Crabby
Detox
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When
I was but a wee lad, one of my dad's many job transfers took us
to Chattanooga,
Tennessee. It was a beautiful place, although apparently Canucks
talk funny, according to the locals. And while we lived there, we
discovered that Southern hospitality in Chattanooga is alive and
well.
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We also learned
various slang expressions, and folklore wisdom of the Southerners (although
our immediate neighbours were an Italian family from New Yawk and had
the accents to prove it), but I can't honestly remember if I first heard
about crab-in-a-bucket behaviour while I was there or not.
It's a fairly
well-known story that you can put one crab in a bucket, and it can easily
escape. But if you put several crabs -- even a LOT of crabs -- within
easy reach of the rim, they'll never get out. If a crab attempts to escape,
the others simply reach up and pull them back down.
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picture reminds me of a potential trap to be found when people go
through detoxing from church in a group setting. Sometimes, people
who are in detox join an existing house or simple church, and find
safety and healing. Also common is when "a whole whack of"
people (another colloquilism apparently peculiar to Canada, or so
friends in California tell me) who are ALL in detox start their own
group. And that's where crab mentality can show up. |
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These groups
start off as a place of safety and nurture, as people feel free to share
their stories and be heard and understood by others who have been through
the same thing (often from the same church). But as time goes on, when
you'd expect to see at least some of the people starting to come back
to life again, there instead seems to be a perpetual commitment to staying
angry, bitter, and cynical.
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As
soon as one person starts to show signs of returning spiritual and
emotional health, and ventures to share this with the group, they
are immediately pulled back into the vortex of cynicism by their crabbishly-endowed
group. It's REVENGE OF THE CRABS, with their patron saint Mordac
the Preventer. |
Sadly, I've
seen some situations where those who were -- for lack of a better phrase
-- "coming back to life" actually felt they had no other recourse
but to leave the group behind, in order to escape the Crabbites. This
tended to produce a second, albeit much milder and shorter-lived, period
of detoxing from the disillusionment of what they'd hoped for in the home
group versus how it turned out.
I know I've
made this plea here several times before, but please indulge me yet again:
We
all talk about "journey" -- and even the original byline of
this blog was "robbymac: an ecclesiastical anarchist's journey"
-- but we need to respect where others are at in their journey as much
as we'd like them to respect our journey. And that has to include allowing
people to come to terms with how they will relate to the larger Body of
Christ around them, without imposing some kind of uniformity enforced
by cynicism.
Hindsight 2010:
The tag "ecclesiastical anarchist" was given to me in 2002 by Gary Best, then-National Director of Vineyard Canada, during a plenary session at a Vineyard Pastors Conference in Regina. He meant it as a joke, and I thought it would be a funny line for my blog, as anyone who knew me - or read my blog - would surely realize that anarchy was not my intent. Sometimes, it back-fired, but you can't please all the people all the time. :) |
Some people
may stay in house churches for the rest of their lives. Others may return
to a more "institutional" setting, perhaps even -- *GASP* --
the same church they left. Does that make them a "sell-out"?
A quitter? No longer considered part of the Enlightened Remnant?
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And
finally, have you ever seen a happy crab? One capable of being extremely
jaded and simultaneously Christ-like? If you have, please adjust
your medication let me know. |
©2003-2010
Rob McAlpine
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