Playing victim with the poor - pt1

There is a commonly encountered pattern of relating that counsellors and others are familiar with - it is often called the Karpman Drama Triangle (1). In this pattern two people enact well-rehearsed roles out of the following three options:

Victim (V): In this role the person is, in effect, saying "Please help me, I am poor and helpless and can't help myself".
Rescuer (R): The person playing this role sees the 'victim' and rushes to their rescue, saying "I can help you, I know just what you need, you poor thing".
Persecutor (P): The person playing this role may see the Victim and say: "Help yourself, you lazy useless good-for-nothing", and or may say to the Rescuer: "What gives you the right to be so high and mighty, thinking you have all the answers…".

Now, what is important to realise, is that this P-V-R game is about power; it is not about helping. Moreover, the players are very likely to switch roles frequently! Here is a simple example:

Nancy: "I don't know how to check the oil on the car; I've never done it before. Would you be a darling and do it for me?" (taking Victim role)
Fred: "It's about time you learnt to do it yourself. You'll never be independent while you expect me to do it for you." (Persecutor)
Nancy: "Oh please, darling. I'll learn one day but right now I"m worried about the car." (Victim)
Fred: "Alright, I'll do it. It's very easy really and it won't take me long." (Rescuer)
Nancy: "Well, there's no need to rub it in. I do all your laundry every week without complaining." (Persecutor)

And so the conversation continues… Please excuse the stereotypical roles, but I trust you will recognise how it works!

Note that Nancy never learns how to change the oil. Her request was not to learn how to do this, but to have Fred do it for her. Similarly, Fred never learns how to do the laundry. But also notice that Fred probably doesn't want Nancy to learn to change the oil or to be independent, for that would rob him of his role as 'expert about the car'; similarly Nancy probably doesn't want Fred to do the laundry for fear of losing her area of expertise.

So why repeat this familiar pattern of relating? Everyone gains something: the person playing Victim gets something done for them; the Rescuer can feel proud of their expertise and good deed; and the Persecutor enjoys feeling important by putting others down!

But there is a deeper, darker, and ultimately destructive, result to this way of relating. The Victim ends up being dependent and helpless, the Rescuer knows they haven't really helped and the Persecutor knows they are not important - they are disliked, even despised. In the end everyone ends up feeling bad.

Nothing has changed; they have just been round the familiar, rehearsed roles one more time.

This pattern of relating is very common, but it is not inevitable.  Here is an alternative dialogue, with roles that could be called Helper, Challenger and Vulnerable, so:

Nancy: "I don't know how to check the oil on the car; could you show me?" (Vulnerable)
Fred: "Sure, no problem. Ill be right there." (Helper)
Nancy: "Thanks. And sometime you should learn how to do the laundry" (Challenger)
Fred: "Yes, you are right. I have some time on Saturday; could you show me then?" (Vulnerable)

In this exchange something does change - both learn new skills and there is no need to go round this conversation again in the future.

The P-V-R roles are commonly played out by individuals, but I am also interested in how they play out at a societal and global level - but that is for the next blog...

(1) See: http://www.karpmandramatriangle.com

Impotent Christians in a material world

How come many Christians, of all people, have so lost sight of the spiritual world and the supernatural? Where is the miraculous; where are the God-given spiritual gifts; where are the angels and the victory over evil spirits?

The other major world religions, even the tribal religions are much more in touch with the spiritual world than we are!

We seem to think that we are too advanced to believe that nonsense, even looking down on these beliefs in other religions as primitive or pagan. We, on the other hand, are 'wiser' than they; we know that the world is made of atoms and is material! And we have grown up with a deep belief in our own superior knowledge of how the world works.

But actually it is we who have traded sight for blindness and become blind guides.

We have fallen for the lie that what we can see and explain is all that matters - the materialistic view. We have believed a lie - not so much that science is wrong, but the view that it is all that is true!

But that is not Biblical Christianity.

Some resolve this conundrum by coming to the conclusion that Jesus lived in a pre-scientific age, and explained things in the language of the common (read: primitive) people of his day. Had he lived in this era, they think, he would of course have explained things in material and scientific terms...

But then we would need to remove not just the miracles, but all references in the Bible to the spiritual - even to God being Spirit! And what are we left with? Well, not much at all, really:

• the miracles were obviously some unusual but explainable scientific phenomena
• the spiritual gifts (prophecy, discernment, etc) were a figment of the imagination, or perhaps altered states of mind
• the demonic can be readily dismissed as psychological or mental health issues (and how offensive is that?)...

And is it then surprising that we decide that Christianity isn't very useful in this day and age, and so it is thrown out completely!

Other Christians assume a different 'solution': they are clear that the miraculous used to happen - and especially that Jesus rose miraculously from the dead. But they seem very uncomfortable with the notion of spiritual gifts and with angels and demons, and are clear that miracles don't happen nowadays. They are probably people whose Christian life so far hasn't been touched by the majority of the world where an awareness of the spiritual is a normal part of day-to-day reality.

Anyway, they are left with a castrated Christianity, impotent and nonsensical - a belief system in which God used to be able to do all sorts of things, but offers little these days to those who have any need beyond wanting a cosy circle and a warm feeling. (After all, why would we need any of that spiritual stuff now that we have psychologists and modern medicine? Come to that, why would God need to go to any such effort now that we are so well advanced and able to do everything ourselves?)

While much of life looks simply natural and not obviously spiritual, if we only work at a material level we miss all the spiritual action; we are reduced to feeble human (mis)understanding. We are then blind, powerless and useless.

How true are the Bible's words about collective unbelief:
"He (Jesus) did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith." (Matt 13v58)