Community and Individualism

Don:  Matthew 18 begins with the question: Who will be greatest in the kingdom of heaven? This is really a question about how authority should be determined and managed in a community. Jesus replied that childlike innocence—a desire not to seek authority—is a key element in producing a strongly bonded community. Mutual deference is a foundational principle, a pillar, of community. He went on to make the points that while doing good is important, recognizing god’s grace and our own fallibility makes us all equal, and is therefore even more important.

In the parable of the lost sheep, he talked about the importance of the individual. God will spare no resources to find the single lost sheep—no matter its station in life, its history, its culture, its education, its gender—and bring it back to the fold, to the community, to the kingdom of heaven.

He went on to talk and give practical advice about how conflict is to be resolved within a community, and to remind us that community is not a matter of size—that “wherever two or three are gathered in my name” will suffice for blessing, enlightenment, and so forth.

Finally, a strong component of community is the ability to recognize that all of us are required to forgive one another and that all of us need forgiveness ourselves.

These, then, are the pillars of the community of faith, of the kingdom of heaven, that Jesus talked about.  It is in that context that I wish to explore with you the concept of Individualism, the notion that every person is important. This is not a concept endorsed by all cultures. But in western culture in general and in America especially, it is.

The psalmist finds this to be rather perplexing, and questions why one is important in the eye of god whose other works–the stars, the sky, etc.–seem so much greater.

Psalms 8:3-4

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
What is man that You take thought of him,
And the son of man that You care for him?

Man was made in the image of god; god is invested in every individual. Within each of us is something of the spirit and the nature of god; the inner light. That investment continues to bring dividends in terms of man’s relationship to god.

In the lost sheep parable, even one sheep is worth the shepherd’s full attention. In Luke, Jesus makes some additional statements about the importance of the individual not only in God’s eyes but also in the eyes of one another.

Luke 12:22-32

And He said to His disciples, “For this reason I say to you, do not worry about your life, as to what you will eat; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than the birds! And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life’s span? If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you? You men of little faith! And do not seek what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not keep worrying. For all these things the nations of the world eagerly seek; but your Father knows that you need these things. But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.

In Acts 10, Peter has a dramatic vision in which he is instructed to kill and eat animals considered unclean to his religion. God was pointing to the importance of every man. He was making a statement of ethnicity.

Acts 10:9-16

On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.” Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky.

The Zimmerman trial over the death of Trayvon Martin has shown the deep distrust that continues to exist between ethnicities in our society. A woman visiting from Homs in Syria told me about the dreadful devastation that has occurred there, all because of ethnic and sectarian hatreds. How did we come to this? How have the instructions of Jesus, that point to the importance of the individual to god and therefore of the importance of the other individual to ourselves, gotten lost?

As a surgeon, nearly every day I open up the skin and look inside people. From the inside, I cannot tell the difference between any of them. We have a common core identity that is literally much more than skin deep, and yet the hatred and vitriol between groups ignores that. The woman from Homs said there was no solution. Her son said the only solution was to partition Syria, to separate the groups.

How have we come so far from the instructions of Jesus? The level of malevolence is shocking. Even more shocking is that the malevolence arises from among religious groups. What are we afraid of? It seems that fear is at the root of this. Fear of the other. The kingdom community should be just the opposite.

David: At least, the Zimmerman trial has forced the issues out into the open and the fact that they are now being discussed is the only way we can begin to find the ultimate solution, which is love, but there seems to be no way to bring that about quickly.

Jason: Religiously speaking, individualism is a problem for us because we want to be a member of the group that will be saved and go to heaven, so everyone wants a defining characteristic or set of characteristics for the group, so they have something tangible to identify with. So group identity is directly tied to the ultimate prize: Entry to the kingdom of heaven. But the group characteristics don’t matter at all to god. He is more concerned about our common characteristic as humans, as children of god, which is to love one another as individuals. This is so intangible, though, compared to the characteristics we make up to define our groups, so we downplay it, and we downplay individualism.

Don: Does god care whether you are a Christian, a Jew, a Moslem, a Hindu? That has historically been our position. We seek to convert people to our group because we think that our view of god is better than their view. At a fundamental level, this is what Jesus is getting at here. The notion that there are “sheep who are not of this fold” seems to me to be a direct indictment of the concept that I have the inside track to god. And yet the amount of bitterness, hatred, violence, warfare, and killing that results from the belief that “I have a better view of god than you” is utterly un-godlike.

Jason: Yet it seems from scripture that some sort of conversion experience is important. So what is that conversion? Is it to Christianity? To Seventh-Day Adventism? Or is it something much broader than these? We don’t want it to be broad; it doesn’t mean much to most of us when it is. It’s really an enlightenment, but it seems we shun enlightenment as being too intangible, too lacking in specificity.

