The Life Challenges Podcast
The Life Challenges Podcast
Embracing Interdependence: Strengthening Family and Community Through Faith
The strength of our community lies not in individual independence, but in the power of mutual reliance. How does embracing interdependence reshape our families and society? Join us on this thought-provoking journey as we dissect the profound concept of interdependence within the church, our homes, and our broader communities. We'll tackle how current societal shifts, driven by social media and the pandemic, have led to increased isolation, and why it’s more crucial than ever to foster connections rooted in biblical principles. Discover how churches can lead the way in modeling this value, promoting stronger families and communities designed for collective growth. This isn't just another episode; it's a call to reimagine our connections and live out our faith in unity.
On today's episode.
Jeff Samelson:I think it's a helpful thing for the church to talk about interdependence as the greater goal, the greater good and the reality, really, that we should be living with and live with more than most people admit. Like all things, we're going to need help with that and, to the extent that the church can teach and support and model all of this, it's a good and wonderful thing and I think it certainly would be helpful for families and marriages to have this emphasized on a regular basis.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. I'm Krista Potratz and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samuelson, and today we're going to talk about the Declaration of Interdependence. You might be thinking, well, what? That seems kind of funny. But you know we're doing this episode just after Independence Day and last year around the Fourth of July we talked about the Declaration of Independence and we pulled that apart a little bit on talking about that idea, and so this year we wanted to do something a little bit different but still related to it, and so kind of maybe just talking about what is interdependence and how that differs from independence Probably a good place to start.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, well, I think people would typically think mostly in terms of dependence and independence. You know that these are opposite ends on an axis or a line. Dependence is that you need someone else, whether that's a very strict thing, it's like I need you in order to stay alive, or whether it's more of a emotional, relational, I just need you in my life, kind of thing. And if we're talking about in terms of nations and politics and things like that, dependence would be that I'm under your control because I need you in that, and independence, therefore, is not needing someone else. I'm my own actor. Our nation is free of any other entanglements or responsibilities to other nations or whatever. So those are the way we normally think in terms of dependence and independence as those opposites.
Jeff Samelson:But interdependence doesn't fit on that axis. It's not in between. It's almost as though it's another dimension or a separate axis, because interdependence is when you've got two or more people who are dependent on each other. They are interdependent on each other. They are interdependent One can't get along without the other and the other also can't get along with the first one. And it's going to include aspects. Interdependence is going to include aspects of both dependence and interdependence. It's like dependence in that you are depending on one another. It's like independence that in most cases, the dependence on one another is not necessary. Even if it's essential and it's often when you're talking about relationships it's entered into by mutual choice, which was an independent decision. So that was a lot to say that the main difference between independence and interdependence is that one means that you stand alone that's independence and the other means that you stand because you are connected to and depend on each other.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, and Jeff's touched on something that's clearly obvious nowadays and that is and social media is getting a lot of the blame for it today and that is we've continually begun to isolate ourselves During the pandemic. More and more churches moving online. People are avoiding the congregational experience, families are plunking their kid down with their smartphone to keep the kid occupied and they're not interacting with their children. Pretty soon they become addicted to social media, internet, all this kind of stuff. We're lacking it and it's kind of a whole new environment and we basically need to be refreshed. I know that the historical roots behind the Declaration of Independence was basically separation, was basically separation, a declare of our own independence? But a Declaration of Interdependence is basically acknowledging something that's very biblical and that is that we're part of a whole and we've got to play out that role.
Christa Potratz:Fun fact about myself here. I got married on the 4th of July.
Christa Potratz:Oh really, and so I feel like I've already been practicing and I thank God I'm not like other people who got married on all those other days, no, but it does definitely make me think about that topic and stuff too. And it was funny too when we were getting married on the 4th of July, especially my husband got a lot of jokes like related to losing his independence on the 4th of July. But it does make me think too, just how prone our culture and our world is to independence and that anything else, even being dependent or this idea of interdependence, just doesn't seem to fit the culture today. Why kind of is that, do we think?
