51. They Will Know We Are Christians By How We Repair

“They will know we are Christians by our love” is true, but what if the clearest proof of love is our ability to repair after rupture? Ryan and Emily Baker dig into why repair is strangely missing as a category in many Christian families, churches, and faith-based organizations and why that absence makes communities fragile instead of safe.

We talk about “weak systems” and how good intentions don’t stop harm. Like neighborhood watch signs or children’s ministry safety policies, healthy communities don’t rely on policies, they walk on clear paths of accountability and conflict resolution. We connect Jesus’ warning about the yeast of the Pharisees to a modern picture of invisible germs: the most destructive dynamics in church culture are often subtle, minimized, or explained away until they spread.

The turning point is the difference between shame-based repair and grace-based repair. Shame-based repair chases relief, reputation, and belonging, so it settles for “Are we good?” Grace-based repair tells the truth about what happened, names sin specifically, and makes room for confession, repentance, and real restoration. 

If you care about healthy Christian relationships, church leadership integrity, and communities that actually feel safe, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who leads or serves, and leave a review, what’s one place you want to practice repair this week?

Transcript

Welcome And Core Vision

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

And I'm Emily Baker.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story in the world around you with a new lens.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

We're glad you're here.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

As followers of Christ, we often say the sentence, they will know we are Christians by our love. And I would like to nuance that. They will know we are Christians by our capability to repair. And not assuming we won't have ruptures, but in fact, knowing as sinners we're going to hurt each other, it's how do we handle that differently than the rest of the world. We now have such a security in Christ that we can move in towards repair. Why is repair not a category that's on the forefront of every Christian family, church, Christian organization?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

In this episode, we're going to pick up on a topic that we've actually covered before. We're going to push into it a little bit deeper because we're noticing that the idea of repair in relationships and in communities and systems, it's not just difficult, but what we are noticing was it's missing. It's almost like it's not a category.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

A desire for every Christian community is to feel like we are uniquely kind and our community is based on this beautiful grace of Jesus. And there's so much goodness. And yet I keep coming back to this feeling like, do we just assume there's not going to be conflict? And so we're kind of weak systems, so to speak.

Weak Systems Attract Hidden Harm

SPEAKER_00 1:32

And so again, a family is a system. We talk about repair in a family, we talk about repair in any organization. And something you actually said once was churches often draw people who are conflict avoidant. And I think that's probably true. Hey, here's a place where we can just go and be and not have a lot of problems. But one of the things, as we were discussing that, we remembered a training we went through for the children's ministry to keep them safe from any potential predator. And one of the fascinating things was even though they did background checks, and that's important, so many times the people who committed those sorts of indiscretions don't have a record. And what this training taught was by having a system in place of checks and balances, those kinds of people might often move on. They're going to realize this is not a place where I could get away with this. And I think that's interesting because again, whether that person or anyone is thinking this way explicitly, people who are conflict-oriented might find themselves enjoying a system that is not ready for the conflict. It's like that deep thought. I imagine a world where there is no war, there is no weapons, there is only peace. And then I imagine us attacking that world because they would never expect it.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Deep thoughts by Jack Handy. So weak systems attract people that can get away with things like abusive behaviors or oppressive. We we talked about the failure of nerve, kind of like cancerous type cells that can really bring down a system. And when there's not on the forefront of everyone's minds, we do conflict resolution. We are committed individuals to the systems in place. It's almost like churches assume if we just love, we're not going to have conflicts. And that feels very naive.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Well, there's another thing that you said about that sign at the beginning of neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

People that will take advantage of others or do nefarious things don't wear black caps and black capes like the neighborhood sign that says beware. We have neighborhood watch. We're one of those neighborhoods that we're watching out for each other. It's saying to the bad guys, hey, we've got a system here and we're ready for you. So don't come to our neighborhood. And I think we're naive as Christians to think that evil will come into our communities through people wearing the black hats and black coats.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

