Community I

Individual vs. Community

 or

United vs. Untied (thanks to Eb for the anagrammatic suggestion!)

Before the meeting began, the participants expressed their concern for Fay, and for Alice, Ghada and Rimon. We admired the depth of Fay’s “self-awareness” and above all her demonstration of faith, which we thought must be an enormous comfort. David reiterated his belief that although science would one day enable us to live almost forever (until the Big Crunch) it did not matter whether one died young or old, or in an earlier or a later generation, because the next life will be so much more than we have as humans.

Don: One of the concepts that grew out of our discussion of the sheep and the goats was that in the book of John, Jesus talks about other sheep “not of this fold” that he is going to bring into it. Evidently, then, God is in the business of gathering, bringing together, forming community—of creating the Kingdom of Heaven. This concept of community seems to be contrasted with separation, individualization, isolation as evil.

Is this so? We have noted that it is in the nature of sheep to congregate together anyway, unlike goats. In Genesis, Adam and Eve formed a community with God and with the creatures yet they were driven out, secluded, separated from the Garden of Eden. When Cain murdered his brother, he was isolated from his family. In the Jewish sanctuary service, the scapegoat is separated from the community and made to wander in the wilderness.

Isolation is linked with free will, too. Up to the point at which Adam and Eve exercised their free will to eat from the Tree of Life, they accepted God’s direction in all things.

In the parable of the Wedding Feast, one individual does not wear suitable clothes and ends up being cast out from the wedding, from the community. In the life and teachings of Jesus, you see a lot of individualism. He himself is often isolated, alone, throughout his life. He is unmarried. He is shunned by his family. He is a rabbi yet he sets himself apart from the other rabbis.

In today’s society, the extreme right believe in extreme individualism – that we all have a right to carry a gun, and so on. They claim that Jesus underwrites rugged individualism.

Is individualism more or less moral than community spirit? In the judgment scene [the separation of the sheep from the goats] it is strongly implied that one is expected to be community-oriented—it sounds as if being individualist is something that is labeled evil, contrasted to the collective responsibility for our neighbor; and in general, there is no evidence in the teachings of Jesus and in the parables that individualism is preferred to community, to obligation to one’s neighbors. Yet Jesus, and the prophets of the Old Testament, were themselves rugged individualists who often found themselves at odds with their communities.

As well, we all recognize a moral responsibility to act according to our personal conscience, our individual belief, not according to what the crowd thinks. The notion of peer pressure on our decision making seems to be somehow against us individually. In a democracy, everyone counts; in a socialist dictatorship, the collective has the decision making power. The teachings that in Kingdom of Heaven, the last shall be first, that one should turn the other check, etc. seem upside down. There is a complete abrogation of the individual interest to the community interest.

Can a community be morally evil? Or is immorality only a function of individuals? Or is there inherent goodness in community? Or is a community dependent on its individuals for its goodness? Or are we missing something else, some other factors at play here?

In short: Is there a moral difference between collectivism and individualism?

David: Free will enables us to be individuals. The Good Samaritan is a rugged individualist, but he applied his individualism in a good way, for the benefit of others. A community can be immoral if it promotes the application of individualism for selfish ends. So you can have community-oriented individual, like the Good Samaritan. And you can have the arch conservative who would put two million of his fellow citizens in gaol rather than turn the other cheek.

Jay: God is a community builder in many biblical examples. God is the one who brings the “other” sheep into the fold. Man wants to build community, but God says no, let Me do that. Only God knows what defines a moral community. We can at best only make an amoral community. In the Fall, we became like God in knowing the concepts of Good and Evil, but we had and have no ability to handle them. In the very act of establishing community, we automatically set up exclusion as well. We define not only who is in, but also who is out! We don’t have the capacity to deal with community, or with good and evil.

Only the Kingdom will work as a community, even though it makes no sense to us – “Hit me on the other cheek” indeed! The last shall be first! I love my enemy but I hate my mom and dad and brother! Humanistic community is amoral because it has to be – we don’t have the capacity to do it right.

