“I think it’s because people need to get together.”
This was the explanation given by someone in a local newspaper as to why the crowds grow larger each year at the annual Italian Festival here in Wilmington. It makes sense, doesn’t it? People get together because they need to get together. Living in isolation from others has never been viewed as ideal by most. Someone who is lonely or alienated from others is typically someone we feel sorry for. We humans have always valued being together. We’ve always needed to be part of community somewhere. But why? Why do people need to get together? Is it because we have been conditioned by our environment to live in community with others? Are we simply living out what we have been trained to do all our lives?
I don’t find these explanations very satisfying. My personal need for community runs deeper than what a purely naturalistic explanation can account for. There seems to be an ache or yearning in my inner person to be connected to others. I have an inbuilt desire to do life with others. As human beings, I believe we are compelled to share life together. Our longing to be together flows from our identity as humans. It is part and parcel to who we are.
The biblical drama makes sense of this. We learn in the first act of the drama (Creation) in Genesis 1 that we were made by Community. This brings us in on a remarkable reality: God himself is a community of persons. He is three in one (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). This accounts for why Christians use theological lingo such as triune, trinity, trinitarian, etc. Don’t ask me to diagram or explain what God as three in one means with any sort of precision. The Bible just doesn’t go there. And we shouldn’t be surprised that there are truths about God that boggle our minds. In fact, I would be a bit skeptical if this wasn’t the case. It seems logical to me that since God is God, since He is bigger than us and distinct from us, there should be some mystery involved in knowing Him. The Bible avoids presenting the Trinity as some abstraction we are to figure out. What the biblical story is apparently trying to tell us is that we should devote less time to analysis and speculation and more time to experiencing and knowing the Trinity. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “the thing that matters most is being actually drawn into that three-personal life.”
Among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit there is an other focus – a constant giving of themselves as each person of the Trinity is out to make much of the others. The Trinity is a community of divine love and delight. This assures us that God did not create the world because he needed something, but rather because He wanted to share and spread the wealth. Think about your own life, for example. Have you ever experienced something so meaningful that the joy you felt was virtually uncontainable, compelling you to share it with someone else? This gives us insight into why God made the world. He wanted to bring us in on what He experienced. The creation of the world was an overflow of the Trinitarian community. God desired for us to experience that community through knowing Him and living with and for others.
We also discover in the first act of the drama that humans are made in the image of this triune God. Since God is a community of persons, it would follow that one significant way we image Him is by being in community ourselves. We can’t help but to gravitate towards others because we were made by Community for community. Our “being together” is a reflection of our being made in the image of God. We are inescapably community-oriented. This is why Adam by himself was not enough. God declared in Genesis 2, “It is not good for man to be alone.” So He made Eve to compliment Adam. We are made for relationship with others. It is in our DNA. This means I’m not myself by myself. I’m incomplete when I live independent of others. I need community to live a fully human life.
I believe the biblical story explains why we need to get together. We were made by Community for community. What do you think?
The conversation continues…
10 comments
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July 10, 2007 at 7:10 pm
David B.
Thanks for starting this blog Jason! You have stretched my thought process via your blog posting wherein you discussed the need we all have for community and how this relates to the community of the Trinity in some mysterious way.
David B.
July 11, 2007 at 1:01 am
raleigh b.
I agree. Why most Christians do not care to become involved with community outside of the walls of the church boggles my mind.
July 11, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Laura
I was thinking this morning about the similarity between the word “community” and the word “trinity”. I guess the “-inity” or “-unity” part means the same thing–oneness. So in the same way that God is three in one, we as a community are one. I guess that’s why we reflect the image of God best as a community and not as individuals.
July 11, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Jason Sica
Raleigh, I’m with you about how Christians don’t do a good job of community outside the walls of the church. I’ll have to post on this subject in the near future!
July 12, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Anonymous
I highly recommend Shane Caliborne’s book (Zondervan Press): “The Irresistable Revolution; Living as An Ordinary radical” as an example of a radical call to Chirstian love and community! He will bend and stretch you to the breaking point. The key thing he asks is, “did Jesus really mean what He said” (DJRMWHS not WWJD which we know the answer to if we read the new Testament) when He said to care for the sick, the prisoner, the poor and destitute, the widow, and the orphan. The book seems almost irreverent at times because he’s got ideas that seem so foreign to the modern church, but they would not be foreign to the 1st century church in the book of Acts.
David B.
July 12, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Jason Sica
I’ve heard good things about the Claiborne book. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve heard from others that it is really helpful and challenging. His ministry is based locally in Philly!
July 13, 2007 at 4:35 am
Anonymous
Another excellent writing on “community” is the chapter by David Giardiniere in the compilation It Was Good–Making Art to the Glory of God. 2006 Bustard editor, Square Halo Books
Brerbearsr
July 13, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Jason Sica
The chapter by David Giardiniere in It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God is excellent. Actually, the book as a whole is very good and worth checking out. I highly recommend it!
July 14, 2007 at 1:26 am
brent d.
Great thoughts, Jason. You know, I think too many people (even churched people dangling on the outer circle) think that our relationship with God is purely personal and that no one else needs to be let in – I was deceived previously and used to think that, too. As you said, we were made for community – so, it is important that we embrace a church community.
August 20, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Anonymous
The best concert I ever saw (a few years ago) was Michael W. Smith in Newark, DE. The auditorium was a hush as the Holy Spirit filled that place, and we just worshiped the Lord. I thought the roof was going to be blown off the place at times due to the spiritual electricity in that building. It was chilling.
David B.