church and dysfunctional family

I’m reading an excellent book by by the Jungian analyst James Hollis called “FInding Meaning in the Second Half of Life“. On his chapter on family, he wonders what would happen to our lives and to our world if parents could “unconditionally affirm the child“, saying in so many words:

You are precious to us; you will always have our love and support; you are here to be who you are; try never to hurt another, but never stop trying to become yourself as fully as you can; when you fall and fail, you are still loved by us and welcomed to us, but are also here to leave us, and to go onward toward your own destiny without having to worry about pleasing us.

Of course, I find this an excellent analogy for the church. Even though I experienced so much good within the church, largely my experience was the opposite of the above. The church’s words, in my experience, were more like:

You are precious to us as long as you toe the line; you will always have our love and support as long as you conform; you are here to be who you are meant to be; try never to hurt another unless it is necessary in the Lord, and be willing to be hurt by us because it will be the Lord; your real self is sinful so don’t try to be yourself; when you fall and fail, we will express our love for you through discipline, and if you don’t comply you will no longer be welcomed, but that’s of your own doing; you are here to stay, but if you leave it is only if we send you out with a blessing to reproduce exactly what we have here; and if you go on to follow your path you are on your own and we will not be pleased until you return repentant like the prodigal son.

What if the church chose to embrace and proclaim the first quote with sincerity and conviction? In my opinion, this would be true evangelism and a revolutionary kind of church-planting where new, diverse and unique communities of unconditional love would crop up all over the place.

Instead, we witness a remarkable disintegration of church life and reproduction because the level of conformity required is too demanding, soul-killing and life-sucking. It creates a path of pain and a world of woundedness. Instead of a flourishing of rich layers of expression, we see departures of so many unwilling to ever be associated again with such a dysfunctional model of family and relationship.

I’m determined, as I hope you might be, in being ambassadors of the first quote. That is good news.