The roots of faithlessness: Pablo Martinez at the ELF
I’m back at the ELF (click tag for more info below about previous visits) which is fun – lovely to see old friends and catch up. But have been musing a lot today on some of the things Pablo Martinez was talking about in his plenary session last night. For those who’ve not encountered him, he’s a Spanish Psychiatrist who’s been involved in Christian ministry for years, especially amongst university students. He’s written a number of really helpful books.
He was addressing the issue of why trust has broken down particularly in personal relationships and beyond. What are the roots of the prevalent faithlessness that is seen in the west? For clearly the days when a person’s word was his/her bond have gone.
He had a really helpful diagram which i’ve recreated here – i think it is really insightful and so thought it worth sharing. I hope he doesn’t mind! The core reason why people don’t keep their word or stick with promises they’ve made (e.g. to a spouse) is because overriding commitments take over. It often boils down to rights – these 3 overlap of course but it is helpful to delineate them. He cited a Spanish tv series which is called (I think) Unfaithfulness – and it has a strapline on the lines of ‘in order to be faithful to yourself, you sometimes have to be unfaithful to others’.
QuaerentiaOLD 
It struck me that if the ego is replaced with Jesus, then the three points of the triangle stay the same: I truly find myself in him, I am changed in him, and I am happy in him. Yet all three are transformed by looking out of myself to Jesus rather than looking inwards.
Thanks Pete – i think there’s something in that.
The key i guess is to see that the transformation is brought about him which at one level, removes all our strivings and yearnings.
Perhaps then the way to sum that up is to say that with Christ in the centre, we can substitute THE RIGHT… with THE GRACE to be myself, happy and to change.
Also one would then have to remove the “isms” in brackets. I’m not 100% convinced that a word like hedonism is redeemable – although I’m aware that John Piper has sought to do that with his Christian hedonism. I think his aim is laudable – i’m not sure to use such a baggaged word as hedonism is realistic. But that’s of course a whole other thing!