Hi, I am a follower of Jesus. My given name is Ryan, my family name is Thorson. I have lived almost all of my life in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America in the late 20th and early 21st century. I have been married to my best friend for almost twenty years and we have four wonderful kids, 3 who are biological and 1 who is adopted. I am Caucasian, heterosexual and a male who can trace my ancestry back to the Mayflower. I am a pastor of a large, small church of 200 people. I have a high school degree, a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature where I played Division 2 American Football and I have a Master of Divinity from George Fox University. I like to flyfish, read poetry and go on adventures. I live in a progressive university town that is mostly white but says it believes in equality and justice for all. My wife teaches at a public school, I pastor a traditionally ‘evangelical’ church (its our middle name…ugh) and my kids go to a conversative Christian private school…for now. I’m writing this post while at the laundromat in the town I live in because our dryer is broken at home and I couldn’t repair a light bulb if I tried.<\/p>\n
So who am I?<\/p>\n
I am me.<\/p>\n
Writing this bio was a good exercise for me, and hopefully gave you a small insight into who I am. And, while I potentially overshared and gave you (and the internet) a lot of data about who I am, even all of what I have written does not contain the complexity of who I am, what has shaped me, and who I might become. In writing this bio, I struggled with what words to use, what order to put them in and when to stop, cognizant of the lenses I was using to introduce myself, as well as the way the effect of those words might cause you to interpret who I am.<\/p>\n
Which items I shared on my list surprised you? Which disappointed you? Which ones had the most influence on the opinion you are forming of me?<\/p>\n
Yascha Mounk’s book\u00a0The Identity Trap<\/em> describes well the various lenses we’ve used to identity, separate and even subjugate people over centuries in the Western World. In response, many well meaning people, in search of justice, have fallen into the same trap as their predecessors and will unintentionally create a similarly divided world.<\/p>\n The way in which our reactionary world has begun to see itself through the limited lenses of gender, sexuality and ethnicity in order to promote and advance “liberty and justice for all” has not always bothered me. In fact, I’ve championed it at times when it has seemed appealing to accomplish my deeply held values of freedom, compassion and grace that come from my upbringing and my belief in a God who died to give everyone person who ever lived those same values. But something has felt off, I’ve felt strained and stretched like putty or gum that is growing thin at the center. This book has finally broken the thread in the center.<\/p>\n Mounk’s book was a welcome respite from either-or thinking and helped me put language and framework around some of the concerns or problems I have seen with identity synthesis thinking in recent years. As someone who is progressive in conservative circles, it has been easier to observe and critique the more conservative ideology and way of thinking because it is more familiar. In a therapeutic rejection of the ideology of Manifest Destiny that drove my answers to oppress and harm so many, I have sought to salve the shame and right the wrongs of previous generations. Because I am drawn towards justice and drawn towards equality (values that I believe to be deeply Christian) it has been easy to adopt the identity synthesis in recent years as ways of seeking to steward the experience I’ve had and the position of influence I am in.<\/p>\n But Mounk’s book has reminded me, not only that there is a way forward in our country and society that re-centers our focus on the values of freedom and equality, but that, ultimately, those will only be experienced with the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom in my life and in my community. His suggestions as ways to argue the Identity Trap\u00a0<\/em>are a great map forward if they are incorporated into a Christ-centered view of each person made in the image of God, ally and enemy, and a belief that it is ultimately the self-sacrificial power of the cross that will break the bonds of injustice in our world. May it begin with me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi, I am a follower of Jesus. My given name is Ryan, my family name is Thorson. I have lived almost all of my life in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America in the late 20th and early 21st century. I have been married to my best friend for almost twenty years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36427","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\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36429,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36427\/revisions\/36429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}