Posts Tagged 'Family'

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve recently completed a practical skills and theory course in conflict.  Lots of thoughts have been swimming around in my head since then.  We covered a lot of material from different vantage points.  Of all of this, the one thing that stood out most to me was the competing forces that exist within conflict.  I’ll write a couple posts on this, which will be paraphrasing information and material that I’m borrowing from my classmates, professors, and readings for the course.

The first force that I observed in our discussions on conflict is the power of perception.  The way we view a conflict has great impact on how the conflict affects us and on how we will handle ourselves and the conflict as we work our way through it.  Conflict can be seen as something evil that should be avoided, or can be viewed as an opportunity for growth.

Specifically, the philosophical way we view conflict is very important.  Most people will view conflict as a punctiliar event or a specific point in space/time.  Thinking geometrically, this perception would view conflict as a singular point in space.  Viewing conflict this way allows us to treat the conflict as a specific event and allows us to describe it as such.  For example, viewing conflict as a point in space gives us the ability to avoid it if we choose.  We can walk around it just like we walk around a piece of furniture or we can store it in a cabinet like a souvenir from our latest vacation.  We can look at it, use it, or avoid it all together.

Viewing conflict as a point in space also allows us to use a very self-centered approach to describing our conflict.  This over-simplified approach to our conflict enables us to consider our perception as the only one that matters.  Since a point is space is easy to name and observe, we can easily place blame on others and be confident in our recollection of events and happenings. Our perception becomes the only one that matters.

While there are certain aspects to conflicts that are specific in space/time, viewing conflict in this way ignores the relational aspect of conflict.  If our desire is to resolve only the specific space/time aspects of a conflict, this is the highest level of philosophical complexity that is required.  For example, if I am injured and my car is damaged in a car crash I may choose to ignore any future relationship with the other person and seek to settle my conflict through litigation.  Myself and the other person will have our perceptions of the space/time event presented to a judge/jury and will have a decision made on our behalf.  A majority of our conflicts, however, will be better served by being resolved with a greater consideration given to the relational value in conflict.

Tomorrow I’ll talk more about that, but I’ll leave you with a true story from today that reveals some of the problems of viewing conflict as a point in time.  One of my BIGGEST pet peeves is when the remote controls go missing in our house.  When a remote disappeared today, I instructed the boys to do nothing else until they found the missing remote.  None of them seemed to have it last, so they were all in it together.  When I came back into the room, I found two children involved in a conflict.  Specifically, one child, red faced, had the other child by the wrist and was staring him down while saying, “Boy… you better get control of yourself and I’m NOT kidding.”  Having been a parent for a combination of 39 years, I knew that they would each have a different account of what had happened that led to this particular situation.

What problems do you see with viewing this conflict as a specific, point in space kind of conflict?

This questions has caused me more trouble than I care to admit. I never felt a strong pull toward what “I am supposed to be”. I’ve joked recently with people my age and older that we still don’t know what we want to be when we grow up. I imagine we’ll figure out one day.

For the last several months, and maybe from the beginning of this blog, my blog has been asking the same question. The focus for my blog has meandered from family to ministry to leadership. It’s tried to balance between personal anecdotes and lessons or devotionals for a more general public. The poor little blog is even torn between whether to be spiritual or technological in nature. Talk about an identity crisis.

After giving it much thought, my blog is not suffering from an identity crisis. My blog is suffering from being too much like its creator: me. As many of us experience, my life is a balancing act between competing agendas. I am simultaneously an individual consumed with my own wants and desires as well as a parent/husband/church leader whose primary responsibility is for the care for others. I am pulled between things I want to do and things I need to do. I walk daily in the gray area between the spiritual and the physical. Throw in a little bit of ADD, infrequent bouts of fatigue and depression, and an ability to be amused and entertained by things that others consider silly and you’ve got the makings for one random life.

As such, I have decided what this blog is supposed to be. As narcissistic as it may sound, this blog is about me. It is about my challenges and my triumphs. It is about my successes and failures. It is about my attempt to do the best I can to make it through this world that we live in without messing things up too badly. That walk includes lessons God is teaching me and will include other characters that share the stage of life with me.  Sometimes those lessons will have a broad focus and sometimes narrow.  The characters may be friends, family, or strangers.  One thing this blog will not be is fake.  You’ll get the real Brad, and hopefully you’ll find him a little charming.

Thanks for sharing this journey with me!

I really don’t, but I wanted something provocative as a title for my blog. Since you’re reading this, it seems to have worked.

I’ve written about race once or twice before following the election of Barack Obama. I grew up in an environment [Please read environment as much bigger than immediate family. My parents were awesome, and encouraged relationships with people of other races.]where racism was (is?) the norm. I’ve told others of how I was assaulted on a regular basis by ethnically Hispanic peers on almost a daily basis in middle school. I developed such a dislike for all things Hispanic that I intentionally failed the semester of Spanish required by the great state of Texas. My best friend in middle school was African American. This one fact was the reason he wasn’t allowed to join my family on our Thanksgiving trips.

As an adult, I’ve tried to intentionally seek multi-cultural situations within which I could have a dialog with members of other ethnic groups. I’ve traveled internationally. My previous congregation was split evenly among native European Americans (think ‘White People’) and Hispanic immigrants. I’ve been blessed to have friends that are African American that will tolerate me asking pointed questions about race relations. All this, I thought, helped me gain a better understanding of culture and a greater sensitivity to race.

A few years ago I read the book “Freakonomics” and learned of a facial sorting activity that Harvard University developed to identify subconscious preferences for either European Americans or African Americans. It’s a little tricky, but after you complete the survey and a very neat facial sorting activity, it provides you with an evaluation as to whether you prefer blacks to whites and vice versa. After viewing your results, it takes you to a page with overall results from all participants, which is a little surprising.

I’ll share my results with you, but only after I give you a few days to take the instrument first. If you’re brave enough, share your results in the comments section. Remember this is subconscious associations, which we may or may not be directly responsible for. Feel free to tell us if/why you agree/disagree with your results.

To take the instrument, visit http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit and then:

• On the main page, select ‘Demonstration’ and read the introductory statement.
• Click “Go to the Demonstration Tests,” read the preliminary information.
• Click “I wish to proceed” agreeing with the statement.
• Scroll down to the “Race IAT” button and select it.
• Continue following instructions through to the completion of the test.