(For and) Against Relationshipism
Why the Bible Does Not (and Cannot) Teach "Relationships"
For
"Relationships" is the ultimate value of MBTI
Feelers. I call the promotion of that value "Relationshipism". Because
the American church is run by and for the exclusive benefit of Feelers
and Feeler wannabes, it is important for Relationshipists to find "relationships"
in their foundational document, the Bible (if they care about it). The
more conservative pastors and teachers all claim it is taught there, but
they are silent about exactly where it is to be found. I have not found
any place in all the Bible where "relationships" is taught as a positive
value to be sought. The word does not occur in the Bible. No word with
any similar meaning can be found there.
The best anybody can do is find a few (half-dozen or less) places where
the Bible encourages a particular kind of connectivity (to God), but that
is not what Relationshipists usually mean by their Relationshipism.
There (above) you see the complete argument for "relationships" in the
Bible.
You can find a much stronger argument for "molecules"
in the Bible. Like "relationships", the word "molecules" is not in the
Bible, nor any synonym of it. But there is plenty of teaching about physical
objects -- all of them made of molecules. God created the molecules, and
commanded His people to form some of them into particular objects, and
(this is important) God Himself became "flesh" (molecules) and dwellt among
us. Of course there are no Moleculists, nobody arguing for Moleculism and
claiming it is taught in the Bible. Why? Because Moleculism is not a value
important to a large class of people running the churches.
Ought
There are relationships described in the Bible. There are relationships
everywhere. Everything is in relation to something or another. Draw three
"unconnected" dots on a piece of paper and they are still connected to
each other by the piece of paper and the hand that drew them and the color
of their ink. There are molecules everywhere. Everything is made of molecules.
Even those dots on the paper are made from molecules. So also is the paper.
It is a logical fallacy to argue from "is" to "ought", to infer moral
imperative from a description of something that exists. The Bible describes
relationships. The Bible describes physical material objects (molecules).
But that's not the same as teaching them as normative. The Bible describes
sin, but it does not teach that everyone must become a sinner. We already
are. God teaches rather that we should "stop sinning."
1+2C
The foremost moral demand of the Bible, according to Jesus, is the First
and Second Great Commandments (1+2C). It might be argued that obedience
to 1+2C creates a relationship, and therefore the relationship is also
commanded. The premise is actually false; the relationship is created by
the command, not by obedience to it. The relationship merely exists; it
is the obedience that is commanded. Furthermore, like the molecules we
are made of, the relationship is irrelevant to the command. If it were
important, God would have said so -- somewhere. God said no such thing.
Reciprocity
It is the nature of relationships that two more parties are involved. One
person is not a relationship. Therefore, if God were to make "relationship"
a moral imperative, it would necessarily be a command directed at two or
more people and successfully obeyed only when both or all of them are in
compliance. Thus if God had commanded Adam and Eve to be in relationship
(He did not, but let's suppose), then if Adam obeys and Eve refuses, Adam
also has failed.
This is a very strange moral situation, where obedience to God's command
is contingent on some other person. Nowhere in the Bible are you made morally
culpable for another person's moral failure to which you gave no assent.
Did Adam sin when Eve ate the fruit? No, Adam sinned when Adam ate the
fruit. In fact, Eve was deceived. The blame is entirely on Adam -- because
Adam ate the fruit willingly. Relationship as a moral imperative is therefore
immoral, because you become a sinner unwillingly.
For God to require of us "relationships" thus makes God unrighteous.
But God is Holy and Righteous and Just. Therefore God cannot morally require
"relationship". And God does not require it. It is not taught in the Bible.
What is taught can be obeyed unconditionally, regardless of what the other
party does or does not do. You can "Love your neighbor as yourself" even
if he hates you back. Loving your enemies is an explicit virtue, taught
by Jesus.
Definitions
The word "relationship" has many meanings, some of them in the dictionary,
many more only implicit in the actual use of the word by Relationshipists.
The analysis here mostly does not depend on which definition is chosen,
so long as you use it consistently.
Tom Pittman
2009 April 25, revised 09 Aug 28
Links
The arguments (For and) Against Relationshipism
(you are here)
The Counterfeit Religion of Relationships, comparing
Relationshipism to 1+2C
Relationships, concluding that people
mean "affirmation" by that word
Relationshipism, defining the term
(2008 October 31 blog post)
God of Truth, a draft of what
might eventually become a book
Men Are from Mars, a list of specific Thinker/Feeler
differences
The bottom of my home page, a challenge
to do something about it
Thinker/Feeler Distinction
(October 27 blog post)
Relationshipists Respond
Here are some of the arguments people who have read this essay bring in
defense of their religion.
