Is Passing

Sometimes you hear people say things like, "Anytime somebody says __________, you can guarantee they..." or "I can't handle the kind of person who..." This Spotlight is here to put an end to that. By the time you finish this, you'll be able to recognize and avoid the kind of people who...no, wait. That's not it. Purity tests: They're not helping, but they're hard to get away from, too.

Individuals spend enormous energy trying to earn approval, whether growing for it, shrinking for it, or reshaping ourselves to get it - and communities spend enormous energy dispensing it, withholding it, or using it as a control mechanism. But approval is a diminishing game: it reduces people to auditioners and communities to panels of judges. This Spotlight will make the case for something better and truer, which we'll call "fitting." Fitting is cooperative. It assumes that both the person and the community bring something real to the encounter, and that the goal is a genuine match that honors who someone actually is while taking seriously what a community actually needs. You were not made to audition. You were made to fit. And when fit is found, something in both you and the community becomes more fully itself.

If meeting some kind of worthiness standard is no longer the method by which a person finds their way in, how is order kept and safety for all parties maintained? The darkness that is gatekeeping and approval metrics is passing, but it is not fully gone, and to some extent, it can still serve the light. One key question that hasn't been addressed in this series, though, is this: What do we do when things happen that, in the old system, would be seen as inappropriate (that is, unapproved.) How does this non-standards based system of grace handle, for example, situations in which someone harms someone else? Let's think about a different set of rules that don't rely as much on approval as they do on compassion, care, and defending those who cannot defend themselves.