Publisher's Synopsis
Relationships. So many trees give their lives in the cause of understanding, improving, dissecting, and building relation-ships. The lion's share of theses books are written about cre-ating positive, helpful environments for reinforcing our relation-ships. This book is not one of them. You see my problem lies in the fact that these environ-ments must be created. It is difficult enough just to live in and understand the environments in which we find ourselves let alone endeavor to create new ones. I always read these books and got fired up about the ideas in the book and went about creating the new environment the author suggested so I could improve my relationships. The trouble was that I worked so hard creating the environment that I lost sight of the im-provements I sought for my relationships. The method be-came the goal and it never worked for me the way I'd hoped or the how author said it would. After years of frustration I began to wonder how we might better our relationships in the midst of the environment in which we find ourselves. What if we could use our current circumstances and find ways improve our relationships? What if the negative things we all experience in our relation-ships could somehow be turned into positives? Why can't bad things be used to make good relationships? There are certain negative forces common to the hu-man condition that almost all folks experience: Anger, Unfor-giveness, Confrontation, and Discrimination. If there was a way to turn these negatives into positives, it could be revolu-tionary. Folks could operate within the common circumstanc-es of their interactions and use them to build better relation-ships. Wouldn't that be wonderful? So I set off to work. As a pastor, convinced that the answers to most every human problem are hidden somewhere in scripture, I started my search there. I was amazed to find references fairly easily which seemed to support my hypothesis. Many of these were found in one of the most famous portions of the New Testa-ment: Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Others were found in equally well known passages, most were the words of Jesus himself - not initially what I expected in this particular search of scripture. This book is not a Bible study, and I did not write it sole-ly for Christians. The Bible, like most sacred writings, is full of common sense. Sometimes we have to search for it and try to understand its original context to get a clear picture of its meaning, but that does not discount its helpfulness. If you are not a believer, I respectfully ask that you "Suspend Your Dis-belief" for a while and try to find the nuggets of truth for your own relationships I think I've discovered. Whether you seek to better your relationship with God or not, I believe these principles will help you use your current relationship circumstances to improve your interactions with your loved ones and even those you don't love so much. So grab a cup of coffee and a blanket if you are somewhere cold or a cool drink and a beach chair if you are somewhere warm and join me in an odyssey we all live daily. Maybe we can make good use of bad situations. Maybe we can use bad things to make good relationships. Pressing on toward the goal . . . (Philippians 3:14) Rev. Dr. Keith Layton Posehn (RevDrKid)
