Found recently:
“The simple but nonetheless important point to emerge from this is that it is not God's will for us to exist merely as individual Christians. We are meant to gather together as the people of God.”
It struck me while reading the web-article where I found this quote, that there was nothing actually wrong with it, but that it was answering a wrong-headed question; or that it wasn't saying anything necessarily false, but just not saying the entire truth.
In other words, the person writing this assumes that we are first individuals, and then we have to make the effort to join the church. Reality is that we are not members of Christ without being members of His body, and so if any move is made, it is the move to separate. We aren’t primarily lone Christians with the individual lifeline to God, who then have to be sure and join the Church. We are baptized into Christ, Head and Body. Not to participate in the life of the Church isn't just maintaining status quo, it is to act contrary to the existing reality. It is not God’s will for us to exist as individual Christians, as the article mentioned, and so God didn’t make us individual Christians.
I realize slowly how deeply ingrained this individualistic paradigm is in myself, and in Americans in general.
posted by A. Steinberg @ 12:29 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Firstly ... nice trees.
Secondly, I too have been seeing this bias toward individuality in my own life and rearing in evangelicalism. The subtlety with which this mindset pervades our whole culture is perfectly evident in the quote you cited. American Christians (including myself) don't understand the acceptance of this presupposition in their lives, and therefore, of course, they cannot question it.
Can there be Christianity without the Church? Personally, my answer is becoming a stronger and stronger, "No." I would wager that for most "American Christians" the answer would either be "I guess" or "huh?"
I would think that we need to switch paradigms a bit. Don't we need to see the world differently than we currently do in our culture in order to actually express our "individualness" without all the baggage that we currently have in our American world?
Regarding the Church, this seems to be a big issue for those of who grew up in a non-catholic setting, i.e. evangelicalism, different styles of reformation christianity, baptist, etc. One of our bishops once said to me that one of the greatest problems with American Christianity is that it has no doctrine of the Church.
For many of, we weren't aware that there was such an animal, not to mention the need for it.
I like the trees. I agree. We are not individuals to begin with, so there should be no need to unite. Oh, how vain we americans are to think we can be individuals! We have no choice in the matter!
Post a Comment
<< Home