Seven More Things I Think are Pretty True

✛Upcoming Stuff
✛Thanks for Your Investment
✛Todays Publication: Seven More Things I Think are Pretty True

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✛Upcoming Stuff

• ORTLINE ‘26 Open and Relational Theology Online happens this week! Still time to get tix to interact with authors who’ve recently published in the field of open and relational theology.

• Off Canon podcast. New thing Tori E. Owens and I are doing — taking some Substack Live and other conversations and reproducing them on audio on any and all podcasting platforms.

• The Curian Podcast, because I’m commited to saving the world one podcast at a time, where Jill Elizabeth and I have interesting conversations in the context of all things thecurian.network. (Haha, am I the only Substacker who gets irritated when they can’t left-justify a smaller image like this?)

  

✛Thanks for Your Investment

Hey, thank you for your support. I’ve really enjoyed the Substack community over the past couple of years. You might only be giving a few dollars, but it adds up, helping me do some of what I’m good at. Some of my better writing has happened here and certainly some of my best conversations (that usually happen with Tori Owens).

For example, left-justified because they’re larger images, there’s the Jim Palmer conversation …

or the Rev. Benjamin R. Cremer conversation …

or the Sarah Fay, PhD conversation …

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✛Todays Publication: Seven More Things I Think are Pretty True

1-Americanized-christianity feels like a fist in search of a nose. The belief system has become its own judgment.

2-Having interacted with Haiti for over a decade now, here’s what I think is pretty true … the Global North is economically rich and relationally poor while the Global South is economically poor and relationally rich.

3-To lead anything is an invitation to manage one’s own unmet expectations.

4-When you run across someone who’s patient or not easily angered, it doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t experienced injustice; it might mean they’re choosing not to replicate behaviors that contributed to some of the injustice they’ve experienced.

5-At first, the pain you’ll feel over the betrayal of friends and family goes deeper than love. Then you realize that the depth of such pain could really only exist because of love. And honestly, that changes everything.

6-Preachers who conflate biblical and family values while ignoring how many dysfunctional families are actually in the bible will stunt the growth of your family.

7-Much of the insecure, infantile, and controlling behavior playing out across our political-religious-economic landscape cannot be understood at a cognitive, rational level, but as something emerging from a deep-seated psychological infatuation and even eroticization of power.

For example, the white person’s persecution narrative isn’t just a mistaken belief that can be corrected with facts; it’s a fantasy structure that organizes enjoyment of the process itself. Perceived threats to identity, values, or dominance become pathways to psychic enjoyment.*

Intelligent pushback easily backfires because the agitation it creates becomes the fuel to double down on dumb talking points. In this sense, agitation is not a bug in the system; it’s a feature. Obstacles become the point, and the point is psychic enjoyment.

Good Lord, what a mess.

What I think is pretty true is that the grown-ups in the room need to gain awareness here. For example, fact-checking falsehood is important, yes, but doing so without love rarely changes minds. Why? Because love will seek to process hatred, impatience, and reverse-scapegoating outside of the fight, which, among other things, gives neither the religious-nationalist nor the unimaginative-fundamentalist anything to use as fuel.

If an enemy gains love instead of the agitation they’re subconsciously looking for, it will frustrate their endgame. Btw, the real endgame is not beating the other person into oblivion. The real endgame is salvation, wholeness-making, and flourishing for everyone. If love isn’t interested in your enemy, it’s not love. I’m not saying I’m any good at any of this, but neither am I saying that the goalposts have moved. It’s always been and always will be love.

Love in the midst of desire, facts, propaganda, and psychic enjoyment isn’t easy. It’s very hard. You and I are being invited to think creatively; “to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.”

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*Learn more about psychic enjoyment by reading Todd McGowan, or come sit in on conversations I have with friends like Tim Suttle or Trent Sullivan, or see a psychoanalytic therapist. Sooner or later you’ll wrestle with LeCan’s term jouissance.