Week 2 - Study Questions

  March 17 SG – Wrap Part 1 and Begin Part 2: The Emotional Battlefield

 

Recap of Last Week Part 1 – Entertaining Angels

We danced through the first three Chapters of Stranger God, with some of us not having been able to read the book ahead of time.  Take a minute now that we’ve had some discussion and as you read or re-read these chapters, record your own reflections on the characterization of Chapter 1: Recognizing Angels and identifying who are the people on the periphery of our lives; Chapter 2: The Circle of Our Affections and recognizing our own emotional and moral ecosystem; and Chapter 3: Yes, and…. Can we assess our congregations “will to embrace.” Does our hospitality has limits?

In the end, the comments that have stuck with me from our discussion:

·      Try to use “us” and not “them” and “we” and not “they”

·      How do we approach as equals those whose lifestyle, physical conditions, or political ideologies repel us?

·      Realize that “We are all, in the end, just walking each other home”

Feel free to respond to any of the above or make your own comments below. 

Entry into the Emotional Battlefield

Before we can understand our own barriers to welcoming the strangers, we must examine our fears, phobias, and what Beck describes as the “Cooties for Grown Ups.” Together, we will identify those whose habits, cultures or political beliefs we find offensive. How do we get to the place where we, like St. Francis, can embrace the leper?

STUDY QUESTIONS FROM RB: STRANGER GOD

Chapter 4: Hitler’s Sweater and Cooties for Grown Ups 

1.    The Hitler’s sweater experiment (pp. 66–68) illustrates how we treat sin as a virus, causing us to push sinners away as a source of moral contamination. Share stories of how you’ve seen this purity psychology at work in churches and other communities. 

2.    The Dixie Cup experiment (pp. 70–72): 

• Confession time: Would you drink your spit out of a Dixie Cup? Go around the group and share how disgusting this would be for you, on a scale of 1 (= not disgusting at all) to 10 (= extremely disgusting).

• Your answers about the Dixie Cup reflect what psychologists call “disgust sensitivity,” how each of us differ in what we find disgusting. Describe examples in your life where your disgust sensitivity affects how welcoming or unwelcoming you are to certain people. 

3. Discuss the example of Saint Francis and the leper (pp. 76–78). 

• Who would are the “lepers” you struggle to embrace? 

• Who are the “lepers” your community struggles to embrace? 

• Given the answers above, what would “kissing the leper” (extending the “will to embrace”) look like?