Life at the intersection of Grace and Growth.
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We all have friends, and we all know what it’s like when friendship goes wrong. Today, in a bonus episode, we’re doing our first ever Apprenticeship Way interview with Mary DeMuth who has just written a book called The Seven Deadly Friendships. I want to introduce you to Mary because I think she’s someone you should know, and her book may prove helpful to you.
It’s happening right now.
Somewhere a Christian is talking to another person. Something’s wrong and the Christian feels that right now–in this moment–they have to say something.
I know this is happening right now, because it happens all the time. And not just from Christians. This is something that humans do with vigor. Some call it “just keepin’ it real.” Some call it being authentic. What’s worse? In church world this is often called, “Speaking the truth in love.”
Now, I’ve been on both sides of this conversation. I’ve been the corrector. A lot. I’ve also been the correctee. So I know how this feels on both sides—and it’s not about love at all.
The speaker feels like they’ve been courageous. They have done the hard thing and spoken the truth. The listener feels like they were kicked in the gut. They feel judged, belittled, misunderstood. The last thing on their mind is changing or growing or even talking with this person again.
Is this how it should go down?
So, is the Pope a kidnapper?
On March 13th the white smoke billowed and the world was introduced to the new leader of the Catholic faith. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio went into the conclave and came out Francis the 1st.
The news was first celebratory. The first pope from the Americas! A Latin American pope! A pope who is an advocate for the poor! A pope who seems, from credible sources, to not be blinded by pomp, power, and benefits. This seems stunning and full of hopeful possibilities.
Then something happened. The talking heads started talking about darker things. The pope had tied to the military government of Argentina during the “Dirty War” in the ’70s. The pope failed to advocate for kidnapping victims, or maybe, had even delivered those victims to the kidnappers to be tortured!
Now, I can’t speak to the new pope’s past. As a dyed in the wool protestant, I’m a little down on the idea of popes in general. But as I heard the news developing, I remembered that the very same thing happened when Cardinal Ratzinger became the pope. Within days of his appointment, the news was swamped in stories about the cardinal’s youthful connections to the Nazis.
The pope is for many people a spiritual leader. He leads the largest Christian denomination. Many Catholics still consider his official words to be infallible. The idea that such a leader has blood on his hands is deeply disturbing, right?
Well, maybe.
The odds are stacked against you. It’s 9-to-1 that you won’t change. That’s not a made-up internet statistic (85% of statistics quoted on the internet are made up on the spot. Really.) That statistic comes from research on patients diagnosed with heart disease, cited in the book Change or Die by Alan Deutschman.
These patients were told the truth of their situation. They were given clear, do-able steps they could take to increase the length of their lives. For them to not change was to choose an early death. And yet, 9 out of 10 never made the change. Deutschman’s book goes on to look at the 10%, the ones who did make the change. How did they do it? What set them apart?
In the last post, “Change Your Life? Then Find These 3 Things” I summarized the three necessary elements that lead to real and lasting life change. Today, we’re going to dig into the first of these. Deutschman labelled it “Relate.”
