Sturtz Stuff

The Old Testament prophets are often placed in the category of being fortune tellers. After all it is the prophets, such as Isaiah, that talk about the day when God’s Messiah will come. However, the prophets are offering us something more. The Prophets help us connect the dots between the world as it is and the world as it might be. A small example of this can be found in reading Jeremiah 4:11-12 and 23-28. Reading up to and including 4:11-12 the people have become numb and apathetic towards God. Yet the prophet is out to jolt the people out of their collective denial and into the reality that human sin has wide ranging effects. Jeremiah offers a terrible warning that “a scorching wind” is coming their way. Yet, just like us, the people remain in their denial. Verse 22 describes the people as “senseless children” with no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil without any perception of how to do good. The community is on the path of self-destruction. Even with this heartbreak...

Chronically anxious families and societies and church communities have five key characteristics. These characteristics come from Edwin Friedman's book A Failure of Nerve. The page notations in parentheses are from A Failure of Nerve.  Reactivity Instead of self-regulation, the regressed society, family or church community is characterized by reactivity. Communication is characterized by ‘you’ statements (‘you are so pig-headed!’, ‘you are just like her!, You are the problem.). Highly reactive systems are a panic in search of a trigger. Friedman sees this same reactivity within American society, where people constantly interfere with others’ self-expression, react to them on a hair-trigger, take disagreement far too seriously, and ‘brand the opposition with ad hominem personal epithets (chauvinist, ethnocentric, homophobic, and so on)’ (64). Leaders dealing with systems that are reactive often become less imaginative and eventually are worn down to the point that th...