Don: Emptiness is the third and penultimate stage in M. Scott Peck’s taxonomy of community. It is characterized in part by silence and listening. The early Christians felt this after going through the chaos of stage 2, when Gentiles began to be admitted to what had hitherto been a purely Jewish congregation:
All the people kept silent, and they were listening to Barnabas and Paul as they were relating what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. (Acts 15:12)
The human heart and mind is opened to the heart and mind of God through such silence and listening. Grace bestows peace, love, and joy to fill the void. Anger is replaced by acceptance; intransigence by openness. Grace is critical to the transition out of emptiness and into the fourth and final phase of true community:
But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.” (Acts 15:11)
True community, unlike phase 1 pseudo community, is open to new ideas. It listens to opposing viewpoints, and offers love without reservation. It is rare, but when it happens it is the kingdom of heaven:
…nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:21)
Today, the divisions among us, at all levels of society from the international to the parochial, seem more extreme than ever. For some 20 years the Pew research institute has annually surveyed the degree to which American people rate themselves as conservative or liberal, with a few shades in between. By 2014, the number of Republicans reporting they are consistently conservative and Democrats reporting they are consistently liberal had doubled.
The average Republican is now more conservative than 94 percent of Democrats and the average Democrat is more liberal than 92 percent of Republicans. Liberals prefer to live in cities, conservatives the rural areas and small towns. Liberals are more likely to say that racial and ethnic diversity is important in community. Conservatives are more likely to want to live in communities that share their faith. Fifteen percent of Democrats and 17 percent of Republicans would be unhappy welcoming someone from the other party into their family. Fifty percent of Americans would be unhappy if a family member married someone who did not believe in God.
The point is that there is now more polarization than there has ever been, at least in recent history. There was a time when one was born and raised, married, had children, and died all within a few miles from home. Information was passed by word of mouth; later, perhaps, by a small local newspaper. Many never saw others who were different from them. All were centered on life within the family, tribe, the clan, the guild. People shared the same ethnicity and spoke the same language and the same language of culture and language of the spirit. There was a place for everyone, and everyone was in his or her place. The sense of belonging was complete.
Today’s world is diverse, rapidly changing, and driven more than ever by technology. The agricultural world, already once replaced by the industrial world, is undergoing a second transformation into the digital world. Every day, in every way, we are being drawn apart. Our sense of where we stand, with whom we stand, and on what we stand is challenged. We seek to belong, we retreat to the familiar, we embrace similarity.
Division in the digital age is accentuated and amplified more by Facebook than by any other single entity of the age. On Facebook (as I understand it—I do not use it) one finds a sense of that much-sought belonging. One is matched with people of similar likes and exposed only to similar views. The exposure of one’s own prejudices and positions, which are confirmed by the input of like-minded individuals, gains strength through repetition.
The digital community thus created has been called the pseudo community to end all pseudo communities. Certainly, it is a community on steroids. And it reinforces one’s dislikes as much as it affirms one’s likes.
This community is hidden behind a digital screen of anonymity. A better name for it might be “Facelessbook”. Its members lash out and attack others in ways we would never do in face-to-face encounters. Anger and vitriol and insult are unleashed without the social fear of retribution or any kind of ad hominem response. In that sense, it is a town without a sheriff. It is a reflection of the age-old definition of “character” as being how one would behave and express oneself if no-one else could find out.
To repeat: The need to belong is strongly held. What holds together those who seek the kingdom of heaven? Will they find it a comfortable place if they get there? It is not what we think. It is a place of divestiture rather than consolidation, of sharing rather than of selfishness, of face-to-face openness—of exposure—of a kind of nakedness or emptiness embraced by the capital-T Truth of Jesus Christ rather than by the small-t truths of knowledge.
John gave us an example of 1st century, faithful, faultless “Facebooking”:
The elder to the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in truth; and not only I, but also all who know the truth, for the sake of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever: Grace, mercy and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.
I was very glad to find some of your children walking in truth, just as we have received commandment to do from the Father. Now I ask you, lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.
For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.
Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, so that your joy may be made full.
The children of your chosen sister greet you. (2 John 1:1-13)
This is a posting from username Elder to username Chosen Lady. Its main objective is to transmit to Chosen Lady the love of Elder and to have her pass it on to others but to shun people who don’t share the kind of genuine love, peace, mercy, and grace intended by Jesus. But near the end, Elder notes that his technology-mediated message to Chosen Lady is not as good or complete as it would be if it were delivered face-to-face.
