Why The Internet is Communal, but Rarely a Community.

I am currently in the process of helping the professor with whom I work with his book that will be published in October of 2008. This quote on community really struck me...

Years ago, I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, “Life Together.” It influenced me deeply in my thoughts about what the Church can, and can’t, be.[i] Bonhoeffer points out that true Christian community is nothing like the fantasies and illusions we have of a wonderful, welcoming family. It is like that, sometimes, of course. But community is really more like a crucible. We have to live in close proximity with people that we really don’t like. Or, if we did like them in the beginning, we will discover many annoying qualities as well. The crucible of a community heats us up and holds us in so that we can’t get away. In the process, it refines us, bringing the impurities to the surface where they can be skimmed away.

Communities are necessary for spiritual purification. Even the desert fathers and mothers, many of whom lived as hermits in caves, settled in proximity to each other and created the first model for the communal life of monasteries. On our own we too easily avoid noticing where our sharp edges are. When we live in close proximity to others we are constantly bumping up against each other with those unfinished edges. It is much more difficult to hide. As the Proverbs remind us, “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”[ii] (Proverbs 27:17, TNIV ). Any who are serious about confronting their own signature sins, then, should seek to be part of a community where this kind of sharpening can take place.

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[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: Harper, 1954).
[ii] Proverbs 27:17, TNIV

Dunked....

Last weekend, our church did an impromptu baptismal service. Without all the usual baptism classes and standard education, they offered to baptize whomever felt led to do so that night, New Testament style. Communion was being served and whoever felt led was to go to the back of the auditorioum.

As I sat there in the service, I felt an anxiety that I know could only be the Holy Spirit. God was telling me to be baptized. Immediately, I started to resist. I told myself all sorts of things... "But I'll look so foolish, I've been a Christian for over a decade." "Theologically, this just is not what is right." With every excuse came that feeling of being sick. I actually told myself, "Just hang on through the next fifteen minutes, this will all be over, and you can pursue baptism some other time."

But, I got up some courage and whispered to my husband, "I think I'm supposed to be baptized."

Thank God for him, because he responded, "Then go. Do you want me to come and support you?"

I said, "Of course!"

So, the theologically savvy among you are wondering how this Baptist girl was getting baptized when she's been a Christ follower some 13 odd years. Well....

I grew up in a church that was generally pretty supportive, though not without flaws. I never felt pressure to make a committment to Christ, and that wasn't quite on my radar yet at the age of 11. I loved Jesus, but the idea of becoming a Christian wasn't one that I fully comprehended, or even partially comprehended.

Enter old school interim pastor (OSIP).OSIP decided he needed to have a Sunday to teach Sunday School for the children, and that all the classes should be taught together. Being a small church, I was the youngest among that late childhood and adolescent crowd. He gave a very evangelistic message in Sunday School and then asked whoever wasn't a Christian to raise their hand. That was....um, me. OSIP came over, put his arm around me, got in my face and asked, "Do you love Jesus? Will you do that today?" Being 11, with an old man asking me to do something, I wasn't going to say, "No."

I said yes. And I made my parents take me home halfway through the church service, crying. I didn't understand what I was doing, but whatever it was, it felt confusing and so wrong. My parents convinced me to go out for lunch, even though I didn't want to because I knew that OSIP would probably be there. My parents assured me OSIP wouldn't bother me.

But he did. I got ambushed in the salad bar line. Confronted by a 70+ year old man about why didn't I come forward. There he went with the hugging and being in my face again. There I went with the crying and feeling violated again. After several other poorly executed attempts by OSIP, my father told him if he ever bothered me again...well, I don't know what he said, but it worked. OSIP left me alone and we got a new pastor.

Six months later, our new pastor told a rousing sermon, and our church experienced a huge revival. This was miraculous for the unemotional straight laced church that raised me. Nearly the whole church went forward to be recommitted, to join the church, or make professions of faith. I saw my opportunity, I could go forward, get baptized and everyone would leave me alone for good. So I did. And it meant nothing to me.

Two years later, at the age of 13, I truly did become a Christian. I didn't tell anyone. Why? Because they all thought I already was one. Talk about embarrassing. So, for 13 years I've wondered about whether to get baptized again or not. I've been counseled by people of all different Christian belief systems about whether to get baptized or not, and been told a a myriad of answers. But, for the past 3 years, I know that it's been something God has wanted me to do, regardless of what I thought I knew about theology.

Every time that I started to get baptized, or mention it, or seek someone out, I would feel too ashamed, too judged, too prideful. But I did it, finally! Making the experience all the more meaningful, my husband was the one who was able to baptize me. When I imagined my true baptism, I never imagined it'd be a loaned pair of men's swim trunks from the church and a tshirt that everyone who is baptized at our church receives. But, I can't imagine a better time or place in my life for making my baptism more meaningful or symbolic of my new life in Christ, for only in these last 4 years have I felt truly remade, refined, and grown by God.

So..now I'm telling everybody.

Soul Making

Tonight we hear more from Alan Jones in his book Soul Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality (1985). Referring to the works of Graham Greene, we find:

First, the believer has an uneasy conscience, and so is incapable of committing atrocities (however minor) with equanimity. Second, the believer identifies with all human beings—the good, the bad, and the indifferent—and thus is an unlikely candidate for totalitarian seduction. Finally, the believer has a certain capacity for disloyalty—disloyalty to existing arrangements, to the principalities and the powers. The believer is not good at the usual excuses. The phrase, “I was only obeying orders,” would stick in the throat of the believer. The Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, has become the exemplar of this unimaginable obeyer of orders from above. He was pronounced perfectly sane; and, as Thomas Merton has pointed out, “It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea, aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones have prepared.

Believers reject this kind of “sanity” and choose the kind of craziness that is committed to expanding existing horizons, crossing frontiers, and stepping over boundaries. They don’t believe in abstractions, which are the spiritual weapons of governments. They are suspicious when their “responsibility towards the State” is invoked. Their loving is local, particular. To quote William Blake, they know that those who invoke the general good are often “scoundrels, hypocrites, and flatterers.” The believer is a sort of subversive in the world, one of God’s spies trying to make room for hope.

Amen.