[July 2006 journal entry]
Would the ‘scrapheap’ Job be justified in expecting or insisting that his three close friends enter the spiritual/theological meltdown with him? I have found myself for many years struggling to figure out how to be with others without pulling them into such a meltdown. The ‘scrapheap’ Job is being swept into a spiritual/theological meltdown and is hopeless (from the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm perspective) whereas his three close friends (consistent with the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm) are clinging to the more hopeful idea of being refined or having character built by ‘God’ through such suffering. For many years, I have been using ‘meltdown’ as a metaphorical description of the experience that drove the shift from ‘religious’ to ‘non-religious’ for me.
Would the ‘scrapheap’ Job be justified in expecting or insisting that his three close friends enter the spiritual/theological meltdown with him? I have found myself for many years struggling to figure out how to be with others without pulling them into such a meltdown. The ‘scrapheap’ Job is being swept into a spiritual/theological meltdown and is hopeless (from the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm perspective) whereas his three close friends (consistent with the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm) are clinging to the more hopeful idea of being refined or having character built by ‘God’ through such suffering. For many years, I have been using ‘meltdown’ as a metaphorical description of the experience that drove the shift from ‘religious’ to ‘non-religious’ for me.