Donald: After the idyllic peace of a recent week’s holiday in the Mt. Rainier National Park, my wife and I were struck by the idyll’s antithesis when we returned to Seattle, where the people we came across at Fisherman’s Wharf seemed to us bizarre, vulgar, and distasteful. We wondered how this related to community. Had we crossed some sort of line? Is there a line to be crossed? Or are we stuck inside the boundaries of our own pseudo community?
David: Within any human community, which to me is pseudo community by virtue of having been organized by humans, are all sorts of lines. Lines may be necessary and unavoidable at the human social level. But the ideal “true” community is just not that kind of community. It is not organized, it is not concerned with mortal things. It is concerned with things of the spirit. Community seems to me to be the wrong word in this ideal sense of communing spiritually with others, where lines do not exist, where there are no splinter or sub-communities. There is only one spiritual community: The kingdom of God, and all God’s children belong to it. It is indivisible; there are no lines to be crossed.
It is difficult to ignore the bizarreness (as we perceive it) of “the other” in terms of human community, but bizarreness is irrelevant in terms of spiritual community. We will all tend to instant compassion for the “Goth” if he (or is it she?) were to suffer a heart attack in front of us.
Robin: A spiritual community will be more intimate and may have more influence on our behavior than our public community. I think about the difference between the wolf and the sheep. We can still feel sympathy for people who are suffering regardless of their faith or lack of it, but we don’t accept them as spiritual partners because of the detrimental influence they could have. Hence, John’s words of warning.
Michael: It’s easy to talk about ideals, but it is really hard to bring about the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Don: The Greek word “koinonia” (κοινωνία) means communion, joint participation within a spiritual bond. [Wikipedia describes it also as “the share which one has in anything, participation, a gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution, etc. It identifies the idealized state of fellowship and unity that should exist within the Christian church, the Body of Christ.”—DE]
David: Yes, that’s a better word than “community” in this context. Michael is right in terms of establishing an ideal human community. It would be pie in the sky to think that Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism are going to sit in a circle holding hands and singing Kumbaya. But the Palestinian who goes to the aid of the Jewish settler in trouble at the side of the road is not pie in the sky. It is not just attainable, it happens—and when it does true community exists, albeit perhaps for not very long. It would be pie in the sky to think that we can get every Palestinian to love every Jew. The kingdom of heaven is here, now, on earth; in brief flashes, and somewhat underpopulated.
I agree that it is unattainable via social media. It can only emerge through face-to-face interaction. Facebook is a serious setback for human civilization for that very reason, but I am optimistic that it will be overcome.
Our divisions—Shiism/Sunniism, Catholic/Protestant, Buddhism and just about every other religion/Islam—are irrelevant to koinonia because they are concepts, not people. They are incapable of sharing spiritual bonds; only individual humans meeting face-to-face can do that. We can relate to people spiritually. We can relate to concepts only intellectually and sometimes emotionally. Hatred and vitriol would not spread so rampantly in a face-to-face world as it does through Facelessbook.
Kiran: The act of trying to build true community only leads to religion, to pseudo community. True community requires recognition of its existence and a willingness to seek it internally, inside oneself. When we do, we will respond to the bad behavior of others, as Jesus did, with goodness and love. The result is more likely to overcome the evil in other people and to cause them to look inside themselves also. If we all would just look inside, our external differences could continue—but they would not matter.
Community can be divided along lines such as family, religion, nation, and so on, but as a practical matter our community consists of the people we meet with on a daily basis. What must I do to accept all of them and their differences? It helps first to get to know a few people who don’t necessarily think and act as I do. We have to expose ourselves to them, then trust in God to provide the tools to develop the relationship. It makes me think that perhaps God created the divisions among us in order to bring us together in real love!
Donald: Not very long ago in history, few people traveled or had access to news 24/7. We’ve only had social media for about a decade. The communities mentioned in scripture seem so unrelated to today’s communities. Could God’s view of us have changed? Could we build a relationship with God through Facebook? We build Facebook relationships with others by “friending” and “liking” them, and they usually reciprocate. Conversely, we build ever greater intolerance for those not counted as friends we like—witness the stats Don gave us earlier. How did this come to be? Is it the fault of some person? Of some religious sect? It seems it’s just the result of our technology, which is not to be dismissed on that account alone, however; after all, it enables these meetings of our group!
Don: The passage from 2 John however says that expressing love, encouraging others to express theirs, avoiding people who don’t have love as their primary motive and modus operandum are paramount, and suggests that face-to-face expression is always better than communication through the technology of the day (in John’s case, pen and ink). The principle is timeless and if all were to adhere to it the world might be a better place. Facebook is the antithesis of the principle. It reinforces preconceived notions and prejudices.
