No perfect people allowed

I read a few quotes in No perfect people allowed and have been thinking about them since I finished reading it.

First Henry Cloud:

"In his book How people grow Henry Cloud says:

"People's most basic need in life is relationship. People connected to other people thrive and grow, and those not connected wither and die. It is a medical fact, for example, that from infancy to old age, health depends on the amount of social connection people have.......Virtually every emotional and psychological problem, from addictions to depression has alienation and emotional isolation at its core"

[No perfect people allowed Page 114]

Second, Larry Crabb:

"Larry Crabb , the psychologist and biblical counsellor has spent a quarter of a century puzzling over how people heal and grow and he came to this conclusion

“When two people connect……something is poured out of one and into the other that has the power to heal the soul of its deepest wounds and restore it to health…..In recent days, I have made a shift. I am now working toward the day when communities of God’s people, ordinary Christians whose lives regularly intersect, will accomplish most of the good that we now depend on mental health professionals to provide. And they will do it by connecting with each other in ways that only the gospel can make possible”

A few years ago, I had my first encounter with a University Mission after having been a Christian for 15 years. I was not a Christian at University and this encounter with students was my first and has stayed with me ever since. What struck me was the extreme relational disconnection. They were very fearful, religious, joyless and were all reading books about gender which seemed an odd choice to have at the top of the list of books young disciples needed to reading. They were not only fearful of anyone who was not a Christian but also of other Christians who did not share their theological outlook. What was the most difficult for mission is that few appeared to have any friends or healthy relationships with others (Burke calls this 'Connecting through affinity' Page 280). Our affinities it became clear were limited and they were, I concluded, one of the most unhappy communities I have ever come across.

This has stayed with me as one of the weirder expressions of Christian community and mission I have witnessed. Since then, I have had to admit that the Church as a whole is rather good on occasions at being similarly life-less, odd, disconnected and judgmental and perhaps that is why so often we are so ineffective at connecting with people and their needs (as No perfect people observes). I do have a caveat, that my experience of University mission was not I hope representative of CU's generally but I only have one to go on.

Dallas Willard has observed a similar thing of Christians generally as quoted in No perfect people:

"How many people are radically and permanently repelled from the Way by Christians who are unfeeling, stiff, unapproachable, boringly life-less, obsessive and dissatisfied? Yet such Christians are everywhere, and what they are missing is a wholesome liveliness......of God's loving rule..."Spirituality" wrongly understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God"

[Page 208]

I enjoyed this book and John Burke has shared his heart and his learning helpfully. There are rather too many personal story case studies (quite a few I skipped) and lots of apologetics (skipped a bit of this too) but there is much to be challenged by and to think on.