*Below are some notes I took while reading through part of Kenneth Boa’s Conformed to His Image. Some lines are direct quotes, others are my own thoughts – my college professors would hate to see them all mixed up like this – but consider yourself warned.

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God created us as relational beings; and because of this we thrive best in community. Community is the hotbed of spiritual growth and renewal, yet it is a fragile and vulnerable space for the Evil One to invade and undermine.

In the Western world, we are seeing an attack on community (not just spiritual community) on just about every level.  There is a fierce pursuit of autonomy, self-actualization, privatization, avoidance of accountability, and a nuanced form of narcissism called “self-esteem.”  Read up on this in the foundational book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam.  In addition, we as Americans have a heritage of distrusting institutions, traditions and especially authority.

This blog post is not about wishing for days gone by, but about recapturing the biblical vision of covenantal community.

Certain Christians groups emphasize either the individual, or the corporate.  Evangelicals really push their attention to the individual’s justification of self before God.  Other groups accent social justice and relevance in culture.  The dangers of irrelevant privatization on one side or mere social ethics on the other are the pits on both sides of the path.  Scripture seems to find a balance by affirming the good news of kingdom living in the present tense.  The spiritual life is both personal and social; both dependent on God and active in the world.

God IS Community

Scripture clearly shows God as a relational being. Even before the creation of the world God is in a pure, loving community of three (Father, Word, Spirit).  Since God made us in his likeness, we have been created for community with him and with one another.  As we make the choice to enter into that original divine relationship, we become members of a new community that is called to reflect the Godhead in its corporate unity. [youversion]John 17:22-26[/youversion] In essence, our Lord tells us, “If you love me, you will love the people I love.”

The private/corporate polarities mentioned above are reflected on well in one of my favorite books on the topic, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:

“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will only do harm to himself and the community…You cannot escape from yourself; for God has singled you out.  Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; You are never alone, even in death…If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you.”

[youversion]Luke 6:12-19[/youversion] is an excellent text on moving from Solitude to Community to Ministry.  Jesus spent the night in solitude with God, in the morning he formed a community by inviting his disciples to follow him, then in the afternoon Jesus ministered with his disciples to the physical and spiritual needs of the crowds.  This is a path we can follow too.  Community is the bridge that connects solitude (intimacy with God) with ministry to the world.

True community is not a collection of lonely or isolated individuals but a dynamic interaction of people who know they are accepted in Christ.  God does not call us to be” Christians at large” or “a colony of hermits” but a vital organism of others-centered people of which Christ is the head.  True solitude and true community enrich each other through their creative interplay where the horizontal meets the vertical.

The corporate life of the body of Christ is not optional.  Its never easy, but we are impoverished without it.  Among other things, it provides:

• relational enrichment and commitment
• trust, love, and acceptance
• mutual submission out of reverence for Christ
• physical, psychological and spiritual healing
• nourishment from the common work of listening to God’s voice together in Scripture, prayer, and life.

Challenges to Community

The Church has always had its manipulators, controllers, and faction builders.  Even worse, few of these people even realize the the corporate damage they inflict, and usually paint a veneer of concern for the best interests of the group.  Just look at the church in Corinth.

In [youversion]Phil 2:3,4[/youversion], Paul recommends “Do nothing out of selfish or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”  Learning to please only Christ, the irony is that we can then find the right position to truly meet the needs of others.

The fundamental threat to community is self-centeredness, the vital builder of community is others-centeredness rooted in Christ-centeredness.

Hell is self-centered and isolational; heaven is others-centered and relational.  Having a corporate spirituality is costly because it asks us to go against the grain of our fallen instincts for privatization and personal control.  But Scripture reminds us that joy is only experienced in full when it is shared, and atrophies when it is hoarded.  Thomas Merton has said plainly, “We are not at peace with each other because we are not at peace with ourselves.  And we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.”

The Key to Creating Community

Surrender and self-denial in Christ is the KEY to biblical community. It is in this context we can read Augustine’s profound prayer, “Lord, your best servants are those who wish to shape their life on your answers rather than shape your answers on their wishes.”

The Church does not exist for the individual – it is inappropriate to leave a church when it no longer “feeds you.”  Maybe its a calling from God to bring some of your own spiritual food to the potluck!

You cannot wait for the perfect group of people to arrive to “start your church” – you must surrender your ideal of community to allow the one before you to thrive.

So you think you really want a taste of this divine community?