The people that we are watching out for are not necessarily obvious like that. And then with all humility, all of us are those people. Like every one of us get into conflict. And so the question then is how do we address conflict? How do we uh address repair?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

It's almost like we assume that conflict will come from outside, like the evil of the world might infiltrate into our community, and we downplay that we ourselves are going to cause the conflicts that need the resolution, the repair. We're thinking, oh, well, when it comes from the outside, we'll be united and know how to handle that kind of attack on our community. But we know from scripture 2,000 years ago, that it was the religious that caused all the problems and even ended up killing Jesus. So why do we think it's always out there and we don't need to have the awareness that it's probably within all of us? And we're completely, as modern Americans, forgetting the fact that invisible microscopic things threaten our health.

Shame-Based Repair Versus Grace

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah, it's interesting when Jesus says, beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, not what you can see, but the things you can't see. And so, and we also talked about germ theory at the end of the war of the world. Oh, that's what killed the aliens. Oh, we forgot about these almost invisible microbes. And so what we would say is there is this invisible reality, but it's very present. And I think probably there are layers there where you can you may pick up on micro expressions, ways things are said, etc. But I think where we go wrong with repair is we have a shame-based system for dealing with repair versus a grace-based system. Grace-based assumes guilt. It assumes a problem and then the solution of Jesus. Then grace leads to repair. What I mean by shame is it's not law-based, it's people-based. So shame-based is by definition not based on the actual guilt or law, but it's based on people's opinions, right? So if something's not socially acceptable, then you feel like you've sinned. You feel the weight of something weighty if it's been seen or talked about. So shame is the way we perceive others to see us. And so if you think about codependency, a codependent person wants the other to say, you're fine, you're good, it's and then they'll feel better, right? And in the same way, I think a shame-based system is that way. So if I've harmed you or I just know I hurt your feelings, maybe we were out with some friends, I could just tell I hurt your feelings. And then later I say, Hey, are you okay? Yeah, I'm great. So relieved because I'm not really concerned that I did it as much as that are you okay, so that I'm okay. And so often what we're doing in our kind of a faux or shame-based repair is, are we good? Is this done? Or are we fine? And the idea is if the other, whether it's an individual or a group, will pronounce me free, then I feel great. I'm good. But yeah, it doesn't address the fact that it happened.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

So you're saying a guilt and grace system is more conducive to repair because there's an actual thing that can be repented of and there's a finite, like there's this one action, and then the person can apologize and then there's grace. But you're saying a shame-based system, there's just kind of a voting system, like you're in, you're out.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

The primary missing ingredient is truth. You know, did you do it or not? Is it real? Did it occur in real time and space? And I think what we want in repair and why it's so important, especially like in households with young children, is it confirms reality. If a parent yells, even if it's not at the child, and the repair looks like the parent telling the child, I'm really sorry, I got angry or I yelled, I should not have done that. It's teaching that child this was not okay. And we're kind of it's strengthening the core of what is true and what is real. But if the parent doesn't do that, he doesn't, they won't remember, they're only four. Or I didn't yell at him, I was yelling at my wife or my other kid. It's setting a type of bar, like this is normal. And I think when we don't address the broken things as being real and we only scan to see if people are bothered by them, then what we're doing is we're living out of that shame-based repair model versus the guilt-grace model, which is I did do this. Now, if the other person doesn't know about it or doesn't seem bothered, you don't have to spend a lot of time there. But it does need to be an aim because what we're repairing is behavior that was brokenness of the way things should have been.

