Real Community

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together about living in—and glorifying God through—the hard realities of Christian communities. If we’re to have real fellowship, we must first shatter our utopian expectations of life with our fellow Christians:

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…. 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.

It's difficult to love real people in real churches when you're trying to attain an ideal that does not exist. Embracing the reality of our own sinfulness and the sinfulness of others is the only way to enter true fellowship—with all members completely dependent on Christ for forgiveness, hiding nothing from each other, experiencing conflict and forgiveness, and extending grace to others because we receive grace from Him. A church that is focused on building the perfect community will never have the patience to recognize and work on the community that already exists. Bonhoeffer continues:

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.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself…When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Disillusionment is necessary if we're to settle down to learn what God would have us learn, rejoicing in our weakness, thankful for His strength, humbled by our sin; but we have to move on through this, or we'll end up wandering from church to church, spiritually alone and trapped in bitterness. We don't need to chase after a vision when, in truth, our struggle with God through the difficulties of reality reveals His power and glory and shapes our character far more than would our participation in the (mythical) perfect community.

Comments

[DW]

Thanks for that, Amy. How true and how Satan works in this area. Wormwood and Screwtape discuss this very thing in Screwtape Letters. In ch. 2 Screwtape says, "One of our great allies at present is the church itself...at this present stage he (the patient) has an idea of 'Christians' in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual, but which in fact is largely pictorial." He continues by saying "Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like 'the body of Christ' & the actual faces in the next pew." I notice that this present 'stage' he refers to is one of a new believer and/or maybe one that is spiritually immature. Spiritual maturity does involve this disillusionment. While very hard, for me sometimes it serves to remind me of my need for a Savior.

[PaulR]

Does this argument trump false teaching?
If not, you're back to square one, aren't you?

Because, hasn't every new denomination been, and aren't most trans-denominational moves, based primarily on a belief that there's false teaching (opinion which disagrees with mine) in one's current church, until one finds false teaching in that new church, and then false teaching in the next church, and so, on and on it goes...?

Or should we just stay put?

[Steve Abernathy]

PaulR

Only if the definition of false teaching is your given definition: "opinion which disagrees with mine."

[PaulR]

Hi Steve Abernathy

So if true teaching, like false teaching, isn't opinion, then which Church is teaching the 'real' truth, as there are clearly many churches some believe to be teaching 'real' false Christianity and not opinion: the evidence being denominationalism and your counter to my definition.

After all, there can be many churches teaching false Christianity, but only one church teaching true Christianity, because a 'they' couldn't be teaching truth, by the rules of logic. (There's an infinite number of wrong answers to 2+2, barring the right one, 4)

Logic insists there must be a true Church if false teaching isn't opinion, doesn't it? For you can't have 'partially true Churches' can you? (I certainly wouldn't feel attracted to joining one!)

What if Jesus actually founded the true Church, protects her, and has stayed with her - his bride - to this day, as he promised in Scripture?

[2oldstroke]

I think it's pretty obvious when we talk about what is false and what is true. Many denominations do Church a little different and back a few decades or maybe centuries ago it was a big deal concerning Church government, infant or adult baptism, etc. Even though now the term "fundamentalist" gets kind of a bad reputation it was created in this country to show that between the Protestant denominations that there were "fundamentals" that they all agree upon. Mainly what is law and what is tht true Gospel. Hope this clarifies.

[Louis Kuhelj]

PaulR

I want you to think really carefully and tell me if the following statement is true or false.

"There's an infinite number of wrong answers to 2+2, barring the right one, 4"

Think about it...is infinity minus one actually infinity?

"Logic insists there must be a true Church if false teaching isn't opinion, doesn't it? "

You are right there is a true Church and its members belong to many different denominations. Make of that what you will.

[Perry Shields]

So, what do you think is more important? Right action or right belief?

In the gestalt of Jesus' teaching, I see a pattern that promotes the former over the latter. Or rather, if one exhibits right action, right belief, however unbeknownst to that person, is present somewhere.

[Billy]

Perry

So which is it that you think Jesus taught was more important: right action or right belief?

[Perry Shields]

Like I said, I believe an interpretation can be made in the gestalt sense that Jesus valued right action over right belief. It is pretty evident in his "When did we see you hungry?" speech, and also in his acknowledgement that those who did not travel with the apostles, yet worked in His name, were not to be dismissed. Also, "right belief" in modern Christianity is quite a different animal than "right belief" in the Jewish age of Jesus. Diversity of thought seemed to be tolerated to a degree not held by fundamentalists today.

[Perry Shields]

On the other hand, an argument can be made from the Thief on the Cross passage that right belief was valuable at that point. There will always be a tension, it seems, between the two. Perhaps it was the wrong choice of words to use "value" as a measure of one and the other. They are both valuable, but if right belief never manifests itself positively, what good it it? Seems to take us back to the book of James.

[Steve Abernathy]

Hi PaulR,

You said, "Logic insists there must be a true Church if false teaching isn't opinion, doesn't it? For you can't have 'partially true Churches' can you? (I certainly wouldn't feel attracted to joining one!)

So just to clarify,

(A) A true Church Exists if, (B) false teaching isn't opinion.

(A) Is true in the sense that we believe and have warrant to believe that the Church exists (As in the body of believers or the body of Christ. We are justified in this belief by the
Holy Spirit and by Scripture).

But(A) is not dependent on (B)in that whether or not false teaching is subjective or objective, the Church exists.

It seems our definition of "Church" is neccesary. Do we mean the Corporation(s), or the body of Christ?