Individualism or Community
As I continue to work through the doubt of my faith, I am drawn by the love of a community around me. When I found myself in my hardest moments of doubt, I do not need someone to give me the “quick answers.” I don’t believe there are any easy answers to most hard questions. Although discussion is key, sometimes community is just a friend with an open ear, an open mind, and a loving heart. Unfortunately this idea of community is undermined by the individualism of our culture.
“No Christian is an island” as the saying goes. Yet it is hard to be in community in our society. American individualism is the dominant view of our culture. Each person must live for himself. At best we can unite as a family, city, or a patriotic nation. Many encouraged me to keep some distance from my family after I moved back in with my parents due to their probable adoption of a 19-month-old baby. To many a family member’s primary duty is not to the family, but to his or her self.
While I was staying in a Dublin hostel I picked up a book (I cannot remember the title) some traveler had left in the lounge. It was a modern egotist arguing that the individual should do all things in their own self-interest. One should put their own happiness above all other’s happiness. I felt sad for the readers who took this to heart. As I reflected on this I wondered, “What would compel a true egotist to write a book to help other people?” The author really wanted everyone to accept his worldview so that they might also be happy, but doesn’t this go against his egotistic basis? Why would an egotist want others to believe as they do? Perhaps there is something innately in us, even in this egotist, that tells us we need others.
In reality, we are creatures made for relationship. This is one point of Christianity I do not doubt because I see it work itself out across history and culture. Most interestingly, man’s need for others is not a result of the Fall. Assuming a Trinitarian view of God, we know that God is a relational being. However he receives all the interaction he needs within the Trinity. When God made man, He made him with the same need, but without the capacity to self-fulfill it. Man needs another being. Man needs relationship. This relationship is found with God, but also with other people. God saw it was not good for man to be alone in the garden, so He made Adam a companion. From the beginning, people were made to be together.
When mankind fell, mankind’s need for other people became corrupted as well. Instead of simply feeling alone and needing others, humans feel abandoned and hurt because we lack community. The egotism described in the paragraphs above came about because mankind went askew. Community was broken, both from God to mankind, and between individuals.
In theory, the Church (meaning the collection of believers of Jesus Christ, not a building or an organization) should be a picture of what community really looks like. Just take a look at what the early church looked like:
And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had needed. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. (Acts 2:44-47a)
Unfortunately, the Church often falls short of this goal. I believe few Christians find real building up on a personal relationship level on Sunday morning. The real problem is that in the U.S., Christians have taken their egotistic, individual worldview and forced it into Christianity. People walk through the doors of a local congregation on Sunday to hear a message, sing some songs, and go home. They are totally bent on what they will get out of the experience. There is little to no idea of service to the people encountered, just as my friend did not understand my duty to my family.
The need for community is real, and Christians need to fight for it. We were made for relationship, both with God and with other people. The individual is not the center of reality. No man is an island.
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- Aug 30, 2007: Community - online interactions « What’s your point caller?
- Sep 6, 2007: A Basis For Community « Confessions of a Seminarian
This is a big part of why I joined the Mormon church. I was really seeking a solid community to explore my faith, and I found just that. I have not yet attended a church with such a strong balance of community relationship and personal relationship as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They talked often about just this, Josh. They taught that when in the Garden, humankind had only need for one another and their direct relationship with God (that is, in the LDS worldview, there was no prayer in the Garden, because Adam and Eve spoke directly with God), but Adam and Eve were cast out, their direct connection with God was severed, and so began the quest for finding other ways to that connection through prayer, worship, etc.
All that made loads of sense to me then, and it still makes a great deal of sense to me now.
Funny, it’s like Thoreau is totally right, like he has hit the closest to what living in God’s light (God’s total light and attention) must really have been like.
well, community starts from an individual, and it ends with an individual . So it is not important to thought about it, but the things matter is that religion comes after the humanity and unity of people , i like ur idea to emphasize on cummunity than individual but still u forget one thing that only a particular religion does not make a community , but whole earth is a community and all the people , actually not only the people but the whole living things makes a community. This community is supposed to work for each other and care for each other which is missing in reality. So i can only say that an individual as urself or myselt takes the first step towards forming a single community which is humanity , coz every thing starts from home and if u takes ur step ( that is u r doing ur duty ) it might possible that others also takes a step forward. U r not supposed to take step forward after watching some one else but u r supposed to first person to takes the forward step.
Kyle!
I’m pleased to hear you have found a community where you feel welcome. The Mormons I have met have all been wonderfully welcoming and engaging folks. Thank you for your comments here!
I do want to affirm that Biblically speaking, prayer is consistently portrayed as direct communion with God. It certainly is different than the Garden, but it is held as direct communication nontheless.
Anyway, you are correct that community is important, and absolutely a gift from God. We are meant for it, without a doubt. I think Josh will explore the purpose and direction of community in a later post, as in, what should a community ultimately be centered on? All sorts of wonderful communities exist in the world, but Christians assert that our community should focus on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Stay tuned!
Oh, well, I’m not LDS any more. Heh. but thanks none the less.