Naming Truth Strengthens Reality

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Okay, I want to go back to the use of the Pharisees for just a moment because I think it was brilliant the way he said something in that day that made sense to them. But now, fast forward, we have germ theory. And you mentioned something about there's an invisible something, layer going on in a shame-based culture or a shame-based family, or even our own internal shame. And that is if it's hidden or so small that you don't notice it, it doesn't mean it's not something. And that's what Jesus is saying. It's actually beware of it. And I have talked with so many people about that layer in their story that goes unnoticed is sometimes the most detrimental. So an analogy would be that if you were walking into a grocery store to grab your cart, if germs that were on the handle were fluorescent green and you could see them, then you would first always grab a wipe or you would choose one that didn't have any of the green so that you're not exposed. But the fact that they are invisible to the naked eye means they're even more dangerous because we don't know where they're gonna touch our hands and touch our mouth and we're gonna get the flu. I think that's the theory that Jesus is bringing up that you've helped me see that exists in our communities, but I think we're naive sometimes to think, well, if I can't see it, it's not there. Disruptors of our community will be obvious because they have these kinds of behaviors, or they look certain ways. But I think that's kind of what the itch I can't scratch is there's something under the surface that most people wouldn't believe you if you said, Well, I felt this in the room, or I sensed this, or there's something going on. Like, why do we not have that kind of awareness that, like we do with germ theory, that kind of germ exists in our families and our Christian communities that's very destructive.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, I think I think what you're referring to in relational situations would be the things that you can't put into words but felt present, micro expressions, or even things you could try to put into words but are easily explained away. And again, what we're always getting back to is in a shame-based system, the goal is to survive, to be a part of the group, to stay safe. And so to ever have to admit you're right, I did do this or I did say this, or I can see how not only that hurt your feelings, but I actually, upon further reflection and prayer, I was angry when I said that, or whatever truth would look like, the risk of that is being that honest, being that forthright does have a sense of feeling like dying. Like I could be expelled, if you will, from this group. Now, that doesn't cross your prefrontal cortex, but that's limbic. Like from the very earliest days of our life, our job is to stay connected to our people. And as Christians, the gospel teaches that we have been adopted and we are no longer connected to these people, we're connected to Jesus. And in one of his more crazy passages, which we've alluded to, is like when he says, Do not think that I've come to bring peace but a sword, and then he talks about dividing relationships. He's not saying that's our goal, but he is saying that will often be the effect. But if that's true, then we're gonna have conflict or situations where whether we're in it or we're just kind of part of helping resolve it, where we have to risk the division. And if we're not willing to do that because we're so caught up in our shame system of this is my friend. That's I went to grade school with her, and that's the guy that we're business partners in any kind of a conflict or in a marriage, it's much easier to go, can we just be good? Can we just get back to normal? Can we just act like that didn't happen, so to speak? And that's very alluring, but that's just not anything the scriptures would teach.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

And yet that's the pervasive attitude I think most Christians, Christian leaders, the flock in general have is let's just all get along. Let's assume there's not going to be conflict. And if there is, let's just as quickly as we can let bygones be bygones, or it's a he said, she said situation, and I'm not gonna really take sides. And I find this neutrality, first of all, to always side with abusers. So if you're neutral in the face of a conflict and there is an aggressor, an aggressor, yeah, you're by going neutral, you are siding with that aggressor. That aggressor will get to continue.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

And you see in the Old Testament law, there's quite a few examples. If you steal a person's ox, and I don't have the exact quote, but there is a consequence. And interestingly, there's different ones for different aggressions, but in one place it's the you have to repay with an extra, like one ox plus an ox, pain and suffering. And the reality is if that other person said, you know what, don't worry about it. We're good. That's okay. They can do that. If the person who did the offense is led to believe everything's great almost like it never even really happened. Oh, I did I had plenty of oxen, don't you worry. You're actually harming the community because this person is now under the impression that this behavior is acceptable.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

So that behavior continues. You didn't really help restore your brother who was stealing from you. So I think this adversity to conflict resolution is so prevalent that I hope that this conversation will awaken all of us, kind of like our conversation about gossip. It's so destructive to our communities, but we're also guilty of it. So can we become more aware of when we avoid finding truth?

