{"id":34831,"date":"2024-01-11T19:56:22","date_gmt":"2024-01-12T03:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=34831"},"modified":"2024-01-11T19:56:22","modified_gmt":"2024-01-12T03:56:22","slug":"i-trapped-friends-in-my-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/i-trapped-friends-in-my-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"I Trapped Friends in my Pain!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have always enjoyed preaching, teaching, training, podcasting, and hosting workshops. About 90% of the time, I am asked to speak on topics such as:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Trauma\u2019s impact on the body, brain, immune system, or nervous system.<\/li>\n
  2. How to help the body heal from childhood trauma?<\/li>\n
  3. How pornography and\/or sex addiction wires the brain.<\/li>\n
  4. Generational trauma<\/li>\n
  5. Understanding epigenetics to understand how to heal severe trauma.<\/li>\n
  6. How to help husbands or wives heal from childhood molestation and\/or emotional abuse.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But in the fall of 2020, I was asked to speak at a leadership conference, be a guest on a podcast, and speak at my church on the issues surrounding the racial unrest in our country and world. I truly believe I was chosen because I was known for speaking on touchy subjects the Church struggled to address such as rape, molestation, and helping leaders to recover from their sexually struggles. But I also believe I was asked because I am an African American. People identified me as a person who should know the answers to dealing with the unrest in our country. I read everything I could get my hands on:<\/p>\n

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    1. Dear White America by Tim Wise<\/li>\n
    2. How to Fight Racism by Jemar Tisby<\/li>\n
    3. Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi<\/li>\n
    4. White Fragility by Dr. Robin DiAngelo<\/li>\n
    5. The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby<\/li>\n
    6. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander<\/li>\n
    7. Good White Racist by Kerry Connelly<\/li>\n
    8. Biased by Jennifer L. Eberhardt<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The result of all my one-sided reading, dialoguing, and researching was I ended up as part of the identity trap. I had no idea my viewpoint was becoming deeply polarizing. It came to a head one day in the fall of 2020 when I responded to a guy in my church. This young man who is Caucasian said, that when he was younger, he experienced racism. I responded by saying, \u201cSince you are white you cannot experience racism.\u201d He responded by saying he truly did experience racism and we left it at that. A good friend lovingly confronted me a year later to let me know he and his wife were deeply hurt and offended by my statement. Within a week, the Lord had reconciled our friendship. I say all of this to show how easy it is to become a part of the identity trap. \u201cThe new focus on categories of group identity like race, gender, and sexual orientation is motivated by disappointment and anger at the persistence of real injustices…and yet I have grown convinced that the identity synthesis will prove deeply counterproductive.\u201d1 <\/sup>Mounk was right, all my work had proved to be counterproductive. Mounk gives more insight into prioritizing identity.<\/p>\n

      If we prioritize identity over universalism, we make the world worse both for the dominant and the marginalized, Mounk contends. His argument shows how what he calls \u201cidentity synthesis\u201d2<\/sup> originated; how it spread from the corridors of academe into the mainstream and claimed victory over all institutions; what\u2019s wrong with it; and how to put it all right. By \u201cidentity synthesis\u201d he means the \u201crole that identity categories like race, gender and sexual orientation play in the world\u201d3<\/sup>. It\u2019s a coinage made necessary by the fact that: \u201cNowadays, anybody who talks about identity politics or describes an activist as woke is liable to be perceived as an old man yelling at the clouds,\u201d4<\/sup> he writes.<\/p>\n

      The trap is that by placing group identity at the center of all discourse, it locks in a victim mentality and a pattern of destructive conflict. Mounk also notes that identity politics deliberately ignores the social progress made since the 1960s. For years, identity politics was a marginal academic interest, but the explosion of social media and the election of Donald Trump took it mainstream. It found its way into media organizations, government agencies, corporations, and schools, and its advocates were always ready to shout down and punish anyone who disagreed. For it to spin out of control, Mounk writes, it only requires that good people stay silent.<\/p>\n

      I have been crawling out of my muddy identity trap hole for about 2 years and Mounk\u2019s book has really given me a huge boost, encouragement, and affirmation for the way I have been thinking lately. On pages 282-284 he has five ways to escape the identity trap. I\u2019m rephrasing four of his main points to fit into my life and business.<\/p>\n

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      1. Helping myself and others realize the advantage to being tolerant toward different points of view. \u201cIn humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others.\u201d5 <\/sup><\/li>\n
      2. Listen to all parties involved instead of the loudest or most educated voice. \u201cEveryone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.\u201d6<\/sup><\/li>\n
      3. Stop people from bullying each other on social media. \u201cObscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes-these are not for you. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God.\u201d7 <\/sup><\/li>\n
      4. Don\u2019t accuse people before you have all the facts. \u201cEveryone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.\u201d8<\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Even though I have gone back to training and speaking on my favorite topics involving trauma, I continue to look for ways others and even myself unknowingly speak well of the identity trap because \u201cthe identity trap, such conservatives warn, holds out a utopian vision of a perfectly just society. But in practice, it would merely succeed in tearing down the guardrails that have for the past decades allowed members of different ethnic and religious groups to live alongside each other in relative peace.\u201d9<\/sup><\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Mounk, Yascha. The Identity Trap<\/em>. 13.<\/li>\n
        2. Ibid. 8.<\/li>\n
        3. Ibid. 9.<\/li>\n
        4. Ibid. 15.<\/li>\n
        5. Philippians 2:3-4. NIV.<\/li>\n
        6. James 1:19. NIV.<\/li>\n
        7. Ephesians 4:5. NIV.<\/li>\n
        8. James 1:19. NIV<\/li>\n
        9. Mounk, Yascha. The Identity Trap. <\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          \n

          \n

          \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          I have always enjoyed preaching, teaching, training, podcasting, and hosting workshops. About 90% of the time, I am asked to speak on topics such as: Trauma\u2019s impact on the body, brain, immune system, or nervous system. How to help the body heal from childhood trauma? How pornography and\/or sex addiction wires the brain. Generational trauma […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[2978],"class_list":["post-34831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-mounk-dlgp02","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34832,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34831\/revisions\/34832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}