mon·o·lith·ic
/ˌmänəˈliTHik/
a
: cast as a single piece
a monolithic concrete wall
b
: formed or composed of material without joints or seams
a monolithic floor covering
c
: consisting of or constituting a single unit
myth
/miTH/
a widely held but false belief or idea.
"he wants to dispel the myth that sea kayaking is too risky or too strenuous"
"Monolithic thinking describes the tendency to view cultures, experiences, and people from a single perspective. This type of thinking stunts our ability to understand and interact with people ... stereotypes and unconscious bias and are often applied as a blanket belief about all group members. Leaving very little room for individuals to both belong to a group and have individual preferences, behaviors, and desires ... when our actions are centered in monolithic thinking, we run the risk of making decisions on behalf of another person because we believe we know what they value and need ... even in the case of well-intentioned motives, an absence of knowledge about cultural patterns and awareness ... is a recipe for disaster."Danielle Marshall (Culture Principles Founder)
I recently found myself swimming upstream in a turbulent current of social media. Mid-stream, it dawned on me that the person I was conversing with had assumed that I was thinking a certain way simply because of some of my associations. I understand that optics are important and I need to be aware of their impact, but what was particularly jarring about this exchange was that this had never been my experience in dialoguing with him before.
Hmmm. What was going on here? Had I been the object of monolithic thinking? Was I being painted with the broad brush of a potential myth about some of my associations that he had bought into?
I immediately stepped out of the public dialogue and direct-messaged my friend. This treadmill of conversation was going nowhere. It went something like this:
"Thanks for your recent post ... however I'm struggling with the monolithic way you are seeing me right now. There seems to be a pernicious myth at work about how I, and others I know, think, that has impacted the way you understand me. Perhaps this is one of the things that feeds so much of the polarization we experience today."
Eventually I saw the bouncing ellipses indicating an incoming message. He wrote, "Even I am losing energy for trying to draw factions together, and maybe that's why this particular post is less nuanced than it should have been."
The tug of monolithic thinking had drawn both of us in, and it took going off line and direct messaging each other for a bit to regain our sense of equilibrium in our relationship. And I had to agree with my friend. Fighting that current can be, well, exhausting. Could it just be that it is our tiredness and exhaustion with all that is swirling in and around us that causes us to take the easy way out and simply categorize and label each other?
"So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued from doing good.
At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit.
Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance,
let us work for the benefit of all,
starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith."
Galatians 6:9-10 MSG
Often, the work of differentiating seems too slow. It's inconvenient and can even be painful. The good way is a narrow way. We do want to give up, but the work of loving, listening and discerning well, is a patient one. Perhaps it is our lack of cultivating the Spirit fruit of longsuffering that ends up skewing the way we see and respond to each other. Our patience runs out. Our emotional intelligence is dumbed down. We end up unnecessarily harming each other. It seems so much easier - quicker - to latch onto a slogan, a great one liner, or a catch all phrase to express our opinions about each other. We are so at ease in this Tik Tok paced flow of communication that too often we end up treating people the same way we do a piece of information - or dis-information - that comes our way.
We can do better.
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.
On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds (monoliths.)
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
(2 Corinthians 10:3-5 NIV - parentheses mine)
Let us give ourselves to the slow, intentional work of loving - thinking - well. Jesus calls us to something better than stereotyping - a way that can topple even the most stubborn and entrenched monoliths of thinking we have and even unwillingly, embraced.
"Remain in my love," Jesus says in John 15.
It is in keeping the commands, the will of Christ Jesus, that will cause us to remain - an anchor for the soul and a source of sanity for the mind. Jesus led this way of being - this way of remaining - by modeling it to us as he journeyed through the shadow of Gethsemane, onto the cross and into His ascension, all the while remaining rooted in the will of the Father and the security of the Father's love, even while doubting and expressing his desire to find another way. Yet, "not my will but Yours Father" was his lean.
Just as He knows the Fathers will for Him, Jesus tells us what His will is for us - His command to us - and it's just one thing really.
Love each other. Just as He loves us all.
Jesus calls it friendship. A lifelong journey of sacrificial love sustained by a grace that is beyond obligation and behavior management to a way of being where friendship can outweigh even the hatred of enemy. And here we lay down our lives. For. One. Another. Friends.
No greater love is there than this.
I recently was at the Vernon & District Performing Arts Centre for a performance by Cilff Cardinal, an Indigenous First Nations comedian and actor. It was one of the most disarming and challenging presentations I had been at in a long while. One reviewer described it as poking "fun at non-Indigenous Canadians who offer trite acknowledgements instead of using their resources and platforms to make meaningful change." It was more than this for me on several levels. It was a push against the power monolithic myth has.
Cardinal's critique of much of his experience with land acknowledgements had him saying, "I find them so ... patronizing. You want me to come out in my beads and feathers and brown skin and bless your event. Tell you you're 'woke'". He also expressed his disdain for when they're done by Indigenous people because they oftentimes are typecast as powerless victims. In his darkly humorous mash up of stand up and spoken word, using the land acknowledgement as a starting place for his diatribe, he ends up tackling many of the other stereotyping he experiences as a First Nation person in Canada.
.
In a brilliant moment of summation, that for me strikes at the core of tearing down these types of monolithic strongholds, was this statement:
"Don't be an ally. Be a friend."
Kind of like Jesus. "I call you friends."
He was not a distant ally pleading our case to the Father from a lofty throne, but came down. Incarnational. Becoming one with us, just as He is one with the Father and Spirit. See, even God is not a monolith. Our unity is not only discovered, but can only be sustained in the mystery of diversity where the love of a friend remains.
"Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial. God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idolized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands set up by their own law, and judge one another and God accordingly. It is not we who build. Christ builds the church. Whoever is mindful to build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it, for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing it. We must confess he builds. We must proclaim, he builds. We must pray to him, and he will build. We do not know his plan. We cannot see whether he is building or pulling down. It may be that the times which by human standards are the times of collapse are for him the great times of construction. It may be that the times which from a human point are great times for the church are times when it's pulled down. It is a great comfort which Jesus gives to his church. You confess, preach, bear witness to me, and I alone will build where it pleases me. Do not meddle in what is not your providence. Do what is given to you, and do it well, and you will have done enough.... Live together in the forgiveness of your sins. Forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts."Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together)
Yes. Again. Step by step.