SPEAKER_00 13:16

And one of the places where it happens a lot is in church leadership. As a pastor for several years, in our denomination, we call it a session where the elders meet, you know, and every church has something like that leadership team or staff, if you have a large church with a large staff. How do they engage conflict and repair among themselves or when other people come in with stories or cases of discipline? And the reality is so often it's avoided. And there's varying reasons why that may be, but what we're hoping to urge is um, how can we recover a healthy, biblical-based, grace-based view of what repair and conflict resolution could look like?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah, I think when an organization has someone, you know, disgruntled leaving, or there's a conflict, and you're just constantly seeing that the organization looks like they're right and everyone that's leaving is wrong, or everyone that opposed them as wrong. That's kind of your first hint that there's not really a repair conversation going on. It's maybe like a repair-resistant system. There's no real proactive conversation about this is how we want to do healthy repair. You and I have talked about loyalty structures. We've talked about the cost of actually looking at truth in our own stories. If we had to minimize things in our childhood, then we're going to minimize things in our adulthood. So, hey, not that big of a deal. I think those are some things at play.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

They are. And I want to just say, just to come back to what we do with story matters, why I think so often people have been like, oh, you they like stories or whatever. And really, for us, that's just a synonym of truth. If you go to a court of law and there's an accusation leveled against somebody, and you have the defendant and the prosecution, all that, they're not just saying murderer. I mean, they're they have to prove a story on this date. The accused did these things and then have to bring in witnesses. And what we're trying to get at there is truth matters. And whether it's uh again an argument in the home or with a child, if the parent sinned, did something wrong, and needs to repair. The point is, as long as it's true that something happened, where to adopt the healthy view of repair, which is forgiveness or grace-based, is that grace teaches something did happen and that needs to be named. Grace is not, hey, just kind of don't even look at it. You're loved, all's good here. Grace is saying, hey, let's really name the story. I mean, we're told to confess our sins. The Westminster Confession says, confess your particular sins particularly. And I think we've talked about that before. Well, why would you do that if God already knows? Because it's for us, it's for the people we've harmed. It's when we can articulate what has happened, it's saying this was real and it needed covering. And so when you get to the organizational level, it how much more important is that when you have multitudes of people watching and being affected, if there's a system in place that's look, we just aren't really interested in doing the work. You and I were discussing earlier the reason. Sometimes it's just if you're a friend and you hear conflict for somewhere else, or you're in the organization and it comes to you and it wasn't involving you, they can feel exhausted.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Or like, it's not my job. I don't want to be the judge, but also it's gonna open up complexity. I don't know if I want to really know all that went on. Just tell me it's gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Well, and what I love that, yeah. It opens up complexity and it opens up the potential for my group, my person, my loyalty to be broken. So think about all the conflicts about politics or where it's like, I'm not even gonna listen to you. And at its core, there is a fear that what if something the other person says has truth to it? And I don't know how to handle that.

Curiosity That Risks Loyalty

SPEAKER_01 16:48

I remember way back in seminary, Jerem Barr's, I audited a class with you, and he said something about going and finding a group of people that think very differently from you, and find someone on the other side of a issue or the other side of a theological stance, or if there's a divide in a church, or if there's some kind of division anywhere, he really encouraged people to go find someone on the other side and just be curious to learn how they think. I want to know what's your story and why do you think these ways? And how did you come to conclude that this was the right methodology, theology, whatever? And I I do think there is a threat. I mean, on a limbook level, if we were to get curious with the other side, if there is division in our systems, or if there's a family member that sees something very differently and that they are insisting this person hurt me, or this is uh something, why is it such a threat for us that feel strongly on one side of an issue to go to the other side and say, tell me a little bit about what you believe. Why are you pushing for this? Why is that so threatening?

