mutual entanglement
What is one way you can tend to well-being and wholeness today, within a system or relationship that feels broken, without aligning with its harm?
Jeremiah 29:7
And seek the well-being of the city where I have sent you all into exile and pray to the God who hears on its behalf for, in its well-being will be well-being for all of you.
Well, this is a staggering directive.
On first reading, it seems I am to seek the well-being of the system that is oppressive. On closer look, though, this is not a command to love the empire, nor to align with its harm. Rather, it recognizes the complex truth that our ability to thrive is entangled with the world and the people we live among, even when those people oppress us and those we love.
Well-being brings to mind wholeness for me. Wholeness invites a far different way for me to live and behave, even within systems of oppression. Wholeness is a God centered space. The call is not to uphold the violence of Babylon, but to live in wholeness among its brokenness. It is a refusal to mirror the violence, even while recognizing our mutual entanglement.
I resist not through withdrawal, but by tending to wholeness.
What is one way you can tend to well-being and wholeness today, within a system or relationship that feels broken, without aligning with its harm?
—Dax Franklin-Hicks