Miniseries for the Mind Part 1! A suspenseful symposium on support!

Since this thing is very long I had the idea of breaking it up into managable sections each dealing with one part of the whole. Here is the intro and first segment I'll post more of it soonish

This post reflects the thoughts and intellectual machinations of a rather lengthy chat me and Bic had on our ride home from Notre Dame. As tends to happen when one reexamines previous work new thoughts have occurred to me and so have been included. Our chat centered around the off mentioned, but perhaps rarely discussed, theoretical notion of support in the Christian life. So here is a systematic approach to support, and it’s role in Christian living.

Support, is a very familiar notion in our life, one that I think most of us grant it is necessary or at the very least helpful in living the Christian life. I think it is also a fairly complex notion that carries many different connotations for different people and places. We all can name types of support, examples of it, and it’s effects, but I think the reason behind it all is far more opaque, which is what we discovered and we got deeper and deeper into discussion. The trouble lies in really nailing down what support does, in terms of actual effect vs in terms of the results it garners. This is not to claim that we have no idea what support is, I’ve granted that we use it quite regularly, as a non-mechanic manages to operate a car with no knowledge of what the engine is doing. This examination is of the sort that looks at the workings of the engine.

We can enumerate two major categories of support, what I will call Substitutive Support and Facilitative Support. Substitutive Support is of the type we generally think of, the classic “how’s your prayer life” sort of support. This type centers around almost entirely the notion of being held accountable by others. It is the kind of support in which you let others into your life in a very intimate manner. You allow yourself to be held accountable by a support group, be it mens/womens group, household, etc. It is an allowing of others help where you fail in your own struggles towards being a better person. Since it is probably the most familar type let's deal with it first.

Substitutive Support

Now I called this type of support substitutive for a very apt reason; because this sort of support acts as a substitute for ones own self-knowledge (deep, I know). If we were to ask why we need to have others hold us accountable, what would be the answer. I think it is really an obvious one. We have others hold us accountable because we cannot do it ourselves. Isn’t being held accountable just having others hold a mirror up to us, reflecting our faults and shortcomings back at us. We do it because the mirror we hold up to ourselves is poor at reflecting. I think the reason for why one would be ill equipped to hold up their own mirror is apparent; it is due to a lack of self-knowledge. Substitutive support fills in for ones lack in self knowledge by surrounding ones self with people that can/are willing to hold up mirrors for you when you cannot.

Practically speaking this type tends to be of the sort found in a defined “support structure” such as weekly smalls groups. It is very systematic and therefore lends itself to formulaic application for a very wide range of people. That is to say that Substitutive support does not differ in practice much from one person to another. In one sense it is the practical advice we get (albeit caters to a very specific domain of spiritual matters) Such as “don’t go there then” or “don’t try and pray when tired.” It is the simple forumalaic nature of this type that allows for the robust support systems we are familiar with. However another consequence is that it doesn’t leave much left in an individual when the structure disappears.

Continueing the analogy of the mirror—if ones has others holding up your mirrors it stands to reason that when these people leave so do the mirrors. Now it is only a practical issue when the support system breaks down. Allow me a quick digression, I think it is this point, intuitively or subconsciously is understood by those in the structure and due to this tend to put a large emphasis keeping people ‘in’ and a afraid of a loss of faith in those who do leave. This may lead to that familiar sense of ‘distrust’ of the outside, and to a certain degree, the individual. Just a thought that occurred to me while writing, and I mean no value judgment on the observation, just that it may be.

Back to the case in point; I think there is something important to be said about the dependant nature of substitutive support. It helpful in many practical ways but this fact can mask the fact that personal growth may not be as advanced as one may think. Substitutive support does not lend itself towards personal growth in the sense that it does not give one much that is not dependant on others. Now while we, as social creatures, will always be in some sense dependant on others that is not to say that our own growth be inextricably tied to others. Ones’ faith should be their own and must exist on its own. In fact a good indication of a lack of personal conviction in faith is can be a quick loss of it outside a support structure.