Going back to the service I was at which was using week 3 of "Christianity explored"....
It contained that standard bit about how if every thing you'd ever thought, every internet site you'd ever visited (this is the updated version!) etc were on display for everyone to see, how bad would you feel?
And this is the effect of sin, but God can forgive you for it...
So I thought about having everything on display. I might be a bit embarrassed, but no-one ever died from embarrassment. People who love me would cope, and why would I care what people who don't love me think? And God knows it all anyway and loves me just the same. Maybe having depression and having lost control rather spectacularly in some extremely embarrassing situations (both work and church) means I don't feel this is such a terrible thing. After all, I've already experienced it to an extent. So I don't have the shame/ guilt/ humiliation issue that you're obviously supposed to have.
I was doing some research for a friend's project, and came across a table showing strategies for gaining and maintaining rank-status (Body Shame, ed Gilbert & Miles, p9). In other words, how do you persuade other people you are important and they should take notice of you?
If the strategy is aggression, the tactics are coercive, threatening and authoritarian: the desired outcome is to be obeyed and to be submitted to: the purpose of the strategy is to inhibit others and stimulate fear.
If the strategy is attractiveness, the tactics are showing talent, showing competence and being relational: the desired outcome is to be valued, to be chosen, to be freely given to: the purpose of the strategy is to inspire/ attract others, to stimulate positive affect.
It struck me that the everything on display approach given above is using the first of these strategies - trying to instil fear and hence submission to God. My reading of the Bible suggests Jesus used the second approach.
Do we need to do something different?
Oh Christmas Tree!
10 hours ago
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