It's all about relationships.
Much of the current economic crisis is about relationships that have fallen apart. That banks are refusing to lend money to each other, as well as to other businesses, is really a relationship crisis: the banks don't trust one another.
As the American joke goes, “In God We Trust, all others pay cash.” Except, of course, the United States economy, like our own, depends highly on relationships of trust.
Frankly, your own banker won't lend you money unless she trusts that you will replay the loan.
It's all about relationships.
More importantly, of course, our interpersonal lives are about relationships. You can have colleagues at work who are as skilled as can be, but if they can't maintain relationships, if they are difficult to work with, it's not really very useful.
I once worked at a daily newspaper where the primary criterion for selecting the final newsroom crew of a few hundred people was their reputation for getting along with colleagues. There were more than enough competent people, but I know a few journalists I wouldn't particularly want in the neighbouring cubicle.
It's the same with family. The people no one misses if they can't make it for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner are generally the ones who just can't get along with others.
And if parents don't have a solid, trusting relationship with their children, then their role as guides to the young is diminished. It will devolve to the bigger and older person bullying the younger.
That's no way to build trust. Trust is forged when the underlying relationship trumps satisfying the immediate need. And when those children grow up, we hope they will have satisfying relationships.
That's what marriage is, after all. It's a complex relationship in which two people paradoxically find their individual needs better met when they place them with another's needs and aspirations and work them out together.
It's all about relationships.
I've just been reading The Shack, about a man who encounters God after a tragedy in his life.
It's a tantalizing plot that, if put in rather dry theological terms, demonstrates how our personal relationship with God is possible because of the interpersonal relationship of the persons of the Trinity.
Interestingly, many of the book's critics are Christians who have turned their faith into the very thing Jesus sought to liberate us from: a set of complex rules of how to please God.
It's perhaps the oldest error about Christianity or Judaism, since both Jesus and Paul address it: Paul, in the many comments about how simply performing the law doesn't repair one's relationship (there it is again) with God.
And Jesus' story about the Pharisee in the square pointing out that he isn't like the sinner he sees is really about the fact that he, the Pharisee, despite fulfilling the smallest letter of the law, still doesn't have a relationship with God.
The sinner, on the other hand, simply relies on his relationship with God and begs for mercy for his sins.
This is also what The Shack reveals about the Trinity. The Trinity is not an arcane doctrine invented by philosophertheologians. The Trinity is an eternal relationship.
Those same critics of The Shack frequently allege that the book has it wrong, that in fact the Trinity is about hierarchy and order.
They seem not to realize that the church explicitly teaches that hierarchy is what the Trinity is not.
Orthodox Christianity teaches that it is all about the relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit.
Relationships are also the focus of our cover feature. In it, Muslim journalist Raheel Raza describes the beautiful relationships that exist between the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as seen through the holy sites in the Middle East, especially Jerusalem.
Jerusalem means “vision of peace.” The peace of religions – read Dr. Joseph McLelland's article in this issue – and the peace of God. Is that not ultimately what we seek in our relationships – peace and love?
It's all about relationships.
