The Funnel

There are two kinds of relationships: Personal and Impersonal.

Personal relationships are all the people who know us: our family, friends, and God. While impersonal relationships are how we fit into the world: what we do, where we work, the mark we leave.

And here’s the thing: it’s the personal that drives the impersonal. That’s what the funnel’s about, and that’s why it works.

The Funnel

The quality of who you are in the world (impersonal) is defined first by the who you are to others (personal). This is the funnel. It’s out of our personal relationships that the rest grows.

But the truth is, the funnel doesn’t always seem to work. Our friends and family can be a bit screwed up–and, if we’re being honest, we’re often a bit screwed up, too. And that screwed-up-ness gets into everything.

But our relationship with God isn’t like that. That one’s always open. And because of that, that’s the relationship that defines our other relationships. In other words, it’s our starting point.

The Funnel Creates Both Hate and Love

Sometimes we think we don’t need God. But then where does even the possibility of love come from? Ourselves?

You see, everything we know is a filter for everything we see. When we know God, we know love. That’s why the funnel works at all.

Why are we so eager to kill each other? It can only be because we don’t know love.

Love brings life not death.

If you flip all this, and you move backwards through that funnel, you might as well be kayaking through a hurricane. (Good luck with that.)

The Last Thing is Love

I suppose that’s why we see so much violence. We’re seeing the opposite of love. And the opposite of God.

It’s hard to put God first, because then we’re not first. And that stings. But it’s only when we do this that the funnel produces love. And it does.

What’s the answer to cops killing and getting killed? To know God–which is to know love.

 

Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
Only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate:
Only love can do that.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.