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When it comes to human relationships and societal structures, there are threads of unity and discord woven side by side. It’s a delicate balance between building up and tearing down and often hinges on subtle attitudes and actions that can go unnoticed until the fabric begins to fray. I want to explore this delicate balance between unity and discord by discussing how the insidious patterns of autoimmunity, verificationism, and psychosis create a sadistic, triune collective that, if left unchecked, can unravel the very essence of our families, churches, and nations. My goal isn’t merely to identify these common traits that can infect all of us but to seek pathways to restoration grounded in the timeless truths that call us to love beyond ourselves.
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Befriending the Others
One of the things you need to keep in mind as we progress is that everyone you rub shoulders with is not a Christian, and even within our large Christian family, there are many disagreements. Some of your friends come from the other side of the political aisle, or you could choose any other metric for comparison, and in all cases, there will not be symmetry in your beliefs or preferences. Our differing worldviews and solutions to problems are something you want to remember as you proceed because seeking unity with those who are not like you is what I will ask you to do in the end.
If you can only be friends with or learn from those you agree with, you are operating at a lower level of Christianity that is bound to bind you into a growthless echo chamber. Suppose you choose to live in that echo chamber of parrots. In that case, you will sabotage your transformative possibilities and interfere with the more significant restoration that could take place in your family, church, or country. God’s common grace is on all people. We can learn from those who are different from us and even make peace with a few of them.
Christians hold truth and love in balance, and the wise, humble person knows how to employ this hybrid for the highest good of all, which is God’s fame. Sometimes, in our frustration with how they do things, we end up doing similar things by attacking them. This reactive attitude inevitably tears down the very structure or system we say that we love, whether it’s a family, church, or country. Thus, with a warning in our sightlines, let’s move forward with three vital words that speak to this analysis: autoimmune, verificationism, and psychosis. I first heard these words from the liberal scientist Brett Weinstein, though I’m taking a different angle in my use of them.
Autoimmune Disease
Immunity is a healthy body with an immune system that can distinguish between healthy and unhealthy cells. A healthy body attacks the foreign cells, which is the body’s way of maintaining unity, wholeness, health, and longevity. Autoimmunity is the opposite of this process. The body does not recognize healthy cells. It is as though these rogue cells are moving through the body wearing a blindfold. They will react to healthy cells, attempting to destroy them. Rather than the body fortifying and defending against evil, it turns on and destroys itself.
We are watching a surreal illustration of a country with an autoimmune disease. It’s happening in slow-motion as radical cells attack a good, albeit imperfect, country, thinking they are doing a greater good. In reality, and ironically, they are killing the very thing that gives them the life and freedom to attack and destroy themselves. When your body flips immunity to autoimmunity, you’re not far from a debilitating disease leading to inevitable death.
These rogue radicals have been in our body since the inception of our country. Like our physical bodies, we’re always carrying about those things that can destroy us. Typically, our immune system is robust and healthy enough to withstand the assaults of radicals. In our country’s case, there has been a slow and steady building of these radicals in our academic indoctrination centers for decades. We are experiencing the full effect of what an autoimmune disease can do to a country.
Autoimmune Applied
Let’s bring it down to a ground-level view. We see a similar thing in the body of Christ—the church. The winds of radical change have always blown through God’s church. The Lord has permitted the rise of these radicals, and then a new, invigorated, and trimmed-down church would write a creed to reposition itself against those destructive forces. The strongest wind blowing in our churches today comes from the social Marxist-rooted teaching of Critical Theory, which has given life to such things as social justice.
The social justice problem is not the only issue. Our churches’ theological immaturity has sunk to infighting over any imaginable, secondary, preferential matter. Perhaps what I’m saying is oversimplifying the problems for some folks, but in another sense, it’s not. When you compare the horrific persecution of the early church, the not-so-early church, and the church in some countries today, some of us are petty over our precious secondary issues. We have become an autoimmune disease within the body of Christ.
You can diagnose yourself on this matter by assessing how you think and respond to those who are different from you in terms of social justice, [precious preference], or [pick your problem]. If your position is to attack without seeking to discuss it with the individual, you have the early onset of an autoimmune disease. If you want to see what this looks like uncensored, spend twenty minutes on X reading the Christians’ posts. I take that back: only spend ten minutes. If you’re not careful, you’ll become like our thought leaders. They seem to have lost their moorings on reconciliation and can only attack within their echo chamber of like-minded parrots—also called grandstanding or preaching to the choir.
Verificationism
Verificationism is the process of believing something and then verifying your view with any data that will support your presupposition. When people want to prove something they already believe, they look for things that affirm their perspective. It’s like the preacher with an idea he wants to preach, so he searches for a text to confirm his latest hot take, even if he has to twist the Scripture to make his pet point. In that way, verificationism and eisegesis are similar.
An example of this would be someone who believes that all white people are racist or all police officers are corrupt. If you lock those two presuppositions in your mind, you will always find the data you’re looking for to support what you already believe. Verificationism should not be an issue if you look at the data first without a preexisting notion and let the collection of information prove what is right or wrong.
