SHIFTING CONTAINERS – Social Capacity
Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships. If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights.
This quote by Colin Powell, 65th United States Secretary of State, is the essence, and the challenge, of expanding our SOCIAL CAPACITY in a season of uncertainty, fear, and suspicion.
Once we have started the process of expanding our PERCEPTUAL CAPACITY (see previous week), we need to expand our SOCIAL CAPACITY. In the words of Christ Himself, true religion lies in loving God and loving our neighbour (Matthew 22:37-40). Everything else — doing good, knowing good, and speaking good – hang on this principle. We can never be authentic followers of Christ outside a community of people. There must, therefore, be an expansion of our SOCIAL CAPACITY if we want to grow and mature as believers. The challenge in this season of social-distancing, wearing masks, and not being able to go to church is to expand our relationships –in ‘width‘ and in ‘depth‘.
YOUR VIBE WILL ATTRACT YOUR TRIBE
The challenge in an age of unlimited technology is that we tend to seek friends that very often confirm our biases and limit our capacity instead of expanding it. We attract, and are attracted to, people who generally think, believe, and live like we do. Inevitably my ‘vibe’ will ultimately attract my ‘tribe’ and become a mirror and a public display of my values.
The saying, “your vibe attracts your tribe” simply means that we attract people who share the same values, priorities, likes, and dislikes as we do. If I am always the dumping ground of conspiracy theories and negative posts, I need to ask myself what it is that attracts negative people to confide in me. It is always good to discover yourself by identifying the people that feel comfortable in your presence and who you feel comfortable with. It exemplifies the truth that we become like the people we associate with. Negative people seldom find the “positive tribe” a place of natural dwelling, and vice versa.
So, if you are suddenly surrounded by negative people who only find their joy in conspiracy theories, criticizing everything and everyone, the chances are good that you are negative as well, even though you might not recognize it. Bad company corrupts good character. Friends that don’t help us fly will ultimately want us to crawl.
EXPAND THE WIDTH OF YOUR FRIENDSHIPS
In order to confront our own biases and expand our Social Capacity, it will therefore be necessary to move outside the comfort zones provided by our tribal borders of culture, economy, religion, and politics. We need the ability to continually make new friends, from different cultures and different orientations. Four guidelines for seeking new capacities are as follows:
Make friends outside your socioeconomic borders
It is an amazing “gratitude-builder” to be with people who make do with less than you have. Making friends with someone who has less than you, will not only enlarge your social capacity but will also enlarge your understanding of what really matters in life. But the challenge is to be a friend and not a bank, and to find a friend and not a charity
Make friends outside your religious borders
It is an amazing “faith-builder” to befriend someone with other religious convictions. This does not only entail befriending someone from another denomination but especially someone from another faith. When you befriend someone from another faith, you become more aware of your own faith and the joy of having a Saviour. It’s when you get comfortable sharing your beliefs and values with others that you are open to learning from others as well.
Make friends outside your political borders
It is an amazing “conviction-builder” to befriend someone with other political convictions. It’s a gift to be able to listen to other convictions, understand the reasoning, and still hold on to your own. It is liberating to have friends who do not share your political convictions and to be able to discuss it with mutual respect.
Make friends outside your cultural borders
It is an amazing “bias-destroyer” to build friendships outside our cultural borders. Few people have the ability to go through life without a bias against another group, gender, race, class, or religion. The only way to overcome the unbiblical attitude of “cultural pride”, being snobbish and proud, is by befriending someone from a culture that you can least identify with. Try it.
EXPAND THE DEPTH OF YOUR FRIENDSHIPS
With the exponential growth of social media the challenge in building a wider social capacity lies not in obtaining more friends, but in developing deeper relationships.
Relationships can generally be grouped into four divisions:
- those that subtract,
- those that divide,
- those that add and
- those that multiply.
If we truly seek to develop our social capacity it is wise to attract friendships that add and multiply value to us, and to shun relationships that subtract and divide. We should avoid those that drain life and seek those that give life.
But it is equally important to pursue relationships where we add and multiply value into the lives of friends without seeking only friendships in which we are the beneficiaries. Capacity building is always a mutual exercise, it should never be only one party that benefits. Faith always inspires faith; courage inspires courage and boldness inspires boldness. As much as we need friends who inspire us, we need to be that friend who inspires others.
To enlarge a social capacity will require that we move back to the old model of friendships where we invest our lives in like-minded people who we trust to be friends such as described in Proverbs:
- Proverbs 12:26 speaks about Godly friends
- Proverbs 17:17 speaks about loyal friends
- Proverbs 18:24 speaks about faithful friends
- Proverbs 20:6 speaks about reliable friends
- Proverbs 22:11 speaks about pure friends
- Proverbs 27:5-6 speaks about sincere friends
- Proverbs 27:9 speaks about honest friends
- Proverbs 27:17 speaks about involved friends
One of the greatest gifts any person can pray for is loyal and faithful friends. Nothing on earth is more precious, more worthwhile investing in, and worthier of keeping. Expanding our social capacity will to a large extent depend on our ability to make true and reliable friends out of acquaintances. It is also true that the quality of friendship one has determines the quality of one’s life (Proverbs 13:20). Jesus grew in favour with God and also with men. In order to have an enhanced social capacity, one must seek true friendship with God and also true friendship with man; one must be a giver and not just a taker, and one must be free of pretense and shallowness.
Amazingly, once we start building our social capacity we will soon discover the need to build our INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY. (next week)
You are most welcome to order the book CAPACITY from Mike at thirdwayinfo@gmail.com