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yeah, I think the answer would be we say as Christians that we believe that we are justified by grace through faith and that our identity is in Christ. But the reality is practically day-to-day, most of the time, whether consciously or limbically, we're living based on how we're meshing and engaging certain groups, whether imagined like people are part of a network in our mind, you know what I mean, like like all across the world, or actually like a team or our family or online. And whatever that is, it's very much driven by being admitted in and staying in. And so anything that could threaten that is where all of a sudden our faith is challenged. But what you just said, I want to pick up on is the word curiosity. And that is certainly true about creativity as well. To be creative, to create well, curiosity is so important. And what we mean by that is like I'm open to other ideas. I'm really open to actually like exploring them, not just being patient while you explain your side and I'm building my case or sort of pretending to live. I really want to pretend like yours might be true. I had an experience, so in another life, I was a pharmaceutical rep and at training, we had to do like a mock trial, and one team had to defend the drug that we're selling, and the other team had to learn of a competitor's drug and then defend it. And it really is fascinating to have to do what you just said. And I think what we're getting at in this episode is the gospel gives me the freedom from my loyalty structure, whether it's to the other person because of codependency or some system, I can be free from that and therefore be curious and really do the work of engaging what is true in this situation, in this conflict, so that we can repair it. But unfortunately, it is costly. You may lose a friendship, someone may get mad because they still live out of the loyalty world. And that would just help us also understand what tribe do we want to be in? Are we wanting to build systems that are based on those kind of loyalties versus Christ in truth?

SPEAKER_01 19:56

So it boils down to our loyalty, if it is Christ, then we're living in a grace-based community. That means we will see and commit sin that needs God's grace, and we're not loyal to anyone besides Jesus. So if it's our very closest confidant, our mother, our husband, whoever it may be that is found to be guilty, we don't push that under the rug and say, no, it's not what I can't imagine that. We our loyalty is first and foremost to Jesus, and we believe that all of us are capable. And I think the sentence that comes to my mind that feels very repetitive that I've heard people say in their own stories or like in systems is, well, I can't imagine that person fill in the blank. I can't believe your story. That man was abusive to you because I know him and he's beloved and he's great. Or I only know that person in this context, and I can't have an imagination for her sinning against you in that way. That is such a repetitive theme that it's, well, I can't imagine. So therefore, I can't believe you. But that is such a naive way of seeing life that you can't imagine people sinning.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

But it's more than naive, right? It naive is very kind, and it may be, but it's also like I'm not at this point prepared to choose you in truth over the fact that I get to play golf with him on Tuesdays, and that's fun for me.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Like it's gonna cost you something to name the truth. Again, your loyalty is first to your own enjoyment, your own safety. Like, if I believe your story to be true, I may be affected. Like a little bit like when we hear a big thing, like things that are made in China, they're mistreating their people. Okay, well, what does that mean for us? I I can't truly go all the way and believe that, or it's gonna mean something for my life.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Another thing I want to say is the loyalty that we show to another individual often can be people we don't even know. It may be we're loyal to a system that doesn't go that deep. Like I don't want to be a part of a system that's gonna get this persnickety. I'm gonna land in the camp since it didn't happen to me and I like the piece. I'm gonna land in the camp of let bygones be bygones or get over it. Let's just all get along because. That's kind of how I live my individual life. I don't ever pursue my areas of deep shame and harm. And that's why over and over we say you can't take people farther than you've gone yourself. And that's not just being a counselor. That's you can't engage conflict if you haven't addressed your own areas of shame and wounds. But once you have and you do start to engage conflict, what you're saying and what we're saying here is there will be, I say this a lot in this podcast, there will be blood. There will be harm. There can be fallout. And that scares us.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

So curiosity, let's go back to that for a second. I think most of us either grew up or showed our kids a lot of Curious George episodes or books. And it was kind of cute, but really the messaging was like his curiosity got him into a lot of trouble.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Yeah, curiosity killed the cat.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Yeah, but it's almost like we're gonna assume everybody's loving each other well. And if you say anything otherwise, I don't really know what to do with that. Let's not be curious. That person may have sinned against you. Let's not venture over there. I have that person in a category in my mind that's she's a Sunday school teacher. He's a deacon. And I don't want to hear anything that would disrupt, let's not be curious because it's gonna disrupt our system.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

It and it disrupts our own philosophies, right? I want to believe that people can be good and upright standing citizens and basically never do sinful things or harm people. And there's all sorts of reasons for it. But what we're really getting at is in any place where the word repair is needed, there's a conflict. There's two sides at least. And something tangible, even if it's invisible to our naked eyes, has been broken, right? Something's gone wrong and it's in disrepair. And what we're really urging, and the reason we're using the word curiosity, is we're saying, if if imagine, I don't know why I always think of elf, how just innocent he was, but imagine just if the gospel was just coursing through our veins and all of a sudden all of our loyalty structures were gone, we were all in, and in this situation, we're really curious, then we would want to do the deep dive of what really happened and then how'd that make you feel and what what was wrong? And how can I help?

