Raising Your Approachability Quotient

For decades everyone was concerned with their IQ as a measure of potential success and more recently their EQ or Emotional Quotient. But I think that the future for people of faith, as well as our hopes for a peaceful world will be more profoundly shaped by our AQ or Approachability Quotient than anything else. After all, if no-one can really approach us what good is our goodness?

This amusing video shows how people of faith have always struggled with maintaining their distinct identity while living in the midst of a secular society.  A bubble feels safe. You don’t have to interact with anything you don’t agree with, and that makes it much easier to maintain a feeling of superiority!

On occasion, isolationism is a form of self-defense to maintain something precious that you have. Throughout history people of faith have trekked far and wide to put distance between themselves and others to protect their community. But that solution does not usually last long or multiply any goodness for the people left behind. It’s an age-old dilemma.

I read an example of this in a recent post on our Faith Fusion blog: Pathways to a Sustainable Future. A small Mennonite community moved from Canada to Loma Plata in Paraguay. They chose this harsh, isolated environment or bubble to protect their faith. That’s a tough call. They have built a beautiful community that embodies the qualities of faith, honesty and hard work. It’s a model and the world needs models. Nevertheless, the world that was left behind moves on and God continues to grieve.

Why do we want to live in a bubble?

I think the reason we sometimes choose to live in a bubble is because, when it comes to our faith, we get confused between “vision” and “mission.” A vision should articulate who you want to become; what you are striving for, while a mission outlines the “how” or the steps to get there. As people of faith we can get so caught up in the particulars of how we worship Bubbleor what customs we should have that we forget the big picture. While culture and lifestyle choices do matter because if we lose sight of the vision we can end up losing everything. Father Moon clarified that the purpose of religion is to know the heart of God. You can’t know the heart of God while living in a bubble or by just reading scripture. You have to live life with God. This is one of the things that I always loved about Father Moon. His whole life was dedicated to knowing God’s heart and liberating God from his suffering. He was firmly rooted in vision, which is by nature expansive. Mission always has to be in service of vision.

If you love God and love humanity as much as you love your family, that is the basis for everything.” – True Families; Gateway to Heaven. P.20

Sadly, I think that sometimes even God would like to live in a bubble because outside the bubble there is so much pain in the world. But that isn’t possible. The impulse to love automatically raises your AQ and requires relationship, no matter how difficult.

The importance of touch

Touch is essential to human health and happiness. We cannot live without touch. God cannot live in a bubble and neither can we! There is a spatial dynamic to healthy relationships. Psychologists have discovered the more distant couples are from each other in conversations, the more likely they are to be dissatisfied in their relationship.  People need to be touched and those who have that intimacy in their lives have a longer life expectancy. And it’s not just a physical touch. Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone acknowledges the importance of social relationships and emotional touch.

As people of faith, our purpose is to know God’s heart and once we do that we can no longer dwell happily in our bubble. I was reminded of this while reading John Ortberg’s book Life Changing Love. In the book he explains that religious people sometimes isolate themselves because sin and suffering are thought to be contagious and something to be avoided at all costs. I enjoy Ortberg’s books as he always has interesting stories and facts. In this particular instance he talks about the Bruised and Bleeding Rabbis. These were a group of Rabbis who were so committed to not looking at women and other inappropriate images that they would walk around with their eyes closed and consequently keep bumping into things; hence Bruised and Bleeding Rabbis. This story made me think, as in some ways, we are the same. We would rather live in a bubble than confront some of the issues in the community around us: drug abuse, isolation, sex trafficking to name a few. We prefer a bubble to confronting what our Heavenly Parent has to deal with every day.

Touching the untouchable

The story of Jesus healing the leper is such a beautiful story to me. You can read it in Matthew 8:

“When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy.”

Jesus & leperJesus was impelled to live outside the bubble and touch the untouchable because he was one in heart with God. He understood things we have barely glimpsed. Rev. Moon testified to Jesus:

“History and the world will not be ruled by the experts of theology or philosophy (think bruised and bleeding Rabbis), but by the experts of God’s heart. Jesus was the first to understand the heart of God in 4,000 years from Adam’s fall…It is lamentable that today, there are no saints who understand Jesus’ heart as deeply as Jesus understood God’s heart. Can you imagine how the heart of God has been, who has toiled for 6,000 years in wordless hardship?”

From today’s perspective it is hard to understand the magnitude of Jesus’ actions. He didn’t need to touch the leper to heal him. Jesus healed others at a distance, including a Roman soldier’s servant. The penalty for touching a leper was to make that person unclean, necessitating ritual cleansing. Jesus knew the price of healing the leper but did it anyway because he wanted to show love. He wanted to challenge the “us versus them” mentality that pervaded Jewish culture.

