Community Work

Community is resurfacing again as a buzzword in Christian circles. (I guess we Christians got tired of Mormons and Jehovah's Witness' doing our job for us.) It seems to me a few years ago community was talked about a bunch, but its popularity went the way of so many religious fads. With no concrete works to go along with our belief that community was the way to go, away it went. Community has one enormous hurdle to get over, human selfishness. We want to live the way we want to and we don't want anyone else to comment on the way we live. My own particular brand of selfishness that precludes intimate community includes not wanting my faults to be known. I don't want people to realize that my number one concern most of the time is me, not the thousand and one commitments I've made in one week, or the people who expect the "always true, always loyal, always neurotically on-time Jenn" to fulfill those commitments. I over-commit, try to be true and loyal and on-time because I feel that gives me some kind of saint-ish clout with friends and God himself. I don't want people to realize the amount of time I spend being incredibly insecure. If people only knew that, they would be as disgusted with me as I am. BUT, and this is a big but, isn't that what community is supposed to be? I don't believe for a minute that community is this safe, pretty existence where Christians live and sing in perfect harmony, like some hokey Coke commercial. If we really and truly want community with one another and the unbelieving world around us, we have to be willing to see and hear and get messy with those things we would rather not let anyone see, hear, and get messy with in our lives. "One anothering" requires a solid commitment to the mess in each other's lives. If there aren't people in my life who will confront me with my faults and be equally willing to show me theirs for me to confront, then we both are severely hindered in our attempts to walk with the one who came down to get as messy as a body could possibly get to save us from our sin and a life that is meaningless without him. At its best, community is messy. At its worst, community is non-existent, when we withhold our junky messes from each other. Community is so much more than sharing space and resources, it is treating others as better than ourselves. Sometimes, treating people better involves doing what is best for them, even when it causes them pain. Admittedly, I am terrible at this. I would rather swim with live eels than tell someone I love and respect that they are not doing things right, even when I know there is no one else to tell them. The times of greatest growth for me have always involved an uncovering of sin in my life that I couldn't (or wasn't willing to) see, by someone who was willing to wade into my reluctance and anger and denial of it.

A missionary in "harm's way" shared at my church's recent mission conference that he didn't serve God, in fact, he didn't even have a ministry. He held out for some time before exclaiming that God serves him. And as hard as that is to hear with my American "rugged individualist" ears, it is true. God serves us. He did all the work and came down to forgive my sin (and yours) and he even exclaimed that he did not come to be served but to serve. So, why is it so hard for me to believe it? Why is it so difficult to read what is clearly written in scripture and believe it to be true? A common bible study question seems to be "If you could believe the truth that God loves you and died to be with you, how could believing this truth change your life?" That question, in its various forms, always blows me away. IF I could believe it, if I could REALLY make it past the surface of that truth, everything would change. The trouble is getting past my seemingly endless supply of insecurity. I know my free will would be greatly hampered by God simply performing a kind of faith lobotomy procedure in my brain, but I think I would welcome it. God is tricky in how he wants us to want to believe him. My conclusion, at this point, is that I really can't come to the conclusion that God loves me all on my own. I need others to help point out God's faithfulness and love to me. In turn, I must be willing to do the same for those God has put in my path and in community with me. Another thing I can't seem to believe is that God wants us to live isolated in our own little introspective worlds to the point that we can't see beyond our own peevish, dare I say the word, issues. My increasing realization is that this world is not all about me; I am no longer my own. "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." If that statement is true (head belief and heart belief are two different things), I can no longer claim my "rights" to my time, my energy level, my income, my gifts, and even my failures. I claim that Christ has won my heart, and the winner takes all. The only way for me to recognize Christ in me and in the others around me is to commit to one another to point Him out when we see Him.

The fact that my God serves me strikes me as an excellent reason not to be self-centered. Christ gave up his position and his place in order to serve me through his life and through his death, and ultimately, through his resurrection. One way of getting out of my own neurotic, insecure way is to emulate Christ's selflessness among others. I long to live in community, loving, selfless community without the hip, buzzword, 70's Coke commercial meaning that goes along with that. I really do long to be sharpened against the iron of community. It can't always feel good to go through that kind of sharpening, but I have the feeling it would be well worth the benefits.