Aug 23, 2010
Community of Neighborly Advocacy: Ruminations Inspired by Jean Alexandre, a Pipe Smoking Aficionado
Posted by Pastor Todd Murphy in | Comments (13)
I was inspired by Jean Alexandre's fine blog post today and wanted to share some thoughts of my own. I have found a common misconception about community in the Church that is essentially this; "Spiritual growth comes from getting into really deep and connected relationships." This is very common relational dysfunction of many house church types. The emphasis is on closeness. However the idea that relational closeness leads to “spiritual maturity" is actually a relational fallacy. In fact, I have surprisingly found that where there is often an overemphasis on "closeness," it may in fact point to relational dysfunctions where people are pursuing closeness not out of a Gospel centered love of neighbor and putting your neighbor before yourself, but out of emotional neediness.
This often shows itself when small groups or home churches will divide for growth and individuals within them get anxious. Peter Steinke offers the following insight:
'HUMANS HAVE THE STRONG TENDENCY TO GROUP TOGETHER AND COMMUNE. ONCE THIS HAPPENS, THEY BECOME COMFORTABLE TOGETHER. THEY FIND A SENSE OF SATISFACTION IN STANDING SHOULDER-TO-SHOULDER AND HEART-TO-HEART.
This is the natural tendency of all people, but the urge becomes stronger and out of balance when there is deep need of self affirmation. This leads relationships in the emotional system to "fuse" with one another. This means people give some part of themselves away to other persons in an effort to get certain needs met, a sort of negotiation of emotional resources. Another way this commonly manifests is when a couple is dating, often in semi-obsessive ways, and yet when they break up, the affection suddenly transforms to anger. This is because the self-centered needs are not being met anymore, and often it is precisely the partner's needs that are going unmet that lead to the friction int he first place.
This is no different in the church. Often as the individuals try to go "deep," it leads to friction and and disappointment because individuals are searching for areas of affirmation that cannot be truly met by the nature of that relationship. The only things that will address them is a growing awareness of the inward unmet necessities and and then a purposeful endeavor to begin to address them through managing of the emotions. In fact, the attempt to go deep, when motivated by neediness only ultimately compounds or maintains the problem in the individual. In other words, it is co-dependent and then continues to create a false fulfillment of the need (leading to a false homeostasis or equilibrium) reather than helping the person to work through it and wean themselves off of false self-affirmation and toward spiritual and emotional health.
Let me give you an example. We have a common human relational misconception that duration of relationship equals stronger friendship and trustworthiness. There of course is something to a history that adds certain value to a relationship, but it really has nothing to do with its quality. How many of us have been in a long deep relationship with a person only at one point or another to be deeply betrayed and not understand why. True friendship and respect is not the result of duration, but rather to the level at which that person acts selflessly or selfishly in the relationship. Not long ago I was asked by someone if I was “good friends” with a pastor and mentor, Chris Mitchell. Ironically, I had only known him less than a year. I stopped and pondered it for a few minutes, and I had to in the end turn to the person and say to this effect, "Well I actually have not known him very long, but in fact I think I can honestly say he is one of my most trustworthy friends." How could I say this? It was his overall posture of life. There have been times in that relationship where there was friction caused by me and on the one hand, he did not let the transgression go, but addressed it as it should be, for my benefit. On the other, he never allowed it to cause a strain in the relationship. He would treat peoples sins and mistakes as normalcy and thus would not take it personally while still addressing it uncompromisingly. It was then I realized that it was a Gospel centered posture that drives the healthy relationship and defines what a true friend is.
Returning the community, it is this kind of true Gospel centered friendship that is constantly fully accepting of the person in spite of their faults and yet never brushes them under the rug that is the basis of all good friendship and community. It always has a posture toward the advancement of the individual and not the mutual strokes it gets. It stands on principle even when it requires taking issue with another person's actions yet never rejecting them. In our endeavor to develop authentic Gospel community, it is not about endeavoring to go "greasy" and "deep" but to act justly out of one another's benefit.
Reality demonstrates that there are only so many people you can be in really close relationship with, but through a principled posture of unconditional love and justice toward others, we can be everyone's true friend. In other words, how well I know somebody has nothing to do with the level to which I am a true friend to them; whether I am a person who acts primarily out of selfish motives (not a friend), out of mixed motives (a nominal friend), or out of a neighbor first Gospel posture of love and justice (a true friend.) This last one is the posture of Jesus. Look at Jesus closely and you will see a man who was only very close with 12 guys, and only three of them were his closest. But was there a single person he met where he did not love them and seek their benefit even more than their own mother? Jesus acted out of perfect love that always acts on behalf of the other person, a love that I will call "Cross love." It is this kind of selfless love that seeks honesty with justice for all before the self that is the basis of all community. And so this is how early church was so effective. When it said they had all things in common in Acts, this did not mean their community was a commune, but what they practiced was truly seeking justice and prosperity for their neighbor first. There were many disciples (thousands after Pentecost) and so like us, there is no way they could have all been on intimate terms. But what happened was when persons' had need people with selfless love and resources stepped up to meet that need as a manifestation of justice befitting the Gospel of the Kingdom. Fused and codependent relationships siphon off of each other’s emotional resources rather than actually developing the other. True friendship and community if founded in a rule of life where people do not "life off of," or "live through" their neighbor, but rather to live for their neighbor as his or her advocate without surrendering one’s own individuality.
Posted by Pastor Todd Murphy in | Comments (13)
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