While there is still leprosy in the world today, an example closer to home in 2015 might be the Ebola epidemic. I was incredibly moved by people who went to serve in nations struggling with an Ebola outbreak. They could have stayed safe in America but they chose to live their lives for the sake of others. Their example in putting themselves out there was confronting (in a good way.) In isolation, we all become smaller; love dies and compassion suffocates.

Why is our AQ so low?

As people of faith our Approachability Quotient can be low because we are afraid of being contaminated, but if you think about it our fear is groundless. If we have something wonderful, if our inner world is more beautiful because of what we believe, then shouldn’t we be confident in our ability to naturally influence others, rather than the other way around?

“God gives happiness to those who can give it to others. In spite of their sincerity, religious people so far have wanted to receive it only for themselves, thus not giving it to others.” – Sun Myung Moon

Or perhaps our AQ is low because in judging others we have learned to judge ourselves, and that is unhealthy! We are afraid our love isn’t good enough and so we withdraw. I was reminded the other day that love doesn’t have to be perfect to be good and beautiful.

A beautiful love

I travelled down to visit a friend, Songja, who will soon transition into the spiritual world. At 21, her impending death seems incomprehensible. I don’t get why she is dying. But at her Songja & Sujabedside I experienced a taste of heaven. The cancer in Songja’s brain is impacting her sensory and motor systems making communication almost impossible. Her sister, Suja, was there for Songja. They had a kind of telepathy whereby Suja could interpret the tiniest of signals and understand what Songja needed. Like any sisters, I am sure they had their ups and downs, but I could see the depth of their love and it was beautiful to behold. I felt God’s presence in the space between them.

The following day on Facebook I saw a picture of Songja and Suja. They had made a heart together with their hands. Suja had written underneath the picture “Our luv is like this heart; not perfect but good!”

Too often, we are afraid to even love in case it comes out wrong or is not perfect. We lose – and the world loses. We may not perfectly love or communicate our heart for God to others, but so what? It’s our effort to love that matters and makes a difference.

Songja & Suja 2It was difficult to be at Songja’s bedside because my nature as a mom is to want to make things better and I couldn’t make Songja better. There was so much to grieve about but I didn’t want to cry in front of her, as I felt it would add to her burden. Songja can no longer speak but she mouthed, “I’m sad.” It broke my heart. I replied, “I’m sad too” and we sat in an oddly comfortable silence.

Our Heavenly Parent wants to be in the midst of our relationships but can only be so if we invite Him in to the space between us.

Raising our AQ

To raise our Approachability Quotient we have to leave our bubble or any other construct we hide behind and reach out to others. While the world can be a terrible place, it is possible to influence it. A man who I consider to have a really high AQ is the Dalai Lama. In a moving and very funny eight minute video he explains that even though some people consider him very special, he sees himself as one of the seven billion people on the planet. He is incredibly approachable and because of that can share his profound wisdom with the world.

Start small

My husband is a person of deep faith but he is not the kind of person who loudly proclaims he is going to change the world. Nevertheless, over the years I have noticed the impact he has had on the lives of others. He spent many years working in a mechanic shop. He was surrounded by calendars (you know the type) and a liberal salting of curse words, used with what he described as unfathomable frequency, as though expelled from a machine gun. How many “Fs” can you get in a sentence? Throughout his time in the shop, he never said “don’t swear around me” or judged his co-workers. He just went about his business. He never swore himself. After a while, the incidence of swearing went down and if done in Phil’s corner of the shop he even got an “excuse me.” We have to believe in the power of our lives to impact others. God needs us to leave our bubble.

The power of give and take

Our lives give us the opportunity to infect others with the power of our love. The Divine Principle talks about Give and Take Action and explains that Give and Take Action is behind all the forces of existence, action and multiplication. In other words, for anything to even exist or have an influence in the world there has to be a base of give and take. Doesn’t it make sense then, that we should be the influencers in the world? We can’t afford to not have “give and take” and simply withdraw from life, no matter how hopeless the news headlines are. Only when people are touched in their brokenness can healing come, so we can’t be put off by a little brokenness.

Contagion works both ways

John Ortberg once said, “Only when you get close enough to catch their hurt will they be close enough to catch your love.”

Once outside the bubble, all of who we are can be shared with others and God’s goodness can be multiplied through our lives. You too may feel reluctant to declare you are going to change the world but consider what you could do, because every little thing makes a difference.

There is a marvelous story in Matthew 13 that can give us hope that the influence we sprinkle on the world can give rise to something greater:

The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”

As you go about your life this week, sprinkle a little love wherever you go and see what you can do for others.

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