Here’s the metaphor that I’m working with.<\/p>\n
Suppose you’re one of several adult siblings in a family that has an alcoholic Dad. Dad’s alcoholism has steadily worsened over the years. He’s driving drunk with the grandkids, spending all of his money into the ground, has a looming liver disorder that will likely someday kill him, and the list grows. Your Mother has always been an enabling co-dependent, and still thinks that if only Dad would just “ease back a bit on the bottle” things would improve. One of your adult siblings is well on her way to being just like Dad, only the Young Energetic Version. And the rest of you don’t know what to do.<\/p>\n
At any rate, yet another family meeting is called, this time to deal with Dad’s latest drunk-driving event. The meeting goes terribly wrong. The Dad is surly and unrepentant. The Mother bursts into tears and says that her children “don’t love Dad to treat him this way.” Dad throws a glass at your second-born brother, and a general melee is barely averted. What you had hoped to gain — taking away the car keys from your Dad, with your Mother’s support — is not granted, since your Mother turns on all of you and support Dad.<\/p>\n
You leave that meeting conscious that things cannot go on as they have. You dearly love your family, including your Dad. But life as you have known it has changed. In the old days, your childhood was one of deep shame, as all of your family struggled to contain and hide your Dad’s bouts with the bottle. But suddenly, in a strange sense, after this latest disaster of a “family gathering” you feel . . . free.
You are still a part of the family, of course. But short of a miracle, Dad — and your own beloved, kind, enabling Mother — will not change. They are trapped, and they are carrying the rest of the clinging family down with them.<\/p>\n
You call your siblings and let them know that you will not be attending family meetings as they are presently structured in the future. You are . . . done. You still love the family, you care about the family, and you will do all in your power to help your family . . . but it will be from a distance. You are moving on, to establish a new family, a new household . . . and you are determined that by God’s grace you will not carry your family’s dysfunction and sickness into this new family. You will allow the old dyad of your Mother and Father to carry the consequences of their behavior. When Dad gets drunk and convicted of another DUI, you will not help with another lawyer, another bailout. When your Mother calls you — after she’s forgotten or forgiven you for the latest “family meeting” — to complain about Dad’s latest outrages, you will love her, commisserate with her . . . . and gently disengage from the conversation at the appropriate time. She is unwilling to help establish order. And life goes on. Your heart breaks for her, for your sister, for your Dad, and for the other comparatively healthy siblings . . . but there is nothing further that you can do for your family.<\/p>\n
You now focus on what you can do. You can stop helping your Mother to enable Dad’s behavior. You can try to engage in good relationships with your current healthy siblings. You can love Dad, even . . . from a healthy distance. You can pray, and work on your own behavior. And even though you disagree with some of your own siblings — who wish to maintain involvement in the family dynamic to a greater extent than you — you can encourage them and advise them as best you can. And recognizing just how sick you yourself have become in trying to engage with the family on your parents’ terms, you determine to repent and retreat for the time being, to learn how to best combat what you have experienced in childhood and adulthood from the dysfunctional and sinful behavior of your family, which you in fact are a part of.<\/p>\n
It seems to me that that is the current state of the FedCons and the Gafcon movement in the Anglican Communion.<\/p>\n
With that as my controlling metaphor, let me move on with what actions and attitudes that I think would be most helpful to come out of Gafcon.<\/p>\n