Jeff Samelson:In a word, sin. It's not that independence in and of itself is sinful, but in the garden before the fall, adam and Eve were interdependent the whole wonderful language and imagery there of the rib and things were not good until he had the suitable helper that was made for him. There was that independence and together they happily depended on God. But to assert their independence they ate the fruit and they managed to sever the connection to him and on the process they ended up severing the connection to each other in a strong way, because you see that in Genesis 3, when they start pointing fingers that connection had been separated, they're thinking first of themselves, they're acting independent of each other, and since then it's just been our sinful nature, which is always seeking to serve self, to see independence as the ideal.
Jeff Samelson:Now, certainly there are cultures and philosophies and things like that that talk much more about community, about we depend on each other, and that's good, no problem with that. But there's always this sinful attitude of myself comes first and very often the interdependence that's involved is still a self-serving kind. I get along with the others because that's what's best for me, rather than just being. This is a good in and of itself that we depend on each other. We think about some of the ideals that are well, he's his own man.
Jeff Samelson:Okay yeah, he stands apart from everyone else. Nobody tells me what to do. That's an ideal of independence. That's what we want to be. Our kids grow up, it's like I can't wait till I'm old enough. I, I don't have to listen to anybody anymore. There was somebody in my family who, um way back during the vietnam era, got really tired of everybody at college telling him what to do and his family telling him what to do, and, and so he dropped out of college, which meant he immediately got drafted. So he got people telling him what to do In the major way.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, and I think in our society there's almost an allergy to dependence of any kind. You know the sense of oh, I can't be in that situation where I'm depending on others. I've got to be able to make all my own decisions and see this corrupting marriage and all sorts of relationships. I think we see it in our politics and all sorts of things like that and it means that interdependence then is misunderstood as an aspect of just a continuing dependence that rejects independence, when in fact, you know, as I was saying earlier, it's on a different plane and it's more of a choice than it is a requirement of you.
Bob Fleischmann:A lot of this is rooted, I think, into some strong misunderstandings about what is true freedom. The biblical concept of freedom is kind of a crazy thing. I remember hearing a seminary professor put it this way. He just said freedom is the freedom to do anything you want, as long as it's not contrary to the will of God. We've been, by our culture, been indoctrinated so much that it's that exception clause. It's like well, freedom is everything, but you're not free to go contrary to the will of God. No, no, if I have freedom, I should be able to do anything.
Bob Fleischmann:But one thing that you begin to recognize in history about human nature is that if you put them into a culture, into an environment in which they're permitted to have less restraint, it isn't like they get better. They tend to degrade into worse. I remember in the book on the history of abortion the author Marvin Alasky had written about how people had when they started to leave the farms and go into the city. Their lives weren't as closely regulated by their family or by their church and so forth. There was all sorts of degrading things that began to happen, and usually sexual, but not always sexual. Other things of a degrading nature were occurring and I mean we see it now. I remember when I was doing work in the parish as a parish pastor, how frustrated you were getting because more and more community sports were occurring on Sundays and your people were saying, well, I guess I don't need to be a church, I don't have to go to church to be a Christian. I mean, you get all this kind of different mentality, which coming to church was never a mark, it was not a performance thing you did to earn salvation, it was evidence, that was an opportunity to glorify God. But people begin to kind of—they get this freedom. And then of course you throw in there the Internet, the opportunity to venerate your opinion to the level, and of course nobody wants to tie it to anything.
Bob Fleischmann:I was just reading earlier this morning an interview on the subject of ideology, and one of the points that came up about ideology is it's kind of reverse engineered. People form an opinion and how your opinion is formed is oftentimes dependent upon what's happened to you in life. So they form an opinion and then they create a kind of a principles and values around it to support the opinion. And so what we've got today is people are avoiding the interdependence we have, because the problem is is that when I am interdependent on the two of you, my view is subject to scrutiny. When you're independent, people say, well, you have no right. I have the right to think what I want and to do what I want, and they think that that's freedom or that's independence. Christians have no business thinking that way. That's not biblical freedom. You correct each other.