Trinity
Several people mentioned the doctrine of the Trinity as an example of something
the Bible teaches but the word is nowhere to be found. I agree that the
Bible teaches the Trinity among other things, but it is not "everywhere
in the Bible." There is in fact no single verse that teaches the whole
concept. The Trinity is too hard to understand for that to be true. It
took the Christian church a couple hundred years of diligent study to figure
out what the doctrine is, before they could even give it a name. The word
"Trinity" is a made-up word to describe a very obscure doctrine that few
people even understand. The Bible is not about the Trinity.
Relationships are not obscure. Relationships are everywhere. Everybody
understands relationships. There are (a few) verses in the Bible that teach
particular kinds of relationships, but not relationships in general. There
are Greek and Hebrew words that (more or less) mean "relationship", just
as there are other English words, like "connected" that more or less mean
the same thing. If the connectedness were the point of any particular Biblical
teaching, the translators -- honest people, every one of them -- would
have used "relationship" to express what is being taught. They did not.
There is a reason for that.
There is no Greek or Hebrew word that means "Trinity" (nor anything
like it) available to the Bible authors at the time they wrote, because
the word was not invented until the Christian church understood the
idea, hundreds of years later. That is why the word "Trinity" is not in
the Bible. The same is not true of "relationship". The Trinity is not a
good analogy.
Trees
"Mike" offered this argument:
Suppose I wrote a book about trees and only mentioned leaves,
trunk, limbs, bugs, insecticides, red oak, live oak, silver leaf maple,
gum, apple, orange, pear, bradford pear, fertilizer, water, sun, soil,
dung and never used the word tree...İis then my book not about trees?
This is a good argument, but fatally flawed. If Mike wrote a book about
trees, then it would of course be about trees. But he would have to go
to heroic -- perhaps even perverse -- efforts to do so and never once use
the word "tree" nor any words that mean something similar, like "tall bush"
or "dendritic flora" or "forest". An easy way to know what a book is about
is to count the uses of each significant word (not including "the" or "and"
or "is") in it. The most frequent word is always what the book is
about. Mike could write a book about a particular kind of tree, say silver
leaf maple, and he would still have a great deal of difficulty -- well
nigh impossible -- to do so without using the word "tree". God is not perverse,
and the sacred authors were not intentionally avoiding the one word their
writings were all about. They could not avoid it, if that's what they were
writing about -- and they did not. The Bible is about God, not relationships.
Truthful Relationships
My friend "Dan" likes Hegelian dialectic, the philosophical notion that
truth emerges from the merging of polar opposites. His descriptive phrase
is "both/and, not either/or." Sometimes I kid him about applying his dialectic
to hot and cold, because God explicitly rejects the lukewarm combination
in Rev.3:16.
In a sinless world, all relationships can be both affirming (the
Feeler value) and truthful (the Thinker value). Of course we do
not live in a sinless world, nor are any of the relationships we are concerned
about between equally sinless persons. When there is pie in the sky in
the sweet bye and bye, we can work on achieving Dan's dialectic. Between
now and that blessed time, we need to deal with the opposition of affirmation
to truth.
Dan works in the marketing arm of his employer. He (and others in business)
tell me that business is built on relationships. That is true, so long
as you recognize that by "relationships" they mean "mutual affirmation"
and not merely connections. If either party in a business transaction starts
disaffirming the other party, the "relationship" is broken, the transaction
aborted. Telling the other party an uncomfortable truth affecting their
decision ultimately affirms their intelligence and their right to make
their own decisions, so truth is an important component in affirmation,
but it is the affirmation that creates the business relationship, not the
truth itself. Disaffirming truth -- for example, truthfully telling an
incompetent buyer or seller of his folly -- is a sure deal-breaker.
Trusting people
One of deacons at the church I attend keeps telling us that "the Bible
teaches us to trust each other." I find no such teaching in my Bible, but
rather the reverse. "Trust God," it tells me in numerous places, "not people."
So what's the big deal with trust? I think it's perceived as a form of
affirmation ("Relationshipism") related
to "vulnerability" (another
pop-moral value everybody seems to think is taught in the Bible, but actually
is not). Trusting a person (or making yourself vulnerable to them) affirms
their integrity and sinless perfection, which is of course untrue. President
Reagan famously said, "Trust, but verify," which is of course not trust
at all, but only pure affirmation. The Bible expects us to trust God, and
God alone, not other people. We may be put in stituations which depend
on other people for desirable outcomes, but we are trusting God, not those
other people, for those outcomes. God is bigger than those other people,
and God is always Good, so our trust is not misplaced when we trust God.
If those other people failed to do what we hoped, they are only being human,
and our trust (which was in God, not them) has not been violated; God still
knows and will do what is best.
Comments added 2010 January 11, August 23