Emotional First Aid video
Psychologist Guy Winch talks about humans' urgent need to give themselves "emotional first aid" on a par with treatment for physical ailments.
John Wesley was a master at "plundering the Egyptians," that is, taking ideas and expressions from the secular world and turning them into tools for God. I was reminded of that gift this week when I viewed my weekly dose of TED talks.
TED is a mind-expanding phenomenon that has swept the globe. According to its website: "TED was born in 1984 out of Richard Saul Wurman's observation of a powerful convergence among three fields: technology, entertainment and design." The first invitation-only conference lost money and its future looked bleak. Wurman and his partner Harry Marks persisted, however, and by 2000 the conference became an annual highlight for some of the world's most creative thinkers and doers. Media entrepreneur Chris Anderson acquired the rights to TED conferences in 2001, and eventually the conference expanded to more offerings, especially revamping around free online videos of the best conference content.
Why should something like strictly nonpartisan and nonsectarian TED serve as an example for The United Methodist Church? I find many aspects of its operation potentially beneficial to the UMC's struggles with structure, polity and global identity, but what most impresses me about many TED talks is how the speakers deeply penetrate the most essential longings of the human spirit and human community, what Viktor Frankl calls the "search for ultimate meaning." Once the Church's held sole province over this search for meaning. The fact that a nonprofit secular organization has taken over this function tells us much from the start.
In a short time similar to a sermon, TED Talks often can delve into some of our most profound longings. That's where I found myself this week when I watched the video featuring Swedish-American psychologist Guy Winch talking about "emotional first aid." For some reason – perhaps the Holy Spirit at work on my preoccupation – I drew connections between Winch's talk about humans' emotional health and the state of The United Methodist Church.
The psychologist offered a simple premise: We humans give preference to ailments of the body over ailments of the mind, when in order to be truly healthy, we must tend to our emotional ills with as much diligence as we tend to our bodily injuries.
Winch's statement struck me the way blinding light hit Paul on the Damascus Road. What an apt description of the state of The United Methodist Church! We keep tending to our bodily ailments – how to organize our general agencies, our judicatory regions, our orders of ministry, our beliefs and theological methods, down to even the structure of local congregations – when these may only be symptoms of the true emotional illness that threatens our ongoing existence. In Winch's own words: "How is it we spend more time taking care of our teeth than we do our minds?"
Winch pointed out that we sustain psychological injuries such as failure, rejection and loneliness far more often than physical injuries. After 27 years of observing The United Methodist Church at all its levels, it's heartbreaking to me to recollect how often we have inflicted these kinds of hurts on ourselves and one another when our whole reason for being is to share God's unconditional love with the world (see John 3:16, 17, among many other scriptures).
For example, in the two-plus decades of which I speak, the UMC has focused on our sense of failure through obsessively counting the numerical decline in membership. Yet how often have we counterbalanced that sense of failure with the stories of the quality of life we've experienced through the church? Particularly through the past decade of turmoil, my husband John and I have often remarked to one another how we could not have survived the stresses on our lives without the support of our United Methodist congregation. How many of us would gladly say the same about our own churches? But how often do we share our stories of hope and encouragement with others?
Take rejection as another example. We, the Church, have set ourselves up as the purveyors of rejection because we cling to the fallacy that it is not God but we who decide who and what is worthy. This sets the Church at odds with the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, who scandalized the religious authorities of his day by eating and drinking with tax collectors and other "sinners." We are ALL sinners, fallen short of the glory that God intends for us. What if we were to suffer with one another as we struggle through the challenges of our lives, rather than condemning one another for the sins to which we all fall prey? What if we were to practice the "generous orthodoxy" that popular church expert Brian McLaren advocates?
And loneliness. Ah, the loneliness. Even in an Easter Sunday crowd there are people who long for a phone call or some other acknowledgement that they are known and loved beyond the resources they bring to sustain the institutional church. Winch calls this loneliness "social and emotional disconnection from those around you." We suffer from it in the United Methodist Church far more than any of us would like to admit. And it's life-threatening, as Winch points out: Individually, chronic loneliness increases our likelihood of an early death by 14 percent. I wonder how that applies to institutions like the Church?
There is much more to Guy Winch's talk than I can recount here, so I encourage you to watch the entire 17-1/2-minute video. I suspect that you will find even more resemblance to the emotional state of The United Methodist Church than I have. In closing, I invite you to consider this thought:
Elsewhere in this issue of United Methodist Insight, Pastor Ron Bell Jr. notes that the "Hannah's cry" of today's Millennial generation is "relationship." What if we United Methodists were to work harder on strengthening our relationships -- the "connection" that we claim with such pride -- than we were to define and divide ourselves through doctrine and polity? What if we made these ideas – tending to our individual and corporate emotional health through improving our relationships with God and one another – the guiding principle for approving any legislation at the 2016 General Conference?
If the great church father Irenaeus was right, that the glory of God is a human life fully lived, then perhaps we'd be surprised at what we find when we heal ourselves in mind and soul as well as body.
A veteran journalist and certified spiritual director, Cynthia B. Astle serves as coordinator for United Methodist Insight.