By Richard Rice
A Commentary on the Sabbath School Lesson for June 26–July 2, 2004
The Detroit Pistons have just won the 2004 National Basketball Association championship, overwhelming the highly favored Los Angeles Lakers, four games to one. The Lakers had all the stars, including several certain Hall of Famers, as sportcasters never tired of telling us. But the Pistons had something else—the ability to work together, the willingness to put the success of the team ahead of their individual statistics. In fact, the series’ Most Valuable Player, Chauncy Billups has never been to the All Star Game.
True teamwork is remarkable in America, even for teams. We are a nation of individualists, and we admire nothing more than people who do things their own way. This is as true in religion as anywhere else. In fact, it may be more true in religion than anywhere else. As most people see it, religion is intensely private and we all have to find our own individual way of being "spiritual."
As is often the case, California provides vivid examples of broader social patterns. An article in one of the year-end issues of the Los Angeles Times nicely illustrates this trend. "Spiritual Blend Appeals to People of Many Faiths," reads the headline, and the story begins with a woman who describes herself as "a nice Jewish, Southern Baptist, Buddhist girl," and relishes this "customized spiritual arrangement." "It works for me," she says. "I literally feel like I am at a buffet." The article goes on to describe the current scene with expressions like "do-it-yourself religion," "mix-and-match spirituality," "cutting and pasting," and the "smorgasbord approach." The impulse behind this approach to religion? Extreme individualism. The conviction that "each individual is ultimately the arbiter of personal fulfillment and personal meaning."
Popular as sentiments like these are today, there is nothing in the Bible to support the idea that we can make it on our own, spiritually or any other way. To the contrary, the Bible insists in a multitude of ways that we are created for community.
According to Genesis 2, God formed the first human being from the dust of the ground, breathed into him the breath of life, and he awoke to become a living being. God placed the man he had made in a garden, surrounded him with trees and plants and rivers—everything he would need to survive. Then God announced that what he had made was incomplete. Something more was needed. "It is not good that man should live alone." So God created companions for this new being. He surrounded him with other forms of life and brought the animals to him.
When none of them met his need for fellow¬ship, God made another human being, a precise counterpart, someone who could share the man’s life to the fullest, who could appreciate his thoughts and his feelings. It is no wonder that Adam burst into song when he first saw Eve. "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Gen 2:23). He recognized that she was exactly what he needed to make his life complete. This account of human creation underscores the truth that human beings cannot live in isolation. Life is meant to be shared.
The plan of salvation also underscores the importance of community. The purpose of Christ’s mission is not only to restore our relationship to God. It also seeks to restore our relationship to one another. Jesus Christ makes real community possible. In fact, the ultimate goal of salvation is a community of people who, through the power of Christ, come together to form a fellowship that could never otherwise exist. The members of this community find their lives opening to one another in astonishing ways. They confess their faults to each another, without fearing condemnation or rejection. They share their burdens with one another, knowing they will receive nothing but help and encouragement. They can even entrust their money and their property to one another, confident their gifts will be appreciated and properly used.
No one speaks more vividly of the effects of salvation on human relationships than the apostle John. When he talks about leaving the darkness of sin and entering the light of salvation he describes it as a dramatic change in our relationships with each other. "God’s love was revealed among us in this way," he says. "God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.... Since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another..... If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.... God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.... We love because he first loved us.... Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also" (1 Jn 4:7-21). The love that God poured into the world through Jesus fills and vitalizes those who respond to it. God’s love for us awakens a love for him in return, and this love also flows into our relationships with each other. God’s love for us creates a love within us that embraces other people.
So, the picture that emerges from the New Testament is this. Christ makes available to people a quality of life together, or a specific a type of community, that is radically different from all other human groups or societies. In the quality of their relationships and the nature of their fellowship, in the content of their shared experiences, the members of the church enjoy a recovery of our original life together and a foretaste of the harmony that will exist in the life to come.
We are created for community. And we are re-created for community. In spite of sin, God’s purpose for humanity remains the same—a worldwide fellowship of people whose lives are connected to him and to one another in the bonds of love.
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE
|