Eb: It all depends on how much light you have received. The more you have received, the more accountable you are. [Talked of Nebuchadnezzar and Balshazar (sp?), but the sound was broken up.] It all depends on what we do based on the amount of light we have received. I have a collection of bibles, which I read often, so I know a lot is expected of me, and the bible makes plain to me what I am supposed to be doing; yet I often find myself not living up to it. So it’s not about being “out” or “in,” it’s about what you’ve done.

Michael: Jesus may have demonstrated some propensity to want to be alone, but he never failed to show us how we should behave in a community. And even when he was “alone,” he used that time to commune with God, his Father.

Robin: We tend to seek community where we find support and commonality. So if we enjoy doing evil things, we seek out others of like mind. The opposite is true as well. But as in the separation of the sheep and the goats, in the final judgment God knows which community we have aligned ourselves with, so his judgment is all inclusive in in that he judges us both as individuals and by our chosen community.

Mac: One of the best examples of community is the earliest Christian church. Acts 2:43-47:

Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need. Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.

In China, collectivism is the rule. Individualism is discouraged. China and Japan have a low crime rate probably because people are encouraged to behave in a way that is best for the community. The point is there are in the bible examples of community that god uses to draw individuals in.

Don: The notion that a group would congregate and pool their resources for a common purpose is almost ridiculous today. Even religion teaches individualism today – the message is all about personal responsibility and reward. Yet here is a concept of both physical and moral sharing, in community.

Robin: As Webster defines socialism and communism, I can’t find anything to object to in them, yet we do object to them. Is our objection just because we don’t have it or because there were evil people who took over the socialist states? It’s not fair to define socialism or communism just because evil individuals usurped the concept.

Eb: To Mac’s quotation from Acts 2 we could add Acts 4:32-33:

And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them. And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all.

And 5:1-5:

But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and kept back some of the price for himself, with his wife’s full knowledge, and bringing a portion of it, he laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last; and great fear came over all who heard of it.

The problem was, they took their eyes off Jesus. Our eyes must be fixed on him all the time; any time we take them off, we stray. If we all look at the center of a circle, we are focused; but if we do not, we are not.

Don: The story of Ananias and Sapphira is interesting. They first make a commitment to the community, but then they change their minds and end up dropping dead, perhaps as an illustration that individualism, in contrast to community, brings destruction, and that there is some inherent morality in community.

Eb: After Ananias and had sold, they could still have kept some of their money, if they had been open about it, but they told a lie.

David: Community is an evolutionary imperative. It has survival value to the species. So community is the norm, and the individualist stands out from the crowd. Most of us are sheep, but without the occasional goat, there could be contrast, and no parables. We can see the growth of goodness [afterthought: or is it rather a diminution of evil?] in the historical growth of community, from a time when humanity was divided into many small tribes that fought with one another constantly, through a period of a few nation states that fought with one another occasionally, to a United Nations and (soon) a world government – a global community with no wars.

But despite the evident progression of community, we have not lost individualism in that process. Community depends on the application of individualism to the good of the community. As Eb pointed out, it’s possible to benefit personally by doing good, but if you do it only for personal benefit then you are not being good. We have the free will to choose.

In Mao’s China, “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought” was the strict moral code people were expected to live by. It was truly moral; not at all unlike fundamental Christianity. One of its precepts was “From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs” – a wonderful summary of how we ought to behave to one another and what to expect from one another.

Jay: Communities often get started because of a common need for protection, but as they evolve, they become more and more exclusionary. Even churches have done that. The UN is behaving likewise. Yes, God wants community – like the unselfish early church; but as the church evolved, it became more and more exclusionary and you end up with the Crusades, etc. Community is a trap.

Mac: The problem comes when we as individuals try to define what the community standard should be. That was the problem with Maoism, whose later stages few Chinese today would describe as good. The early ideals were corrupted, as happened with the early church.

Eb: The United Nations are often more like the Untied Nations; yet without the UN there would be even more chaos. The church is the same. Without it, we are less likely to focus on Jesus—we are more “untied.” There is discord in even the best and longest of marriages, yet they are triumphs of unity. The problem with communism was that its leaders did not practice it.

Don: We’ll pick this up again next week. Meantime our thoughts and prayers return to Fay and Alice and family. Fay has given us a resounding demonstration of faith, and is a member of the class in spirit and through her reading of our proceedings. Through Fay we have been privileged to see the light of God shining brightly.

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