Christa Potratz:I think too, like in our culture, we have this idea that to have any kind of dependence is a weakness, and so our strength is in our independence. But I think the idea of interdependence is this idea that we're stronger together. So I look at too, just parenting my children, you know, and I say no, and then you know, they ask, they ask dad, and if he says no to, I mean it's like you know, or we come like together and say no on whatever issue, I mean we're stronger together. We have this united front and it is. It's, it's a sign of strength really too, and to be interdependent on somebody really does give you strength in a lot of positions too.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, and Bob alluded to the change in society as people left the farms and came to the city and things like that, and the model has been lost. Think about life on a farm. Typically, as that went, everyone was interdependent. Certainly, the kids depended on mom and dad to an extent that the parents didn't depend on the kids, but at the same time, if Johnny's chore was to milk the cows every morning, everyone else in the family depended on Johnny to get that done, because if he didn't, there'd be a cascade effect and messing everything else up and someone was depended on to have lunch ready when everybody came in from the fields and you know all those kinds of things.
Jeff Samelson:There was an interdependence there that was taught and even you know, going back into the ages, with, with, with creating goods. Those were often family things. The dad did this, mom did this, and the kids, as soon as they were able, they contributed by doing that. There was this interdependence. How did you protect your village or your town? Well, everybody had to work together, they depended on each other and there was this real dislocation that came with modernization. And I'm not saying that modernization is a bad thing, but we lost the, the model, that of interdependence that people just took for granted and it hasn't really been replaced. And pretty much the only place we see it is in sports teams, to see how much coaches have to really just teach teamwork so that, no, it's not all about you. You've got to depend on him because he depends on you, and in places like the military or the military unit, where the guys really need to understand, yes, you depend on each other, otherwise things aren't going to go well.
Christa Potratz:Are there other areas where we can kind of see this connection of interdependence?
Bob Fleischmann:Well, you know, right now there's a lot of talk about how society is polarized. You have these strong opinions and no one wants to meet in the middle or anything like that, and that's unfortunate. Criticism is hard to take, but criticism when it's done right, it's done well, can both sharpen you, make you better and you spend your entire life learning it. There's a lot of people over 35, 36 years of me being in this position. You know their version of criticism was not to try to. You know, help me understand my position so I can understand your position. Why are we different? Instead, they basically want to not only declare you to be wrong, they want to punish you for it. And they fail to recognize that. Like I'm real big on staff meetings, you know, and when we have a staff meeting, we'll talk about things that not everybody agrees on, but we'll sit in the staff meeting and I'll say, okay, I'm going to write on this, I'm going to do this, what do you guys think? And we'll argue it out. And you know I try to be as open-minded as I can, treating it like a brainstorming session. In other words, you can even say something stupid, you can say something outlandish. Let's just get it out there so that we can talk about it. And then we begin to kind of come down because we're on the same page.
Bob Fleischmann:At the heart of an interdependence approach to life is to recognize we're all in this, we all face challenges, we all face struggles, we're all trying to find meaning in life. We're in this together and there are things that I like that you won't like. We had an office manager who's just a wonderful, good friend, everything. I've been thinking about her the last couple of weeks because she lives in this beautiful house that they built and she just refused to put air conditioning in it. Now I don't know about you. I can't live that way.
Bob Fleischmann:In other words, people have different ways of approaching things, different ways of going about things, and when you're interdependent, it forces you to sit in with each other and we do it. We do that here in the neighborhood. We have a. You know we don't have an organized condominium association or HOA, we don't have that, but we all get along. So we make it a point. You know, when Ava comes over and talks about this, because we are interdependent and when you are interdependent, you know what it does. It gives you a forum to show your faith, talk about your faith, live your faith out. People come to you and talk about observing you, wondering how you do it, those kinds of things. That's all 1 Peter 3.15. That's people asking you the reason for the hope that you have. I think, rather than approaching Independence Day with this idea of being independent, I think maybe the best way to approach it is to find out how very much dependent you are on each other, like when you and your husband got married on July 4th.