SPEAKER_01 24:08

I love that because I do think curiosity gets labeled a little bit in the setting that we're talking about as kind of a um skepticism. If you're curious and you actually go asking, like, tell me more about what happened. I think a lot of people assume that's skeptical and you're going to draw conclusions, but that's no, drawing a conclusion is the opposite of curiosity. You're holding the idea that this could have happened, and if it did, well, we need to pursue this and pursue truth, not quickly judge the other person. I'm not just all of a sudden switching camps. It's why do we have camps? Why do we have factions?

Marriage Ruptures And Gaslighting

SPEAKER_00 24:46

And let's bring this to the marriage. The most common ruptures will be with our close people, whether we're married or in close proximity at work and family systems, roommates, right? This is where ruptures happen the most, and then it can circulate out through systems, etc. And and let's assume I know I've done something wrong. Like I've hurt your feelings, and I'm not arguing against that. Like it's true. In some sense, you could say, well, why be curious anymore? Why you could argue like, I say I'm sorry, I've admitted it, case closed. So where do you see curiosity playing out in that scenario?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Because then it helps both people, especially the aggressor in that situation, grow an awareness and desire for holiness. Like it may not have been an outright sin, it may have been a style of relating, or it may have been something that they didn't realize the other person was sensitive to, but it helps both parties in a tight relationship know that really bothers me, and here's why. But when that happens, I don't want to always assume it's you. It just helps the relationship deepen and being a student of each other.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

I totally agree. Unfortunately, this is negative, but often and I do this, I mean, I want to get this behind me. If I'm the aggressor, I'm uncomfortable with this. And because I want to get this behind me, so if you'll just forgive me, we can move on. And again, that moves us into the shame-based version of repair because I'm not interested in the thing. I'm interested in you being okay, so I feel safe again and we keep moving forward. And again, we're not suggesting that at every indiscretion, every repair has to have this like incredibly long, forensic study. But the irony is the reason anything goes on long, like investigations or conversations, is because someone is not being curious and open.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Exactly. Because I was gonna say, how about the scenario where the person doesn't admit that they did wrong? Right? Because that's when you're getting into like, how do I repair in this situation when the other person is demanding I did nothing wrong and I'm actually now hurt by the way you're accusing me? You're now the aggressor by accusing me of something. That's where most things spiral out of control because now sometimes we call that gaslighting.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

It does happen all the time, like in a marriage. I don't like your tone. So it's like now where you've yeah, and it's true, and we always have to deal with each piece, but I think the essence of what we're trying to do in this episode is not exhaust the topic as much as say, yeah, conflict is to be assumed. I mean, I love we were talking earlier, and people I'm I'm kind of a conflict avoidant person. First of all, all of us are trying to avoid conflict. That's just goes without saying. But what you mean, person who says that, is that when there is a problem, you prefer to ignore it. That's not okay. Now, there are people on the other side that like love to dig in. That's not okay either. I mean, the goal is truth and love and healing and repair, not hey, let's just keep this thing going and spinning it. But my point is and and wanting to address it here is how unpractised it is in so many of our places, and largely because it was not practiced in our homes.

