(A continued discussion on David Augsburger’s Dissident Discipleship) This chapter, in some sense, is actually an extension
of “radical attachment”. What Augsburger aims to show is that one’s attachment
to God can only form an attachment and stubborn loyalty to one another. Moreover, it must be seen as an aspect in human
spirituality… and I rather like this idea.
People Knitted into a New Community
We might define
community, in the general sense, as an intersecting of lives, establishing of
relationships and mutual commitments. The
whole of the people will almost instinctively find itself, shape itself (as a group
and individually), create agreeable boundaries and for a time it usually works. This web of community linking person to
person is nothing new.
The distinctiveness
of Christian community however is not this alone, but rather is defined by a
shared radical attachment to Christ.
When we share this attachment Augsburger shows it gives way to a loyalty
toward one another and that loyalty takes a unique shape:
·
Stubborn
Loyalty informs stubborn attentiveness:
When attached to Christ we can listen attentively to one another and
expect to hear his voice as another speaks or expect to see his face in the
other as we come to bear his likeness.
·
Loyalty
allows stubborn vulnerability: This means that a community where free
conversation is allowed creates openness to the point of willingly exposing
personal struggles and vulnerabilities and finds others to be sensitive and responsive
to such self-disclosures.
·
Stubborn
inwardness opened outward: The community then becomes a place where one can
speak honestly about innermost feelings about what is precious and deeply
valued.
·
Allowing
difference: We should recognize that community is the setting for clearly
confronting “unity and discord, positive attachments and negative repulsions,
concord and conflict…” This is a
community that faithfully and stubbornly accepts and integrates discord, not be
a people that excludes all discord.
·
Stubborn
support, confrontation and mutual growth: We should be community that
fosters healing, growth and maturation for all members. No person is an island who is expected to go
it alone, but we band together to provide connections, correctives and support
when people fragment and boundaries fall apart. Because of Christ we too can
bind up what is broken.
·
Stubbornly
including friends and enemies: Community should be place where friends and
frustrators are present, valued, respected, needed, incorporated and invited
into dialogue. We don’t give up on or
dehumanize or tear down the character of the irritating nor withdraw into
conforming, but welcome all.[1]
Not one aspect of this ceases to
be spirituality. It is formed by Christ at the heart of a community and encompasses
people from every age, gender, caste, culture and ethnic group.
Misconceptions
Nevertheless,
this Christ-like community also has had many misconceptions inflicted upon it
which usually revolves around some idea of guaranteed security, survival or
satisfaction. To name a few:
There is the
idea that community is a luxurious consumer item waiting to be bought into
through retreats, seminars, or something equaling membership dues; Sorry, but it is not so much a commodity. Rather it is a “common struggle for
integrity, shared commitment to justice, joint covenants to work toward
wholeness and mutual respect.”[2]
Community is a
utopian gated-society where we will find unconditional acceptance when meeting
the “right” kind of people with similar views and lifestyles; Actually it is more of a “collision of egos,
a furnace for welding steel-hard opinions, a crucible for melting hard ores of
self-interest into common goals” but nice try.[3]
Community is an
extension of our egos where individual goals are met and people just like
ourselves are there to confirm our coveted (and partial) view of reality; Well wouldn’t that be convenient if we got o
choose the people we co-travel with, but we do not get to “sort, select or
assemble our kind of people.”[4] In
reality, sameness creates fakeness and blocks us from having to face any
challenge which ultimately diminishes our growth… so the ones (good and bad) we
get stuck are more a gift of grace than anyone wants to admit.
Well then community
is the place where I will finally get the nurturing from others my home-life
refused to provide; Wrong again! It is
not the place for “familial perfection of solidarity or supportive parental
permissiveness.” Rather, “it is a network of fallible individuals and flawed
families seeking together to learn how to work through the various issues they
carry with them” via the willing Yentas of your group.[5]
Summation
When we think of
community as it should be (stubborn loyalty) in contrast with the community
that we know where many are quick to speak, slow to listen and prone to fail, many
tend to reject it. Community is
intrusive, messy and at times difficult because it is formed by people just as
messed up as the newly formed community who stands outside condemning it, but
to reject it is to reject dealing with real living people.
I think it is
precisely because we are willing to enter into this that something real is
eventually forged through history, testing, growth, continuity, affirmation,
acceptance, mutuality, receiving, giving and so on. From this emerges a community of virtue and
character that all began with the common ground being radically attached to
Christ.
·
Do you agree or is this too intrusive?
·
Were we ever meant to be such close knit
communities like wanderers of a desert, or since times have changed should our
involvement with each other be limited to Sundays and sometimes other days, but
the important stuff left private?
·
However, if you do agree, what things would have
to change currently before seeing a church of individuals who really know each
other and are known by each other?
[1] David Augsburger Dissident Discipleship (Grand Rapids,
MI: Brazo Press 2006), 61-62.
[2] Ibid, 65.
[3] Ibid, 65-66.
[4] Ibid. 66.
[5] Ibid.
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