Community II: vs. Individualism

Community vs. Individualism

Don: Our discussion of community and individualism gives us an opportunity to reach out and help Alice and her family deal with the blows life is delivering to them, in whatever way we can.

I feel as though part of the problem with the community vs. individualism discussion has to do with me personally; with my own individualism and individualistic notions. “Radical individuals” like Jesus reach out and help others, and they form community through their own individualism and leadership. Yet, one of the things most of us don’t do very well is reach out to people; and when people reach out to us, it seems we don’t know how to respond very well either. Part of being a community involves not only reaching out to others, but also allowing them to reach out to us.

It seems as if in western civilization we live as a society of individuals. This seems particularly true in Western first-world countries. The result is that we have trouble forming healthy communities, therefore we have trouble reaching out and being reached out to.

The inability to form community is a fundamental reason why Christianity has not flourished as well in western civilization as it has in some developing countries. Westminster Abbey on a Sunday morning offers no sense of community, other than that of a touristic/voyeuristic community. But our gospel is a gospel of individual salvation and piety and the acquisition of personal holiness. So we expect people in our churches to have an individual gift, but when those gifts clash we have discord.

Of all the themes that Jesus included in his preaching and teaching, the importance of the Kingdom of Heaven, and in particular its importance in the here and now, is paramount and antithetical to the individualistic, pious, personal, salvific message we call the gospel today. The Kingdom of Heaven is not merely a group of like-minded people working to a common goal. There is a leader – a shepherd, and there are the sheep he leads.

It is a central element of the message that these sheep – these Kingdom people – are all things to all people. They become servants to others, as Paul said. They are less concerned about their own personal relationship with God, of what God thinks of them, of their standing before God, than they are concerned about what is going on in the world and what is happening in the lives of those who do not see themselves as being part of the Kingdom of Heaven.

What is the condition of the other, the outsider, sheep? How are they faring, and what needs to be done to bring them into the fold? Kingdom people don’t seek conflict, not even with their enemies, whom Jesus said to love and do good to. They do not set themselves apart on the basis of of theology, liturgy, practice, or ritual. Instead, their Kingdom principles reflect the life, the work, and the teaching of Jesus, who stands accused of spending time with sinners, with those who are disadvantaged, with those who are outside the mainstream.

Jesus welcomed and reached out to all, in real life, with his core values of love, forgiveness, patience, and unselfishness. In Matthew 26 and the Lord’s prayer he teaches us to pray that the Kingdom of Heaven should be manifested here, now, on Earth.

Most Christian churches today teach that sanctification, salvation, is largely a quest for personal holiness. The emphasis is on one’s personal standing before God. This was not always the case. Centuries ago (and even more recently in other cultures) personal and religious identity was not just individualistic. Until the Reformation, the mindset of western civilization was bound up with community and not with the individual. There was a time when one belonged to a family, a class, a guild, a manorial estate, a government, a church. Such was the nature of society. There was community belonging at many levels, which underwrote the person’s identity. The substance of being was found in the social order of things.

But the Reformation changed that. It not only changed a religious idea, but the western mindset as well. Martin Luther’s idea of a priesthood of believers, justified by faith and dependent only on the scriptures (sola scriptura) began a movement away from a sense of belonging to the church, which held the keys to salvation; and toward a sense that personal salvation is a contract between oneself and God: God wants me to do certain things, I will respond, God will correct me, refine me, educate me… whatever; the relationship is just between me and God.

This has so eroded community in the west that the most strongly held community we have left is the family, and even that is not very strong compared to the extended family of early America. In Asia and other parts of the world, this is not yet so – much of the structure of community remains. The gradual erosion of the concept of belonging has brought us the essential emptiness we find in many of our great cathedrals.

There was a time when being excommunicated from the church was tantamount to a loss of salvation, of life, of personhood as one knew it. The church held the keys to heaven; that notion is lost today. Nobody fears the church any more. Excommunication is not the death sentence, the loss of eternal salvation, the consignment to the everlasting fires of hell, it once seemed to be.

Even in our evangelism, as we “share” the gospel, it seems there is little emphasis on community, on a requirement to extend ourselves on behalf of others. The idea is not to win you to a community or some kind of special status within the community; rather, it is about getting  you to get rid of the bad in your life, to be baptized, to give your heart to god, to learn how to pray more effectively, to learn to study the bible, etc.

Jesus enjoins us in Matthew 24 to take the gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven to all the world, and then the End will come. It is specific about what should be taken: It is the gospel of the Kingdom – a community —  that should be taken.

I am not arguing for a return to the church of the middle ages, which terrorized people. But we should recognize that modern evangelism is about individualistic, personal piety. Its key purpose is to get people into Heaven by and by, some time down the road.

When a rich young ruler asked Jesus in Mark 10:17-26, what must I do to achieve eternal life, Jesus said in essence: You already know what to do.

As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments, ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to Him, “Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up.” Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

This is the point where Jesus goes from individualism to community, from a smaller to a larger perspective. This is the essence of the difference.

But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.

And Jesus, looking around, *said to His disciples, “How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus *answered again and *said to them, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! ²⁵ It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” They were even more astonished and said to Him, “Then who can be saved?”

Jesus clearly comes down strongly in favor of community over individualism. In the very center of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:1-8), Jesus addresses the three central pillars common to all the major religions: Prayer, fasting, and the giving of alms. He points out that if you feel compelled to give alms, do it in such a way that your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing. Ditto with prayer and fasting – don’t make a big deal of them. Yet all religions do precisely the opposite. Jesus scales their importance way back.

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.

“So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

“And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

The Kingdom of Heaven makes salvation a team sport, which runs counter to Christianity’s core teaching that we stand alone at the Judgment. In the Judgment scene, it’s all about what you did for your community, not what you did to inflate your own piety. Jesus knew that in the process of doing things for others, one becomes a better person, not obsessed over personal religious piety. Jesus knew that when I unselfishly worry about my sister or brother, I am subconsciously becoming a better person.

Maureen Dowd’s article talks about a priest who enters into the chaos of life with others, and out of that chaos arises the hands and the heart of God. It allows transformational not only to the person helped, but to the helper. So the answer to the question: Am I my bother’s keeper? In the Kingdom of Heaven, the answer is a resounding Yes!

David: Don has excelled himself today and has nailed down the problem we were having over the distinction between trying to be good—being pious—and actually being, actually practicing, good.

Don: The strongly held theory of the so-called Divine Command Ethics posits that we should be good because God instructs us to be good. But that is not the teaching of Jesus. It is not Kingdom of Heaven teaching, which is what is sometimes referred to as Finite Ethical Theory, whereby your goodness is demanded of you because someone else needs it. It implies that there is a reservoir of goodness from which to draw. Goodness is manifested and amplified in us through a spirit of generosity that affects not just the beneficiary but also the benefactor, and it renews and repays the giver by replenishing—and then some—the reservoir.

David: The worst thing that can happen to a Jehovah’s Witness is to be what they call “disfellowshipped” —  to be banned from the congregation, from the community. The practice is designed to protect the congregation from dissention and ultimate fissure, but it seems to fly in the face of Jesus’s teaching.

Don: “Radical individualism,” centered not on personal piety and one’s self but which, rather, accepts and takes responsibility for the wellbeing and the needs of others in the community, is very much closer to what Jesus is talking about when he talks about the Kingdom of Heaven.

Rheinhard: Unfortunately, economic progress and the accompanying Westernization of the developing world is destroying the community aspects of the developing world.

Don ended the meeting with the note that we would continue this topic next week, and with a prayer for Alice and her family.

* * *