Lists, Lists, Lists

The interweb loves it some lists.  Every day I read at least several lists of what parents should do or not do, what churches should do or not do, what our government should do or not do, what people who want to get in shape should do or not do.  I admit it, I have gotten to the point where I will "fast forward" through all of the plain text and just read the bold printed or bullet points.  Assuming that I at least have some interest in the subject dealt with by the list, and that I am reasonably curious about, oh say, "five reasons why Amish albinos are finding a home in post-evangelical coffee house churches,"  I'm probably just interested in the five reasons, because you should be able to tell from the bold print whether the writer is wearing a tin foil hat.
I like quadrilateral diagrams even better than lists so here's one that roughly describes the impact of most of the lists I read:

You'll notice that there is only one quadrant that is like to produce actual change (bottom right), and that is only a big maybe.  There are of course, sweet spots in the matrix, places where you can overcome the overall quality of the quadrant, but these are going to be very site specific, and most likely nowhere near the specific experience that generated the list in the first place.

Case in point, on a list of things that pastors need to do to maintain their personal well being, is the observation that many pastors do not have friends outside the church and this contributes to being enmeshed in whatever dysfunction is going on in the church at any given moment.  True enough, but it presents different problems for everyone.  For me personally it is rooted in the fact that I have never had that many friends, and the friends I do have tend to be based on context.  I'm just not a big "reach out and touch someone" sort of person, and apparently neither are the people who I make friends with, so unless we have some sort of good excuse, we aren't just calling each other up to chat.  This means that my friendships tend to be episodic.  I can get together with someone I haven't seen in years and have a good time and remember why it was that we were friends, and even really enjoy catching up on all that has happened in the intervening years, but everyone, including me, is always moving around, and it just doesn't hold, and I have absolutely no idea what to do about it.  Black Francis, the lead singer of one of my favorite bands (The Pixies), was being interviewed for a documentary that was made around the band's reunion after a long separation.  Rumors had it that they were mad at each other or that there was some trauma that lead to them not talking to each other for a long time, he said something like, "No, that's kind of just who we are." Meaning that they were fine, and didn't actually hate each other, they just weren't all that enmeshed with each other, and they each had their own thing going and they were fairly okay with just kind of drifting.  I can totally identify with that.

Some of the list ideas for winning friends and influencing people: spiritual directors/counselors (great, a "friend" that you pay to listen to you), people outside the church (I'm an introvert, did I mention that I don't make friends that easily? And that I generally need some context, like, I don't know, a church).  Things that work for others in my situation probably will not work for me, and thus the list suggesting that I fundamentally alter a long standing facet of my personality is not going to help me out very much.

I don't mean to whine or get defensive, just trying to be realistic and honest about the prognosis. Fortunately, I have been me for pretty much my whole life, and I have learned how to deal with that unfortunate reality.  So I will still read these lists, and I might chew on any wisdom that I find therein, but I'm not going to swallow it all.

Lists can be informative, and sometimes wise, maybe even helpful, but they tend to over simplify or get way too nit-picky.  It is a fundamental existential problem that we never know exactly what shoes another person is standing in, it's kind of sad, but it is also one of the reasons why the world is a wonderful and strange place, where we constantly encounter others who show us new things, just maybe they could slow down with the lists.