David: Yet enlightenment has to be the solution, and it is written in all the great books of religion—the same books in which are written also the things that groups point to as justifying and defending and promoting, violently if need be, the correctness of their view of god. But the solution is also given by the inner light, the god within, without need for scriptural approbation or even mention.

It had to be either this inner light, or something written in the Koran, or a combination of the two, that led Moslem neighbors to help a Christian priest escape from a mob that had just ransacked his church and were out for his blood, last week in Egypt. Theirs was an act of love, and such acts are the only ultimate solution, and yet they seems to work only at the individual level, not at the group or societal level. How can we scale up? Perhaps the problem is that we are all reading from different books. Perhaps we should seek the same inner light that exists within some part of all the holy books, join those parts together, and discard everything else.

Michael: I lived in Bethlehem, as a Christian. Most of my Moslem neighbors were good people, but I felt that some of them were not, based upon some of the things they did. These feelings were not fomented by my parents or my community. I am not sure how to reconcile these feelings, these prejudices, with my belief. The bible tells me to be and do good, but it also gives me justification to do bad things. Separating these two aspects of the bible is difficult.

David: Perhaps there is the seed of a practical solution. We need to discard the prejudicial aspects from our holy books and join together the good that remains. Maybe it has been tried. Maybe it is being tried right now, somewhere. I don’t know. The result ought to be wonderful. We need a serious global initiative to do this.

Alice: It has to start with the individual. It is not something a religious group can do. We have to start within our own hearts. We must believe that the other is just like us, that differences in color, ethnicity, etc., do not matter. It happened to me. It was only after I learned to suppress my ego that I was able to see past the differences. Arabic has a saying like the English saying: “Divide and conquer.” This concept is evil.

Don: It does not come easily to us to suppress our ego, to remain in childlike innocence and defer authority to someone else. Like the disciples, we demand to know: “Who will be greatest in the kingdom?” Jesus says we’re asking the wrong question.

Alice: We can start by recognizing the wrong that people do as individuals. Religion doesn’t help, because it differentiates among groups. I don’t want to see any difference with my fellow human being. Any differences that exist are utterly trivial. They don’t matter.

David: It seems to me the question of individuality vs. community is not “either/or.” Both are important, as I think the statement about “wherever two or three are gathered in my name” implies. The issue is about the kind of community: The right kind (that is, one based on love and mutual deference) will amplify the good that is within us as individuals, which will in turn enhance the community itself. But absent that kind of community, it is, as Alice said, up to us as individuals to treat our fellow human as we would treat our beloved brother or sister.

Jason: The only way a religion can help in that process is if it is willing to say “our way may not be the best way” to achieve that.

Michael : Then it would not be a religion!

Jay: I am a Seventh Day Adventist. There are many things about my church that bring me closer to god and help me show god’s love to other people. But I am very comfortable in saying there may be other religions that do the same for other people. I just happen to have been born into a certain family and raised a certain way so this has happened to be my path. I can use my Seventh Day Adventism to separate myself from those others, or I can use it to share god’s love with them. If you don’t believe that your religion is “the best” then you are less concerned about converting people to it. Conversion only matters if you feel that it could bring you closer to god and help you show god’s love to others. Religion is just a vehicle for bringing people closer to god. If a vehicle carries one toward god, who cares whether it is a Ford or a Honda?

Michael: We should look at the behavior of individuals as representing themselves, and ignore their religion. Do they act from inner conviction or from imposed conviction? Religion is a separating, divisive force.

Alice: Religion has been good for me. It provided me with a means to know god. But once past that step, I don’t need it any more. I can now live on the basis of lessons I learn from the bible, and I can witness to other people by living out those lessons visibly, in reality. How others react to me will depend upon my behavior, not on my preaching or proselytizing. Love your neighbor, and your neighbor will feel it.

David: I am given to understand that Jehovah’s Witnesses believe the bible foretells that near the End of Days, the United Nations will ban all religion. They point to all the religion-driven global mayhem today that will cause the UN to take that action. The US long ago recognized the importance of downplaying the role of religion, through the explicit separation of church and state, as a means of avoiding the mayhem of religious divisiveness. We can certainly see, in Egypt and other attempts to establish Islamist states, that it is indeed divisive and it does indeed lead to mayhem. So maybe the UN should go ahead and prove the JWs right!

Don: all religions have prophetic viewpoints regarding the end times. There seem to be two end times: the grand end time, and that engendered by our own mortality. As we proceed through the book of Matthew, we will see that Jesus addressed the issue, so we will be discussing this more.