Jun 01, 2010
Community and the Love of Christ
Posted by Joe Paravisini in Community - Gospel Identity - Mission | Comments (9)
In many of the churches that I have been a part of, it's hard enough to get people to care enough about each other to even talk to each other outside of the few minutes you might be forced to on a Sunday. In all reality, in these situations, we do not love each at all because we don't even know each others' names. We couldn't be bothered. Sunday morning is just to hear the professional give his thoughts, and then we need to get on with our lives.
<bq>God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges brethren and God Himself accordingly… When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.</bq>
More recently, I have been part of a "deeper" kind of community. This is the idealistic community. It's where we apparently begin making real friendships with each other, and spend time with each other outside of the Sunday gathering. We discuss all of the things that we agree about, perhaps even unify against some other team or group of people outside of little group. Every person in this new community seems to have a heavenly glow of perfection around them. We won’t be so naive as to think they are fully perfect, but they do seem at least pretty close. At the onset, they won't gossip about you, disagree with you, or do anything in general that makes you uncomfortable. Weeks go by, months, sometimes years, and something happens. You have a falling out with someone. Perhaps someone that you looked up to lost his temper in an “unacceptable way”, or a friend's daughter gets pregnant out of wedlock, or your buddy turns out to be a closet alcoholic. Or, perhaps it was your own dirty laundry that got out on the table, and now people no longer talk to you. Maybe you up and leave this church because you are too hurt, and go looking for another. Or maybe you leave the church altogether, jaded by the hypocrisy of these supposed Christians.
Or, maybe you were on the outside, and helped ostracize someone who just didn't seem like a "real" Christian to you. Maybe you even thought you had godly intentions. You were trying to “disciple” someone. Or you wanted to make sure the ladies at your prayer group were “warned” about who that person really is behind the scenes. Bonhoeffer states that "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." I myself have been both a victim and a victimizer. Being the victim sucks, being the victimizer adds a level of hardness to your heart that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Whether you have been this proud person, or the victim of a proud person, you have been affected by this lie about community. Christian community begins with a proper understanding of your own right-standing before God. Why do you have confidence that you are a Christian? If it’s because you have “cleaned up your life”, or became really good at various spiritual disiciplines, you are putting your confidence in the same place that Pharisees do. Christianity is not morality, it is not a list of do's and don'ts. The sweetest truth that we can learn is that when Christ redeems his child, he secures their identity by his own righteousness alone and forever. Morality only comes into play after identity, and is a response to something that God has already wrought in us.
So, if our right-standing by God is not dictated by a list of sins, why do we act as if that is the case with our brothers and sisters? Why do we try to fool ourselves that our fellow Christian is no longer a sinner? And then when we see their sin, why are we so shocked and so much more offended by their sin than by our own? If we are ever to taste Christ’s true community, we must see the Church as a gathering of sinners saved only by grace, full of others who will indeed hurt us in many different ways, just as we will hurt them in many different ways.
It is only when we are sinned against that we are given the opportunity to love like Christ. If we only love those who love us, our love is no different than the world. When we can love someone who has intentionally hurt us, and can show them forgiveness, grace, and compassion, we taste a bit of Christ’s love. When we are shown grace by a brother, it is Christ at work in them and in us. This is where true beauty is. It is not in the guise of perfection, but in mercy triumphing over judgment. In the heat of a conflict, it is hard to see this, but the next time someone offends us, we should try to remember the amazing potential and give thanks to God for an opportunity like this!
This is a supernatural love, and it is the heart and essence of Christian mission! In John, Jesus states that “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus is talking about his kind of love; The love that forgives enemies, the love that loves those who may never return love. This kind of love is foreign the world and is the best apologetic that we can give.
To close up, those who know me, knows that I can be an opinionated, frustrating, hard-headed, temperamental, judgmental, disrespectful and sarcastic person. I have hurt countless people in my life. I have isolated myself from great friends, and have been a tool in breaking up friendships between others. The greatest regrets that I have consist of the various damaged and unreconciled relationships throughout the years. But when the table turns on me, how quickly do I throw in the towel? I hope this post can be an encouragement to you as it is to me to persist when things get messy. Conflict is just Christ teaching us what real love is.
Posted by Joe Paravisini in Community - Gospel Identity - Mission
