The Sense of Community

The Sense of Community
Karl Evans

For humans, the sense of community is perhaps most difficult to comprehend. We have a seemingly normal tendency to understand human relationships in dramatically objective and first person singular terms. Our advertisements on television focus on MY needs. Our sermons seem to focus on MY responsibilities, and MY relationship with Christ. Even our searches for marital partners focus on MY desires, MY hopes, MY dreams.

We talk in very objective ways about percentages of marriages that survive or fail. We note that some given percentage of the population attends church. We begin to panic when we find that we have some number of our population in prison. These numbers are interesting and even sometimes helpful. On the other hand, they entirely miss the point of personal community

In God’s world, community includes three persons or groups of persons. It goes something like this.

Imagine a three-sided conversation, a relationship. These are common in human life. A girl cannot choose between two boys. A father, a mother and a newborn child. A judge, a prosecutor and the accused. In this case, the three persons of the relationship might be named as God, me and you.

In every three-sided relationship several principles are at work. First, the little community includes everyone and everything affected by the actions and thoughts of any. No one or no thing can be cut out of our community on the basis of any notion. John Donne wrote "No man is an island, complete as unto himself."

Second, the relationships portrayed here show the give and take relationships in every direction between the three. Each of these lines is the direct responsibility of the two parties on the ends of that line. This is easy to see. My relationship with God is God’s responsibility and it is my responsibility.

But that relationship is also a responsibility of the third party of the community as well. It is the responsibility of the “other” in the triangle. Sometimes the other can make direct impact on this God-Me relationship by impacting my life somehow. Sometimes the other will speak to God directly, perhaps on my behalf.

This is true all around the community, the faith community as we know it. God has some, but not all, responsibility for my relationship with other humans. And it is a clear statement of most faith groups that God does impact our human relationships with each other in unlimited ways.

Third, that three way relationship is the real definition of faith. The Greek word pistis seems best translated as "personal relationship". We often try to use words like trust, belief, certainty or others. But these words seem to lack something when we read them into the Gospels. Try reading the Gospel and Johannine passages which speak of "faith" by substituting the words "loving personal relationship".

This is core to the effectiveness of this little discussion. Whether or not you have economic health is always both a concern and a responsibility to me and to our Lord. We have the obligation to make your relationships better if we can understand how. This is the mission of Christ, and it is the mission of the Church.

Jesus came among us to make human life as good as possible. Because Jesus makes our own lives that good, our response will include taking that mission on toward each other. Any relationship reflects in some way every other relationship in one’s life. My relationship with you is a function of my relationship with Christ. My relationship with Christ shouts something of my relationship with you.

A very common question in Christian classes opens the door to our task. The question is simple. “Why did Jesus live and die and come out of the tomb?”

The answer is a simple one. “Jesus came to make human life the best possible.” Our task in economic development is precisely that. To do everything possible to make human life as good as it can be, regardless the risk. We can respond to the work of Jesus doing this for us only by doing it for each other.