Jeff Samelson:Independence Day gave you an opportunity to find out just how much you do depend on each other and on God on God, yeah, yeah and I think in wonderful way that getting married on the 4th of July is a great way to emphasize this that you depend on each other. I mean pastors doing marriage counseling, or even psychologists and other therapists and such. What's the biggest problem that causes marriages to struggle or fall apart? It's because one party or both are acting independent of the other instead of being joined together as one with that mutual dependence and, of course, saying your vows is that declaration of interdependence. We are going to be joined to each other permanently and we're going to share everything. That's a wonderful thing, and that continues as the family grows. Again, the children are more dependent on the permanently and we're going to share everything. That that's that's a wonderful thing, and that continues as the family grows. Again, the children are more dependent on the parents, but you know, it grows there in a. In a larger family, you get the.
Jeff Samelson:The siblings end up in interdependent in various ways and what's very interesting is when you see it um, with uh, older, grown siblings, when they need to be interdependent to look after the needs of a parent who's getting older, needs help maybe is going into the hospital or whatever.
Jeff Samelson:They have to depend on each other and it just, it goes and it grows in that way. And if this hasn't been your experience in the family, maybe look at the church. Just wonderful, fantastic imagery that Paul uses, particularly in first Corinthians 12, of the body of Christ as a body, and he talks about how each member of the body has to be, you know, is dependent on the other, and they can't, can't, be independent, they can't say I don't need you, and that's the way the church is supposed to be. Then, too, this whole idea of I'm just a member, I go to church and the pastor does everything, or leave that to the people who are really dedicated, but I don't have any role to play, that's not the way it's supposed to be. We are all interdependent in doing these things and it's something that should be remembered.
Bob Fleischmann:So it's interesting how this plays out on a national and international level. When you look at the structure of the United States, you know you have a federalist form of government, but then you have 50 states and some territories and you've got all of this. We all want to be independent. Right now, like with regard to abortion, after the overturn of Roe v Wade in the Dobbs decision, you know it went back to the states. The argument is that let the states decide. So you could have one state that's radically pro-abortion, one state that's radically pro-life, and you can have those kinds of differences. But we are interdependent. So the federal government has to wrestle with how much jurisdiction do we demand to keep us all working together and yet still give freedom? And then you've got that on the national level, which getting along with other countries and so forth, the United Nations and things like that. It all kind of fits in, it all plays out.
Bob Fleischmann:So we're always wrestling with this, and so the idea that independence is like the ultimate good is really ultimately silly. I mean, there's just no precedent to show that that independence really is best judged by giving freedoms and yet still recognizing your dependence. It's kind of like even within the family. You know, I moved out of the house at 18. My parents live next door now. I mean, it's kind of like I never left home really. But I mean, and it's a wonderful thing, we always say that they're in their upper 80s, we take care of them, look after them, but the reality is we're interdependent. They're helping my mom's coming over later today to help me out on something, and interdependence is a far better, certainly biblically justifiable, much more so than independence.
Christa Potratz:So then, should we, in our churches, be making a declaration of interdependence? How do we kind of play it out now in the church setting, or even just in our Christian lives?
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, I'm certainly not suggesting that or I would not suggest that we have a special Sunday for it or a new confessional document. That's a declaration of interdependence, but I think it's a helpful idea. Maybe connect it to Independence Day, maybe put it at a different time of the year. Connect it to Independence Day, maybe put it at a different time of the year, but again, because of our culture's obsession with independence, I think it's a helpful thing for the church to talk about interdependence as the greater goal, the greater good and the reality really, that we should be living with and live with more than most people admit. Like all things, we're going to need help with that and, to the extent that the church can teach and support and model all of this, it's a good and wonderful thing and I think it certainly would be helpful for families and marriages to have this emphasized on a regular basis.
