other in their roles. If he wants to help me with the dishes, great! If he doesn’t, I don’t grudge him at all, because I see housekeeping as my role. If we were both working from 8 to 5,  the lines would be blurred because we would have essentially the same roles. I’m not against women working before they have children, but I think the traditional model has a good point to it!

Ahh! Ahhhh haaaaa heeeeeh. (That’s me wheezing out of fear, not laughing).

That comment prompted this post (that is, the first paragraph).

I’m trying to figure out what exactly I’m so bothered by.

I think it was word choice. Specifically, “blissful,” “seamless,” “all the Christian literature I’d read,” “pliant,” “I never became heavily opinionated about how ‘my life’ (SHE PUTS IT IN QUOTES!) should be”. It’s good to “recognize the distinction” that apparently is evident in the “domains” of husband and wife. I don’t “whine”. “He works hard at work all day” “the dishes are my job (among other things!)” Man she sounds chipper, eh? “If we were both working 8 to 5, the lines would be blurred…” *oh the horror!* “essentially the same roles” Next thing you know the man’ll be walking around in a dress! And the woman in slacks! …and the CLINCHER… THE CLINCH-ER. “I’m not against women working before they have children” but clearly, you are against women working after they have children. Of course! Is there any other way?