For the preacher, if the text proves his point wrong, then he should not preach his message from that passage, choosing to give up on his hot take. Take the idea that all white people are racists. You look at a broad demographic of white people, examine all the pertinent evidence, and if some of the data proves your thesis is wrong, then you are wrong. If a humble soul wants to know the truth, they will let the data build out their belief systems.
Verificationism Applied
You see verificationism happening in too many marriages and families. It’s the frustrated wife who has had enough of her husband’s nonsense. Her complaint is valid; he’s a jerk, manipulator, [fill in the blank]. At some point, she can only see him as the wrong person. She does not begin with an “in the image of God” presupposition. She starts with “his Adamic fallenness.” Like the preacher looking for a text to support his thesis, she will always find her husband’s flaws.
Some of you will read this and react, “Let me tell you about my husband.” If so, you sped too quickly by the part where I said you have a “valid complaint.” I would never downsize any legitimate complaint about another fallen person. But if your first instinct is the problem and not the Problem-solver, you have an early onset of autoimmunity; you’re attacking the one-flesh union, which is your new presupposition. You may come back with, “He’s attacking me!” Yes, I understand, but his autoimmunity does not mean you should invite his disease to inhabit your body, a view that we see on both sides of our country’s political aisle.
Personal Illustration: My mother developed autoimmunity when her daughter-in-law murdered her son, who was my brother. Her autoimmunity presupposition turned her into a cynical, bitter, pessimistic, critical person. I’m sharing this illustration with you to support my claim that I understand legitimate hurt. If any problem towers over God’s power to restore your soul, despite what happened to you, then you have autoimmunity and are part of the problem, though you were the victim initially.
Psychosis
The psychotic person is double-minded, which is a better label for the solution-oriented. There is an element of having two minds or two competing belief systems that are running parallel to each other at the same time inside the person’s head. Having two thoughts at the same time should not be a problem. It’s when these two beliefs stop working together for the unifying building of the person. It’s when these two perspectives are forever colliding, asymmetrically stepping on each other, and in a continual battle inside the mind—a psychotic mind.
As you continue to interact with a person with contradictory perspectives that aggressively battle each other, you may conclude he is insane. The incompatibilities inside his head are so diverse that he has no clear understanding of himself or what is happening to the world in which he lives. If you bring my psychotic illustration into a contemporary setting, our country has psychosis. We have two competing ways of thinking about virtually everything. These two views are so opposed to each other that there is a growing consensus that our country is becoming insane.
The other side looks at us and scratches their heads. We look at them and conclude they are psychotic (crazy). Both sides miss the fact that we are diagnosing ourselves. If they are crazy, then I am, too. We are part of the same body—America. Missing this point could mean the believer loses their biblio-centric anchor point and drifts into la-la land.
Psychosis Applied
If you are part of any unit—marriage, family, church, or country—that you diagnose as crazy, you are diagnosing yourself, too. Suppose you believe only the other person is crazy. In that case, you will find data to support your claim (verificationism), and you will develop an (autoimmune) disease that will permit you to attack the body you are part of (psychosis). That unit—which includes you—will die soon.
If you believe that you’re standing outside of a body you are part of, as though you’re not part of it, the psychosis could be so permeated and complicated that you’re blind to it. If you’re unsure what this looks like in real life, perhaps you can listen to the mostly peaceful protestors as they justify their actions, which they believe is a self-prescribed mandate to destroy a country. It’s full-on autoimmunity, using the principle of verificationism, that has led to our country’s psychosis.
If you’re at the place where you can recognize any of these tendencies in you, there is hope. If you don’t see any of them in you, perhaps a prayer, asking the Lord to open your eyes, would be a rational response. All of us have the potential for the diagnosis I have outlined here. If you believe it and work to change it, then you’re part of the solution. We must ask the Lord to provide us with those doors of opportunity for a path forward, whether in our marriages, families, churches, or country.
A Path Forward
The straightforward solution is to find whom you can talk to in that group of people on the other side. Rather than attacking them, ask the Father to give you the grace, courage, compassion, and wisdom to see things through their eyes. I’m not suggesting that you must agree with them, though that could be a good thing. I’m suggesting that you seek to understand them, which is the beginning of a civil discourse.
This practice is at the heart of a wise counselor. The counselor may never agree with the person he is helping, but he knows his first obligation to bring restoration is to understand the person sitting on the other side of the room. If he’s unwilling to sit, ask, listen, and understand, he will never help—never be part of the solution. To say it differently, you should never “believe all women,” but you must understand the woman in front of you if you expect to bring transformative help.
Call to Action
- What level of autoimmunity do you have? In what specific and practical way do you need to change? Who are you going to talk to about this?
- What level of verificationism is operating in you? In what specific and practical way do you need to change? Who are you going to talk to about this?
- What level of psychosis is affecting you? In what specific and practical way do you need to change? Who are you going to talk to about this?
- Do you already have discourse with those who believe differently from you? I hope so. Let me say it another way: you do know those who are different from you. Think about your doctor, nurse, teacher, auto mechanic, local store clerk, manicurist, church member, and hardware store associate. You have a list of folks with whom you intersect in your day-to-day life. This idea of reaching across the aisle, fence, living room, or yard is not a foreign concept to any of us.
- What do you need to do to change yourself so that you can interact with those who believe and act differently from you?
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Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.
In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).