Community: Plumbing the Depths of a Mud Puddle

It would seem that we are each individuals each responsible for our own peccadilloes and other perhaps more severe though private sins. It would seem that we are each unrelated atoms floating about casting dice for our own destinies. I am responsible for me and for no other, and no other is responsible for me.

Since the so-called foundations of “modernism” have begun to crumble or have crumbled (whichever flavor of vague description you prefer), a few things have come to light, namely: I am not an unrelated individual; I am not a manufacturer of my own destiny. The sad though potentially exciting twist is that I share complicity with society’s sins, and society shares complicity with my sins. I do not mean to suggest that each person may evade responsibility by contending that it is the society’s fault for personal sins, but it seems that we do need a more robust understanding of the larger society’s role in relation to particular persons. It would seem then that we need to reevaluate a person’s place in community and the community’s relation to persons. For too long we have treated persons as individual islands, yet no person is an island, no person is an atom unrelated to fellow atoms.

If respective communities share a responsibility for persons in the community and persons in the community share responsibility for the community, then the community needs to make its priority the building of character, lest the community crumble and with it any hope of recourse. The community is indeed responsible for the building of character within the community – a novel thought!

The church then cannot say, “oh look at that terrible sinner!” The church must say instead, “we have failed this person, and now we must come to the aid of this person!” There is no room for the church to evade responsibility for sins, and there is no room for particular persons to evade responsibility for sins. Responsibility goes both ways, and the responsibility to build character then goes both ways – it might be said as a side note, though no less important, that character is both public and “private,” and it is not limited to behaviors in the prayer closet or other "private" spheres of existence.

The Gospel calls people together and in so doing binds them together by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel does not give room for persons to be unrelated to one another, for the Gospel creates community, a community that is not to let its eyelids grow heavy at the crucial moment, a community that is not to deny its partnership with persons from the community. The Gospel creates community that is to be of integrity and cohesion. In the narrative world of the Gospel there is neither space nor time to let individuals be individuals unrelated.

Muddle puddles often seem shallow, but every now and then you might come across a mud puddle that keeps getting deeper and deeper. To plumb the depths of the church’s responsibility to particular persons is similar to plumbing the depths of a mud puddle that at first seemed only a few inches deep but keeps getting deeper and deeper. The church’s responsibility to particular persons runs deep, and the sooner churches acknowledge their responsibility and invest in particular persons the sooner they will be on the road to a Gospel community. The sooner churches make the building of character a priority, the sooner churches will begin clearing the murkiness of the muddle puddle.