In his book “Life Together” Dietrich Bonhoeffer develops this amazing thought -
“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.
By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream…Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”
How challenging is it to imagine that one of the most “graceful” things that God can do for you is to assist you in becoming “overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves”? Are you kidding me? I don’t know what your experience has been, but speaking for myself, I don’t want to be disillusioned with others – I want them to be generally sane and have an acceptable level of moral, mental and spiritual health (so their not TOO difficult to deal with)… and I SURE don’t want people disillusioned with me!
The truth for most of us is that we don’t want other people’s illusions about us destroyed, because it’s what we present to them as our badge of acceptability. The thought that people might finally and definitively see that “the Emperor has no clothes” other than the free gift of acceptance by God because of what Christ accomplished at the cross is a very frightening concept- but it’s in that place that true love finally has soil to grow in.
Overwhelmingly, whenever I’ve heard people complain that “the church is full of hypocrites”, the charge had very little to do with sexual morality or accomplished purity – it had to to with the disconnect between the way we talk about love and the way that we put it into action.
Love is generally a wonderful piece of theology when we are philosophizing; something that stretches us (while at the same time making us feel pretty good about ourselves) when we extend it to someone whose brokenness didn’t affect us directly; but often in short supply when the pain of the disillusionment is close to home.
But, in order to find God’s grace at the point of my biggest failure I need to experience that grace in community . In order to heal well, I need the people that I’ve hurt, and they “need” me…
I walked into a bookstore one day and as I was browsing over the titles my eyes fell on Ruth Graham Bell’s latest book – “In Every Pew Sits A Broken Heart”. I stood there, unable to move as I was overwhelmed by those words, tears sliding silently down my face. I’ve been around long enough to know that that is the absolute, undeniable truth. And I’ve been around long enough that I know how hard it is for us to honor that as one of the “wonderful” parts of our community.
I wonder what the average person would think about church if they knew it was a place where, when you were at your lowest ebb, and you had done everything inappropriate there was to do, people there would be honest with you and hold you accountable for your actions, but they would never get off your bandwagon, and they would never stop encouraging you and loving you in practical ways?
Wow…
Great post, but it brings out these questions in me:
What if the very organization encourages people to become not lovers but false lovers?
What happens if being a part of the organization you learn how not to truly care while appearing as if you care?
Is it possible the “community” we speak of isn’t really a community of people who are attempting to live like Christ, but a community of people who are being systematically trained not to live like Christ but to live religiously?
Diet makes the point:
“A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse.”
Really? Are we seeing this as truth? I see just the opposite. There are many communities who saw they were far from the ideal they started with yet continued and grew by simply accepting their own hypocrisy.
Are they Christian any longer? Beats me, but they survive and even thrive.
In my experience the people I find the most loving are those who have never been “churched”.
Scott sent me. Blame him.
Kevin: Yeah… if I only had the answer to all the “what ifs” in life…
Seen a lot of false lovers. Seen a lot of religion. Seen a lot of people who had complete vocabularies of “love and grace” but dispensed it in ways that were controlling, mean and crushed broken hearts.
While that can be very discouraging at times, all I can do is try to answer the question of how do I stay authentic for myself, and nobody else.
I’ve done a lot of work in recovery. One of the principles that you learn is that all you can concentrate on is “your side of the sidewalk”. Everything and everyone else is up to God. So it’s become harder for me to tell other people what they should do and more important to me to simply examine my own heart on a constant basis to see if I’m being congruent with what I believe is truth.
I don’t personally know any communities who “accepted their own hypocrisy and continued and grew, survived and thrived”, but at the very least I like the sound of their authenticity!
Yeah, many of the best people I’ve ever met are “unchurched”. But, having said that, I still can’t “work any body else’s program”… I just have to do the best I can to be the person that I think Christ died to create, and that’s it.
As for Scott, I’ll deal with him later!!!
Hi Bishop,
Thanks for the response.
You said:
I was thinking of the Catholic church for one. (The Protestant church for the other, though that takes more thought for most people.)
When we join a congregation that picks and chooses its beliefs based on the whims of whoever is making the whims these days aren’t we by nature “working someone else’s program”?
Christianity as it is practiced pretty much everywhere I have seen it is conformed to culture not transforming culture. That is not to say some conformation is bad–much of it is neutral. But when we look at the institutional church today it is conformed on almost every level.
Again, blame Scott.
Kevin: You said, “When we join a congregation that picks and chooses its beliefs based on the whims of whoever is making the whims these days aren’t we by nature “working someone else’s program”?
In recovery, the idea of “working someone else’s program” is about being fixated on what someone else is doing… ignoring my life because it’s easier to “fix” someone else’s. It’s probably one of the “issues” of the blogosphere and demonstrates just how codependent most of us are!
So, I have to take responsibility for myself – no matter what someone teaches or says. I can’t say, “So and so said this…”, I have to say, “I chose to believe this…”. This is my life. I’m not a victim. I chose what to believe and implement in my life.
I love your idea that Christianity is meant to transform culture and not be conformed to culture. Amen, Brother!!!!!
Now, if we could just convince everyone else that that’s true…