Tag: community

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Why Community? Seven Important Perspectives on Community

It is not good for a person to be alone. That’s what God said about Adam when He created him. So, He created Eve.

God made human beings for community.

It’s easy, especially in this society, to isolate ourselves and think we can make it on our own. The irony is that we use more things that involve more people than at any time in history. The reason we can isolate ourselves is because of a huge amount of cooperation by thousands and thousands of people to give us the conveniences that enable us to “make it on our own.”

However, it’s not merely our physical well-being that is dependent on others. Our psychological and emotional well-being is dependent on interactions with others.

We need community.

Here are a few reflections on what this looks like in light of the biblical revelation.

1. Community reflects the image of God. Each individual is made in the image of God, but God is not merely one. God is three–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is a community, and so human beings in their rational and emotional interaction with one another reflect that image.

2. Community manifests the glory of God when people come together in love, trust, and cooperation. To the degree that hatred, distrust, and tribalism characterize community, to that degree it does not reflect the glory of God.

3. Community that reflects God’s glory encourages diversity without compromising the truth. Truth is the foundation of the community, and humanity in its diversity is what reflects God’s glory most effectively. Both are needed.

4. Community must distinguish between primary and secondary truths. Primary truths are those that are necessary for the essence of the community. Secondary truths are areas where people can disagree and still be part of the community. It’s easy to confuse these things, and this confusion limits community.

5. Community is the only way for human beings to reach their full potential. Humans do not attain their potential without the influence of others, and humans are created for the love and service of others.

6. Community is worldwide but is manifested locally. It’s easy to love humanity in general. It’s harder to love individual human beings. However, it’s in real contact with real people that community is constructed and reflects the glory of God.

7. Community requires short-term and long-term connections. Community is established by thousands of short-term interactions. These are crucial. However, the depths of our hearts can only receive love and give love in long-term interactions. So, it is good to be part of community organizations, neighborhoods, and local churches.

All around us, there are message of self-fulfillment. God’s vision is much larger–corporate fulfillment and worldwide community. That is the heart of the mission of the church, and that is what reflects the glory of God most fully.

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Living with Diversity

Families are designed to help us learn to live with people who are different than us.

My 3rd child has started going to public school. That means that she is getting up earlier. What does she want to do in the morning? Talk. My wife and I like to quietly read and meditate in the morning, if possible. There’s nothing wrong with either preference. We’re just different.

But how are we going to deal with it? Can we tolerate the differences, live with them, and even thrive with them?

Sadly, many families don’t prepare people well for living with differences. Instead, they do one of three things. They either seek to suppress the differences, continually fight about them, or eventually flee from them.

The church is also designed to be a place where a diversity of people come together. A Christian is someone who believes in Jesus as the one who saves us from our predicament in sin and brings us to forgiveness and new life. Anyone can hear the message about Jesus, accept it, and become a Christian that very moment. Ideally, they also become a part of a particular community (i.e., the church) at that time.

When this happens, you have people who have a lot of different ideas, a lot of different backgrounds, and a lot of different experiences coming together to try and make the community work. Romans 14 describes the situation in the early Christian communities. The Christian teacher named Paul wrote to the Christian community in Rome describing this situation, “One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. . . . One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike” (Rom. 14:2, 5).

So, what are we to do with this diversity? The church has often tried the same things that families try: suppress the differences or continually fight about them. They also do what families sometimes do when these becomes too difficult. The differences are so hard to deal with that they just separate (which leaves them just as ill-equipped to deal with differences as before).

In the same letter, Paul gives some helpful instructions on how to live together in diversity. Here’s what he proposed:

  1. Receive or accept each other. “Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters” (Rom. 14:1). What if our basic stance toward others was to accept and receive them whatever their differences?
  2. Do not have contempt for others. “The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them” (Rom. 14:3).

    3. Continue reading “Living with Diversity”

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