My children are all teenagers. As such, I am no longer on edge when they are near a hot stove. I no longer fear they will reach out and touch the glimmering light on the stove top.
Why? Because, by now, they have experienced enough of life to know that fire burns.
How? Because my wife and I taught them at a young age: If you touch something hot, you will get burned.
C.S. Lewis called this subduing the soul to reality. That is, ordering life around what we know to be true.
For example:
Reality: The properties of fire are unchangeable. They cause the flame to rise and grow hot.
Subduing the Soul: If you touch it, then you will get burned.
There are, as I see it, at least two prerequisites for subduing our soul to reality:
- Appealing to an authority outside of oneself. My children learned to look to authority other than themselves as they learned to navigate the larger world around them.
- Acceptance in a community in which the individual’s soul is shaped by rather than sovereign over the health of that community. My children (as well as my wife and I) exist within concentric circles of community. One of the tightest of those circles is our family. In order for the family to flourish, we must all find our place within community and participate in meaningful ways within our placedness. When one of us (this would include my wife and me) decides that we are or must be the center, then communal life takes a wild turn, and we are in for a raucous ride. The radical nature of community relies on surrender and acceptance and leads to responsibility keeping and role fulfillment.
Neither one of these (appealing to authority or acceptance of our placedness) appear to exist in our culture today. One could surmise they are absent from the Christian family and church community as well. Indeed, both the church and modern Christian family tend to perpetuate two modern maladies that make it nearly impossible for us to shape our souls to the order of reality.
The two maladies of which I speak are:
- Individualism: self at the center of all authorial appeal.
- Isolationism: non-participation in community and refusal to accept or be accepted in the larger realities and relationships around us.
Before you smell something I am not stepping in, allow me a caveat or two. First, the individual is of great worth and value. I am a firm believer in the unique personhood of the individual! Suggesting the high value of one’s placement within community in no way diminishes the uniqueness of one’s life offered to that community!
Secondly, there are some communities that are toxic and participation in them would only lead to the development of toxicity within the soul. I understand and have experienced communal toxicity. Such communities are not the subject of this post or my concern. Rather, I am more interested in community that offers transformation to the individuals of that community.
Community is sacred. The pursuit of and meaningful participation in community requires
the surrender of self and the acceptance – and encouragement – of others! In such community, all will flourish while some may shine! Conversely, community taken for granted is soon forsaken, forgotten and abandoned.
I have begun to ask myself, “Do I participate in meaningful (soul shaping and subduing) community?” A community (my family, neighborhood, school, place of work, church, etc.) where all might flourish, and others might shine?
I recently read a wonderful book on community written by Ruth Haley Barton. The book’s title, Life Together in Christ, foreshadows its content and places particular emphasis on the development and practice of Transforming Community within a local church/congregation. Pillar Community Church, where I pastor, has about thirty people embarking on a couple of journey’s through this book together. It is my hope that this book will shape the DNA of our church, families, neighborhood and community at large.
I intend to write a series of posts offering a peek into our experiences and interaction with the material. If you would like to purchase the book yourself, you can follow this link: http://www.transformingcenter.org/in/lifetogether/. I have personally read this book three times since purchasing it a few months ago. I anticipate reading it many more. I am hopeful that its content will shape community at Pillar for years to come!
As I write this, my thirteen year old daughter is baking cookies for me. I know they are for me because she is allowing them to singe a bit: I prefer them to be crunchy and crisp as my teeth sink into and enjoy their goodness.
Wonderful! The cookies are magnificent and she didn’t get burned.
Disrupting to Renew!
Biz
Love this, Biz!!!
Good post. Community, at least in my case, has transformed me.