Complicity or challenge?  Responding to self-limiting excuses – by Keith Hebden

In John’s gospel, there is a story of Jesus’ one-to-one conversation with a man lying by the ‘Pool of Bethesda’ which was famed for its healing powers (chapter 5). John’s Jesus asks the man starkly:

“Do you want to get well?”

The man replies with a series of excuses as to why it is harder for him than other people. Jesus has none of it. “Stand up!” he says. Its my favourite biblical example of ‘self-limiting excuses’.

Shaped by the past

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung both promoted the idea that our fairly fixed personalities are shaped by genetic inheritance or experience or both. The past is dominant in understanding our present limitations.

Alfred Adler disagreed. For Adler it is our goals that determine our limitations and not our past. He argued that it can be tempting to take comfort in the idea that an ‘unreachable’ past dominates our lives. We have no power there.

But if Adler is right then many of our excuses for how we behave and many of the limitations we accept, are in fact, chosen. This may sound harsh, but what happens if its true? It could be both harsh and liberating.

Therapy

For years I had a health problem that limited my ability to exercise and talk. It was a choking cough that came and went and which sometimes got so bad that sometimes I vomited. I stopped swimming – something I love – and I struggled to carry on in my new public speaking role as a priest.

The illness, I believed was rooted in trauma and I sought therapy. While the therapy brought new insights in all areas of my life, it also helped me reflect on the day I first developed the choking cough. It was when I was on my way to an work placement I found unpleasant, demeaning, and made me feel like a hypocrite. And I had to turn back and go home. My goal was to avoid a painful truth, to delay a hard choice. I felt obliged to continue on a path I had chosen and I felt I was helpless to change course.

Deeper connection

I find Adlerian psychology really helpful for finding deeper connection with the civic leaders I now work with.

Adler taught that there is a purpose behind every one of our actions and rather than pry into people’s past for trauma, we should instead probe them for authentic purpose.

The problem is, we don’t always knows what that purpose is – even if we think we do. Sometimes that purpose is self-sabotage because we lack the courage of our convictions; and so we find reasons not to “try” because we fear failure – we make excuses.

Challenging the power of trauma

I love that Adler’s ideas challenge the idea that our life chances are limited by traumatic experiences. He doesn’t deny trauma but he insists that the only power past trauma has is the power – or meaning – that we give it NOW.

And, by the way, Adler was no stranger to childhood trauma. At the age of three he experienced the death of his younger brother in bed beside him. He believed his mum preferred his older brother. He developed rickets at the age of four. And that’s just the stuff we know about!

Adler would say: stop blaming your parents for your refusal to take action to change both your life and the world around you. The story you tell about your past is in your hands. Tell a ‘Story of Self’ that is about the insights you gained from your experience.

Complicity

Community Organising is founded on a theory of change built on the assumption that both personal and structural change is possible. We encounter many failures, and require a great deal of courage – but we should not settle for easy excuses. 

I think of myself when I was a Church leader and wonder how often the pastoral instinct, well-intentioned as it is, makes us complicit with people in their self-limiting stories. Unwittingly, our desire to heal can make their trauma king, rather than challenging them to set goals in response to their illnesses, habits, and relationships.

Were we to meet the man lying by the Pool of Bethesda most of us would probably bring him a pillow and a mug of soup rather than the short shrift Jesus gives him. Perhaps our desire to show grace need leavening with a bit more truth?

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Keith Hebden is a Community Organiser for Thames Valley Citizens