Choosing the Better Part

I am looking at the Gospel reading in our church tradition for Sunday, July 21st.  It's the well-known story of Martha and Mary.  Martha is working away in the kitchen.  Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet, soaking in his teaching.  Martha comes to Jesus with a complaint disguised as a request: "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me" (Luke 10:40 NRSV).

Brian Stoffregen takes the opportunity to reflect a bit on emotional triangulation in this text.  Be sure to look at his "Gospel Notes for Next Sunday" (you'll find a link on www.textweek.com if you don't receive these notes already).  Stoffregen quotes from several locations in Edwin Friedman's Generation to Generation on the realities of emotional triangles.

"An emotional triangle is formed by any three persons or issues...The basic law of emotional triangles is that when any two parts of a system become uncomfortable with one another, they will ‘triangle in’ or focus upon a third person, or issue, as a way of stabilizing their own relationship with one another...In the concept of an emotional triangle, 'What Peter says to you about his relationship with Paul has to do with his relationship with you.'"

Stoffregen is quite right in identifying Martha's behavior as, at least in part, triangulation.  That sort of dynamic relies on partial or even inaccurate information.  Usually that information comes through the Fundamental Attribution Error--ascribing bad motives to you and good motives to me.  When that partial or inaccurate information enters to the social network, it becomes rumor, which fuels the often destructive activity of gossip.

Martha assumes that she knows what Mary is thinking.  It may be that Mary has shared something about her motives with her sister.  We don't know.  But Martha puts the least flattering spin on it--a spin that makes Martha look exceedingly good by contrast.  This is the social comparison function of gossip.  We will come back to that in future posts.

I have used this text to read up on the social psychology of rumor and gossip in Nicholas DiFonzo's book, The Watercooler Effect: An Indispensable Guide to Understanding and Harnessing the Power of Rumors.  He defines rumors this way.  "Rumors are unverified information statements that circulate about topics that people perceive as important; arise in situations of ambiguity, threat, or potential threat; and are used by people attempting to make sense or to manage risk" (page 38).

DiFonzo notes that these statements do not become gossip until they are shared in an unchallenged manner.  A personal anxiety doesn't become a rumor until I share it with someone else.  It may not become a rumor unless that person receives the information without challenge.  Unchallenged information becomes verified simply by being unchallenged.  In a breaths, a personal anxiety has become a fact that begins to circulate in a community.

I will share more from DiFonzo's work as I move through the book.  For today's purposes, we can look at the healthy behavior Jesus exhibits in this little vignette.  First he listens to Martha's complaint.  Then he challenges the factual information contained in it.  Then he turns the conversation back on to Martha and how she comes to the situation.  The rumor is cut off at the source.  The gossip system is deprived of additional fuel.  Mary gets to be who she is.  Martha needs to reflect on who she is and not to assume that she knows what Mary is doing.

Perhaps the "better part" that Mary has chosen is to listen for the truth rather than to speak out of her anxiety.

Rumor, gossip and social comparison are often dynamics that drive dysfunctional systems.  That is especially true of Christian congregations.  A pastoral colleague, Scott Musselman, wrote a wonderful article for the Net Results Magazine that described one congregation's efforts to overcome these dynamics and to live more like Jesus followers.  The article was entitled "Successful Guest Retention and Integration Practices," and you can find it in the May-June 2012 issue.  

We think that people outside the church stay away because we haven't marketed well enough.  In fact, they stay in large part because they know how we treat one another.  Who would want to sign up to be part of most Christian congregations these days?  Most of us have enough stress in our lives already.  Working to make our congregational systems healthier may be the most welcoming thing we can do in this missional age.

How can your congregation choose "the better part"?