Our differences are the cause of our divisions. The early Christian church became divided over the issue of whether Gentiles should be circumcised. It seems such an unimportant issue today, as do many other issues with which civilization has come to terms but which caused strong reactions once. Today’s issues—same-sex marriage, gun control, abortion—are relatively novel, but now we can express our views on these issues in ways not possible before. And we can do it behind an anonymous username, which tends to make us meaner, ruder, angrier. The violence we see every day on the news is probably not too far removed from the expression of these emotions on the social media.
Kiran: It also seems to be the case that the negative voices shout louder than the voices of positivity, giving the illusion that the world is in worse shape than in fact it is. When blogs came online, everybody became a journalist. But over time, the problems become apparent and society learns and adjusts.
Robin: Even before the division over the Gentiles, Paul wrote letters admonishing the various geographic branches of the early Christian church for various things, so they were not perfect even then.
David: The difference between human and spiritual community is that spiritual communion is not (yet!) technologically transmissible—not even through the technology of the written word, including scriptures. Technology is an intellectual construct. The danger is in taking it—and therefore taking scripture and Facebook alike—as a substitute for communion. Spiritual communion can only take place between two people, face-to-face, via an unspoken but instantly recognizable expression and reception of love. It cannot be transmitted through words alone. Scripture may encourage us to look internally for capital-T Truth but unfortunately it seems rather to lead people to look externally and point fingers at people not looking in the same direction as us. Paradoxically, communion—true community, spiritual—starts with just one individual: With one’s self. When we possess it, it is easily and wordlessly shared with our neighbor, no matter how different s/he may be.
Michael: I agree that true community must emerge from the individual. It is not something that one will ever just stumble across. But whether people will reciprocate when true community emerges in me is another question.
Kiran: Good point. It didn’t work for Jesus. They killed him for it.
David: But he did succeed in communing with many of those around him. He used words, but his words consistently pointed to things that do not require words: Love, grace, mercy, forgiveness. To say “I love you” or “I forgive you” is meaningless without actual love and actual forgiveness.
Kiran: Martin Luther King and Ghandi used Christian principles to respond with positivity to negative behavior. I think this is partly why they achieved so much. It’s easy to talk about acting on Christian principles but hard to do it.
Donald: Community definition is difficult. Oakwood SDA Church is a community meeting this Sabbath morning. Its members will go home to lunch with another community—the family. It seems community norms become tighter the smaller the community—we have different expectations of them. Our expectations of members of the broader community are not as stringent as our expectations of family members.
Anonymous: I’m confused about the subject of love. It has a lot of ramifications. Words are easy but when it comes to actions it’s difficult to run your life and your community and your relationships with the kind of love that we know we [garbled — should strive for?]. But it doesn’t work when it comes to spiritual love among community. When we are in love with someone, we are willing to overcome our differences to the point where we don’t even notice them—at least, not until reality sets in! But in a large community you can’t help seeing everything and you can’t always be nice and gentle and forgiving and overcome the negativity around you. There must be something we can learn from the experience of being in love, some similarities that shed light on how to practice spiritual love.
No doubt John was talking about spiritual love. He added the important ingredient of believing in Jesus and to act according to his teaching. It is important to live peacefully with others in a community. However, people in natural love can be so loving and forgiving even if they are not spiritual. They may know how to forgive and overcome their differences even if they are not Christians. So how do we reconcile these two points? The natural love that everyone practices and experiences in life has a lot of spirituality in it, as well. Otherwise, it would not be fulfilling. It makes something good of the lovers.
Donald: I suspected that goodness must enter into this somehow.
David: Perhaps it enters in the form of hospitality. It is my understanding that when a stranger enters a house in a Moslem village then the household and indeed the entire community is obliged to treat the stranger as an honored guest, which to me is a form of love and kindness and respect. When it happens, it is a recognition of brotherhood in common humanity and is a wonderful tradition. But it is only possible at the face-to-face level, and perhaps only in that distant time when one lived and died within a few miles of one’s birthplace, or that distant village in the mountains of Afghanistan or the Caucasus still untouched by Facebook. Because once Facebook arrives, goodbye brotherhood and hospitality except for one’s like-minded, so-called, “friends”.
Don: Perhaps we need to invent virtual hospitality.
David: I hope Facebook is just a phase humanity has to go through to get to the other, brighter, side, where better technology will give us implanted chips that bypass Facebook entirely and enable not just telepathic communication but telepathic communing of the spirit within us. If our telepathy ends up being mediated by Facebook (and you’d better believe they will try) then we’ll really be in trouble.
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