Matthew 18 And Blind Trust

SPEAKER_01 27:41

So you have blind trust taking the place of curiosity. Take the method that Jesus gave us in Matthew 18 that says if someone's been harmed, they go directly to the person that harmed them. But if that person does the thing where it's like, hey, I did nothing wrong, I'm not repenting, then Jesus' model is that person that's been harmed is gonna go find someone and say, Hey, I've been really hurt by so-and-so, and he won't listen or she won't listen. Will you help me? Because I've been harmed. And that person that's been asked to help, if he or she said, I know that person, they would never do that. That is called blind trust. That's not curiosity. And it's gonna keep And it's a loyalty structure. Yeah, but it's saying, I'm gonna stop you there. I'm not gonna help you get restored, and I'm not gonna help him get restored if he did commit that sin. I'm just I don't want to be in this because I don't believe you, and if it is true, I just can't imagine it. That blind trust, I think, is pervasive in church communities. I said the word naive earlier, and you said that was too maybe gracious or kind, but I do think there's something of a blind trust or a naivety that would even say, Well, I've heard him lead a Bible study or I've heard her speak, and the things they say are right on, so I can't believe they would ever do that. And it's like, how stupid do we have to be to think that we don't all the time, all of us, say things and then do things that are opposite?

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Yeah, you've heard the phrase hurt people in one way. The people who are not doing the work, who are not looking at the harms that have happened to them, who aren't naming their own sin and repenting of their own, are gonna be the people who are the most prone to be in these shame-based systems where they're just either, like you're saying, naive. It's it's a willful naivete. It's a, I'm disinterested in this. You're boring me with your problem or whatever. I don't it's not that I can't conceive of it.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

It's I'm too lazy to enter the complexity.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

And it's there is lazy. Or I'm too loyal to my person. Or I'm also I like the word naive because I need to have the polyana view of see no evil, hear no evil. I want to live as if that's just not a reality. I'm committed to this faux happy thing, and so I'm not gonna listen. I think it needs to be said. Not every conflict will come to a conclusion. Like it is possible for everything's said and known, and for it to be, I mean, a potential, we see it differently. It's hard to believe that would happen in most cases because of sin being sin. And again, if theoretically everything's known that's available to be known, then it's hard to really get to that. But I just think that we have to hold space for that.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Hold space for what? We're gonna agree to disagree.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Yeah, I I have a love hate with that, mostly hate with that phrase because it's usually said way too early. It's I don't feel like even having the discussion, so let's just agree to disagree. Rather than famous debates like between Chesterton and Bertrand Russell, and one's an atheist, one's a Christian, and they had huge respect for each other. And they could rightly say we agree to disagree, but we love the other man, we engaged in a way that was honorable. Like that can happen in conflict, but that will be apparent, and it's also very rare. So, in our recent podcasts, we've covered gossip, we've covered betrayal. In this episode, we're talking about repair, and we're very passionate about these three topics. But I want to say by saying that, we don't think we're great at them. That's not what we're saying. I think what we're saying, what I want to say is it's important to be able to name this is an important reality that we seek, we want. And at the same time, to say, I struggle. But what we're noticing, and why we want to dive into this one as well as the other two, is there seem to be more people than I think there should be who almost feel like it's not a category. It's almost like that, I mean, come on, repair or gossip.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Yeah, or like, what am I gonna do with my betrayal? Hash it all up again? What's that gonna do to talk about it?

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Yeah, so and what we're saying is let's have categories of things that we struggle with and let's allow them to have a place in our lives and learn of them more and more rather than going, I don't do that well, so let me just ignore that episode or this topic.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

So, in conclusion, we're pretty passionate about repair. We think it's the essence of the gospel that Jesus was the repair to a system that was broken. God sent his son to come into our humanity and to restore and repair the brokenness. And so now we live on this earth carrying out his mission, being the hands and feet of Jesus, to be people that repair, people that love in such a radical way that we don't hold on to our loyalty structures here on earth. But our loyalty is number one, Jesus. And then when we find ourselves to be the aggressor, or we find someone else to be the aggressor, or we are the mediator, that we have the strength and the integrity to want to move into that with kindness and curiosity and love and help restoration be in all of our families, all of our systems, all of our relationships and marriages. And I think that will show the world what Christ is. They will know we are Christians by our repair.