…………
AWKWARD!!!!!!!
I kid.
Quantumfoam-
Although ideally the whole world would be a community, the reality is that it is not. People are separated by various reasons, some legitimate, others illegitimate. I am wondering if you mean to advocate pantheism when you say that all that all living things make up a community?
It is true that I am an individual, and my will only covers me. It does not cover you or anyone else. I only have control and accountability of myself.
Finding community in our humanity… interesting premise, but can humanity save humanity on its own?
Kyle-
I think I will be writing about what community should be centered around next week. This is such a huge issue I don’t think I can deal with it is a single comment.
Thanks for commenting!
joshm-
i think u misunderstood me , i am not actually advocating pantheism but my idea is that we don’t need God to make a community, but we need people to made community and since i am not a Christian i don’t know that what really happens in a church.I have saw people looking for enlightment and nirvana , but what is really these things are ? well i think that some thing is missing in our life as we are not satisfied with what we have.Human has a nature of being called superior than other and this is the part where all things goes bad. First we have to kill the evil inside ourself and than we realise that community itself keep on building, we we need not go to some particular places (don’t takes me wrong) to form a community.
quantumfoam-
If evil is inside of us, how can we kill it? What I mean so is, how can we, who are imperfect improve ourselves on our own? Isn’t an outside source needed?
Community must be centered on something, right? The question then becomes, what should community be centered on? If community is based just on the fact that people want to be together, we have nothing to enjoy together except our mutual needs.
Keep commenting!
I am totally agree that community must be centered on something, but what something & who decide that something?
actually i am a guy having physics background and my family members are very religious. So there is always quest goes inside my mind between a scientific and religious mind.I do believe in god when i am not physics student but as a physics student my first priority becomes to discover true meaning of god , is there someone who can correctly defines him.
as far as evil inside our self is concern , i can only say that there is no discrete definition of evil also , it varies from person to person and according to me, if we do any thing but don’t have honesty & instinct toward that work that is also evil and it not just only harming some one or doing illegal thing is evil.
why u think that we r imperfect , and if we r than why god made us such? actually these question never ends. Hope u understand my situation & any way thanks for writing about such an important topic.
quantumfoam-
Yes, I think I do understand where you’re coming from. I think your questions are good ones, and ones that need to be talked about.
About who decides who God is, what He is like, and what community should be based on, I would argue that no human has the authority to do so. We, as humans, must punt authority to someone greater than any of ourselves. God can only be defined by God. In this respect, we can see his “fingerprint” (if you will) in His creation. This is why I am glad to hear your main area expertise is physics. I think science is a great place to learn about the world, and in doing so get to know the God who made it. I do not think you need to throw away your belief in God when approaching physics. After all, Kant, who devised the scientific method was a theist (though not a Christian).
About perfection, I don’t believe God made us imperfect, but that we became imperfect. I don’t believe evil exists as an “opposing force” as some would say, but rather that evil is a perversion of truth.
So, I was thinking about that exerpt from Acts. It talks about how part of being a community is everyone having things in common, and it depicts them as all selling their possessions and belongings to benefit the group.
Extending outside the literal realm a bit, I was thinking how individualism might fit into this model of community. While the selfish model of every-man-for-himself is not a good basis for community at all, there is a good side to individualism, and I wanted to think about how that would fit in here.
I guess I’m saying that while I don’t agree with the individualist mindset of the individual’s needs and such trumping those of the group, it does seem that there is something important about promoting the interests, desires, needs, abilities of individuals as individuals. We should have separate interests, things we view as more important to us than other interests (that’s where passion comes from). My cause may not be your cause, but perhaps we are both persuing these separate interests (which may go against each other) for the benefit of the group.
And I think that’s kind of the point (for me anyway). It’s taking part of individualism - the part that stresses an individual’s right to persue his/her own intersts, actions, choices, etc. - and turning it toward a community focus. What can I contribute to the group? And my own interests are completely valid and important if my end goal is to contribute, to give, something to the community.
I guess I was thinking about these people selling all their possessions and belongings to benefit the community. Not everyone had the same possessions and belongings. And if they did, who would buy them? The market has to be diverse to most benefit the community. To extend that a bit (I told you it wouldn’t be quite a literal interpretation), we all have to bring our own intersts to the table (and possibly be passionate salespeople about them) to truly benefit the community as a whole and make the market worth visiting.
I’m not sure if that makes a whole lot of sense or is way off the point.
Danielle-
Thanks for the comment, as always you do a great job of examining the topic and dealing with it. It is true that we can error on the side of loss of the individual. Some might argue this is true in some Asian cultures. The individual cannot truely be happy outside of community, but one must ask if that is the sole reason that an individual dives into commuity. There must be something more. My next post is all about this, so I won’t comment to much on it.
On the idea that we all have different passions, I totally agree. I think that ideally we should find this in the church (I mean the body of believers, not the organization). Each person has different “spiritual gifts,” “personality types,” and different passions. However there is some sense of commonality in the church- Christ and His glory! So I think Christianity takes individualism verses radical groupism (if I can invent a term) and makes a synthesis- community!