Bob Fleischmann:You know, when the Laodiceans in Revelation 3, chapter 3, in their independence it was observed you say I'm rich, I don't need a thing. Their independence showed that life was going well for them. And it says but you do not realize, you're pitiful, poor, blind and naked. And the point is you do not realize. And so I look at that and I often wonder what are the steps that led up to that? We can talk about it as a figure, but what are the steps that led up to it? And the problem was, is that you know, drifting away certainly from the Word of God, that interdependence is centered on the Word of God, and so we find our anchor in that. And I think, like Jeff said, the church you know we don't need maybe a new confession or anything like that, but I think the church has to recognize that there is an independence within interdependence and that is the independence reflects the way you understand your interdependence. So if I'm doing my own thing, I don't care anything. It shows that you have no concept of interdependence, which is the biblical concept. But when you choose for yourselves, it's this day whom you will serve, when you set out to make the kind of decisions that come from a heart of faith. Those are informed decisions that have been nurtured and honed not only by the Word of God but by also learning from other people, and we all do it.
Bob Fleischmann:Think back when you were in high school, you know. You started talking about well, what am I going to do for a living? How am I going to do it? Most of us didn't just become ministers or public health professionals or anything like that, just all on our own, out of nowhere. There's influences. It could have been an instructor, it could have been a classmate, it could have been your parents. Those kinds of things have strong influences on the direction you're going. That's interdependence. You're influencing and then all of a sudden to then say, well, now I'm going to be independent, that's not the right way to do it.
Christa Potratz:In some ways, too, we do want some independence and I think, like we've talked to about, yeah, like you know, we want to see our kids grow up and be able to make decisions and live outside the home, and no, I want that someday. Independence, I don't think in and of itself is necessarily bad either.
Christa Potratz:I mean, it's a good thing to be independent and to do certain things by yourself, but I think you know, this idea of interdependence is to just be able to always keep these connections alive and real. And I think too of God, just like back in the garden and creating a partner, and then, and even to just this idea of when a mother has a baby and growing inside of her and there's an interdependence there too, and it's just, it's so played out in our lives, to be interdependent but also to be independent can be good too in ways, Yep, like anything in life, finding that magical balance, I don't know.
Bob Fleischmann:And that's actually, and that's Christian living, christian living is finding the balance. The end of Hebrews, chapter 5 and getting into Hebrews chapter 6 talks about having to go back into learning the basics and everything. But you should be ready to do a deep dive into Scripture so that you can distinguish between good and evil and right and wrong. And when we do, let the children, when they leave the nest, they go out on their own. They're independent. Really, the measure of them is how they use their independence, because everybody is to some degree automatically independent. You still make your own decisions. You still do what you do.
Bob Fleischmann:Wisdom comes from the realization that your dependence is on being rightly calibrated by the Word of God and then talking with people. I mean all of us create—I used to always refer to it politically as a kitchen cabinet, but it's the people that you sit down with once in a while and they listen to you, talk off the rails, say crazy things, but they understand you. And then when they understand you, they say, well, maybe there's a different way and a lot of those things influence you. And that interdependence, I don't think it's just good practical advice, it's good biblical advice. We're told about how friends hone each other and it works that way, and I think that's what we need more of, and I think the church is probably the place that should start putting that to the forefront. You need us and we need you and we need each other.
Christa Potratz:Well, thank you so much for discussing this today and we thank all of our listeners, and I think this episode will air after the 4th of July, but we hope you had a good 4th of July and we look forward to having you back next time. Thanks a lot, bye.
Paul Snamiska:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes, at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at christianliferesourcescom. In addition to the podcasts, we include other valuable information at LifeChallengesus, so be sure to check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit ChristianLifeResourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.
