True Community

"We are creating a culture that does not facilitate the need for community."-Wade Bradshaw

Tonight, I watched the movie Crash with my roommate Sarah. It's an interesting film, which I admittedly did not really love until the closing scenes. The sheer depth of depravity and confusion in the film is almost breathtaking; and yet Sarah and I both kept saying "this is the world we live in." And, you know what? It's true. (It's important to note, though, that i'm not above what any of those most depraved characters stooped to in the film-i've fooled myself if I think so. However, I do have a grounded hope that gives me reason to tell the truth and "do the right thing" when the outcome seems bleak and unimaginative.) I watched gunshots blare across the screen, blood, fear, anger, remorse, and felt my heart weighted down. As I saw the characters stumble to make decisions amongst cloudy circumstances, I found myself sympathizing and empathizing with their situations. It's not all easy and it's not all black and white. And there are some things in this world that are really messed up. That said, if we only mourn this reality, or suck it up and try to muster the strength to live another day, we're simply fooling ourselves.

Here in the West, we like to pretend that we don't have problems. When the problems creep up onto our doorsteps, we try to shoo them away, or fight wars to keep them off of our own soil. The hard reality is that guns, germs and steel won't fix our problems (catch Jared Diamond's book for more on that topic). In college, I was struck by the hard hard truths that we face in this world, and confronted day by day in my Poli. Sci. classes with the world's biggest problems, in my religion classes with the atrocious mess that so many faiths tried to make of it, and in my anthropology classes with the various mechanisms we use as escapes. Who can handle this heavy, heavy burden? There's no end to the death, to the crying, to the brokenness...and yet, here is something beautiful-a delicate flower, a beautifully woven piece of fabric, a significant relationship...what do I do with this? How can I make sense of this messy world, the mix of good, bad, ugly?

This past week, I spent some time visiting Charlottesville, VA. It's no "pie in the sky," but there are some people there wrestling thoughtfully with some of the deep questions that the brokenness raises. On Thursday morning, I sat in on a class taught by a man named Wade Bradshaw, who navigated our little group into a discussion on the look and feel of true community, amongst other things. I hope, quite honestly, that this will be the first of many conversations with Wade and several others in that community. Wade's thoughts have left me with some good things to ponder over the next few weeks as I consider making some significant changes in my own life.

How much am I really loving people who aren't like me (ie. people who don't share the same interests or passions as I do)? And when I say this, I don't mean arbitrarily trying to conjure up a love for them, or wasting my time cultivating shallow relationships amongst people with whom I have little in common. No, i'm talking about something much deeper. And so was Wade. Certainly, we will gravitate towards those with common interests, it's natural. It's likely that i'll marry someone who shares a love of music, food, aesthetics, beauty, being outdoors, community development and quality time-or atleast a openness to such things. However, that does not mean that my community should not include those with whom I have little in common. This is, actually, the beauty of a church body, which is meant to be inclusive rather than exclusive. And within the true body of Christ, is where such community (I believe) can be found at its fullest.

The following lines are nothing short of amazing and do truly make a community of Christ-followers unique: "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:26-28)

Now, let's shake things up and a bit...what if we take this verse and translate it into modern stereotypes, many of which were touched upon in the film Crash.

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither black nor white, redneck nor urbane, poor nor rich, accomplished nor unsuccessful, indie nor punk, Arab nor Western, well-read nor illiterate, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Whoah, so my stereotype doesn't work here? Huh...What if we stopped looking down on other people, because of their jobs, their economic backgrounds, their race, their food preferences, their zip codes, and started looking at them as humans, just like us. Now, this may sound easy at first blush, but what about that clerk at Fedex who is always getting on your nerves, that black guy on the corner who is always smoking pot, that snobby rich woman who takes forever at the sandwich place...what about the person you find hardest, most impossible to love? The terrorist? The rapist? The murderer?-Yes, I took it there-We are so quick to put things in boxes, to live in a world of us and them and then find ourselves in a quandry as we live in ways we never thought possible (and make choices we never thought possible). We may round the corner to forty, look back and think "what have I done with myself, my life; what have I become?" The solution to our growing cynicism, selfishness, arrogance, and apathy, is nothing short of a miracle, but within it we find true community. Galatians 3 takes us there, and it's radical...