In a recent sermon, I mentioned a concept that I picked up from “Find Your Inner Monk.” We don’t learn philosophy and spirituality and ideology in a vacuum. We don’t simply observe our surroundings and make sense of them on our own. Rather, we form our attitudes and beliefs within our communities of belonging.
Our first community of belonging is our family. As teenagers, each person then starts finding new communities to join. Some find belonging on sports teams, others in clubs, still others in musical ensembles (choir, band) or other artistic endeavors. Or in a church, or in a gang. Each community forms its own belief system; each member both absorbs the community’s beliefs and contributes to their formation and propagation.
I am an advisor to Common Call Campus Ministry, which recently had an event titled, “What Is Progressive Christianity?” It was an information session open to the community. I firmly believe that there are students on campus who find their best path to God through other campus ministries. Yet I also believe that there are students who cannot find belonging in any of those communities, and therefore believe that they are not welcome in God’s kingdom. Our mission is to help those students learn and grow as they seek the path God has chosen for them.
An unfortunate circumstance has emerged over the past few decades. Where before, communities had a lot of diversity of viewpoints, now they are all becoming more single-minded. We see this in politics: both parties are being taken over by their extremists who are purging (or trying to purge) those who disagree with them. We see this in churches: each denomination or association is adopting theological stances that tend to push out those who disagree. I am proud to be a member of a denomination (PC(USA)) that not only endorses gay marriage, but also allows gay ordination. Unfortunately, some of the largest congregations in our presbytery could not stand to be associated with a denomination that held those beliefs, and left. As a result, our presbytery has become more liberal because we lost those conservative voices.
Last night, I had the pleasure of attending The Gathering, which is a group of people who have been disaffected from existing churches. They are striving to formulate just who they are and what it means to be in community with each other. My prayer for them is that they find a way to disagree agreeably, and keep their priorities aligned. Patrick Wilson opened the evening with some discussion of the Great Commandment:
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:34-40
Jesus’s entire ministry was an exposition of this commandment. Through words and deeds, he showed how we can love God, and how we can love our neighbor. Yet we still struggle with his teachings and seek to limit God’s dominion over our lives (say, to just Sunday morning) or to limit who we consider to be our neighbor.
Yet if we keep this commandment front and center, we can avoid many of the pitfalls that so many churches fall into. So often, we obsess over petty slights, or argue minor points of doctrine or behavior. Jesus taught that we can disagree about almost everything, except for the fundamental value of each person. If we love each other, we can remain in community together and then grow and change together, each seeking the path that God has laid out for us individually and as the body of Christ.