At various points in this book we have discussed how, on the
individual level, sins such as pride, selfishness, and fear incline us to
isolate ourselves from one another spiritually and psychologically. In this
closing chapter I want to look at obstacles to community on the cultural level.
Every culture and every age has its unique challenges to
community. Let’s briefly consider four of the most common phenomena in modern
Western society that work against biblical community. These are individualism,
compartmentalization, busyness, and misleading expectations.
2. Compartmentalization...
3. Busyness...
4. Misleading Expectations
Have you ever imagined what the ideal church would look
like? We would all love to take the best people and the best moments of our
Christian experience (isolated, of course, from all the other moments and all those other
people) and bring them together in one warm and loving place…where seldom is
heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.
Of course, that’s nothing but fantasy. The ideal church
doesn’t exist. How could it? We don’t live in an ideal world, and there are no
ideal people. We live in the real world, where real people are sinners and
relationships are inherently messy and difficult.
The reason relationships are so difficult is because none
of us are yet fully conformed to the image of Jesus. Sin remains within us. The
process of change has only begun. Though we are saved by grace, the church on
this side of glory is still a society of sinners. The failure to realize this
sets us up for huge disappointments. If you are easily disillusioned with the
church, perhaps you have lost sight of this. But that reality check, even if we
have to go through it again and again, is vital to both our own spiritual
maturity and the growth of others. If God is going to use us in one another’s
lives, we must be part of the church that truly exists, not the church we wish
would exist. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said,
The serious Christian, set down for
the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very
definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize
it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams . . . Every human wish dream
that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine
community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves
his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a
destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so
honest and earnest and sacrificial.[vi]
So, no one in your church is perfect. But they are “instruments in the Redeemer’s hands
– people in need of change helping people in need of change.”[vii]
They can help you, and you can help them. After all, spiritual transformation
is inescapably a community project, a shared task. We need each other. God
planned it that way.
[vi] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The
Classic Exploration of Faith in Community (San Francisco, CA.:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1954) 26-27. Similarly, Jean Vanier wrote, “There is no
ideal community. Community is made up of people with all their richness, but
also with their weakness and poverty, of people who accept and forgive each
other, who are vulnerable with each other. Humility and trust are more at the
foundation of community than perfection” (Quoted in Ortberg, 48).