True community in Christ is not created by attempts to “make it happen;” instead, it is a by-product of others-centeredness – which comes from losing our life to seek Jesus. [youversion]Matt 16:25[/youversion] Death is the only way to resurrection.  Conversion to Christ and to the cross should in turn lead to conversion to community.  Everything you do alone in the Lord is useless without it. [youversion]1 Cor 13:1[/youversion]

“I will lead a life of integrity in my own home.” – psalm 101:2

How does this happen? What are the markings of a life led by integrity?

Some words that come to mind when I consider the word integrity:

Blameless, innocent, intentional, reflective, coherent, consistent, honest, authentic, concious, mindful, receptive, steadfast.

- Read this list again and ruminate on each of the words. Which ones especially stand out to you? What in this list surprises you or angers you? Pay special attention to you instant reactions and emotions. What else might you add or remove from this list?

I feel like God is calling me to step it up a notch in the way of integrity in my life. Integrity is for me a gift offered to me through the Holy Spirit. When I live centered not on myself but on the Lord, quickly I begin to sense things in a new way. I begin to look for what the Father is doing in this situation or that relationship. In a previous post I considered a life lived with relentless attention given to hearts: mine, God’s, and others. I believe a life oriented in this way opens me up to several things which leads to a life of integrity.

First, it opens me up to my own shadows and hypocrisy. When I am honestly looking into my own heart, discovering my wants and desires, I begin to see a pattern that either reflects light or darkness. This is the point where I become honest and authentic with myself- a key starting place on the road to integrity.

At the point where my attention to my own desires and the desires of God’s heart collide is where I see the narrow road I must walk toward integrity. Failure to bring God’s heart into the clear focus of my thoughts and prayers makes me humble, aware that my desires sometimes do, but often do not offer a sure path to the blameless walk of integrity I deeply desire. I must pay attention to my heart, yes, but only as long as I am willing to submit it to the Heart that I seeking after.

How do I trust that my attention to my own heart and the heart of God is authentic, and not a self-delusion I concocted in order to satisfy my own desires? I am convinced it is by paying relentless attention to the hearts of others as well. They bring the heart of God into clearer view, and they call me out when I am hiding my own heart from them, from God, or even myself. When a family of God pays unyielding attention to hearts, it launches each of them onto a trajectory of integrity and points them toward fulfilling their unique purpose God has prepared them to do on this earth.

I want to continue to process what happens when I am simply aware of the most powerful motivator in the universe: the human heart.

Ever wonder where Christian Orthodoxy comes from?  I read a fascinating article on that over at Emergent Village.  It turns out that the pope and his cronies called the Magisterium (who were originally established to protect against gnosticism) had grown so powerful that they could actually broker truth to the masses exchanging loyalty (tithes) for protection (communion, citizenship).

Magisterium essentially withheld Scripture from the masses, thus keeping it out of their control.  They taught that the Word of God was too holy to be transcribed or spoken in any language other than Latin, a dying language.

By the 1450’s the Catholic Church needed money, and began selling indulgences (handwritten forgivenesses on pieces of paper).  Officiates would travel all throughout Europe selling these tickets out of middle hell by the hundreds.  When the printing press was invented they found they could print these indulgences literally by the millions, which was the equivalent of printing money.  That is why the printing press succeeded, and why the church became filthy rich, and kept the masses under their control.

Martin Luther, when he tagged his 95 Theses to the door of a Wittenburg church, he was complaining that the Catcholic Church was corrupt, in part because of its selling of indulgences.

We tend to think that the printing press was a noble invention used to advance biblical literacy.  Sorry!  We entered the golden age of the printed book through the heartless pursuit of filthy money by corrupted power.  Thankfully, God used that sorrowful time to print his Bible in German, the language of the people and started a revolution that continues to this day.

So, who will hold the keys to orthodoxy in an age of limitless voice?  In a world of blogs, podcasts, and internet watchdogs, Tony Jones suggests that “those committed to the social web will become the new Magisterium.”  Now we have access to God’s Word not only in printed form, but check out YouVersion, a collaborative online bible studying community.  Or BibleWiki.  Now we the people access to the halls of science, technology, medicine, and history like never before!  It may mean questioning long-held traditions and assumptions of truth, but the goal is Truth (as in, Way, Truth, Life = Jesus) not truth (being right and being mean about it).

Like the dream of Martin Luther, we can discover the truth on our own – and the people control the Orthodoxy!