Personal Faith? Communal Witness? Both?
I wonder, has the church made working on our personal faith more important than working on a communal faith? Or, are they impossible to separate? Is it possible to talk about having a personal faith apart a communal faith?
The reason I ask this question is that I often get the sense in America that American Christians (because this is what we teach from the leadership – so its on the heads of us as pastors) don’t have a hard time placing a high importance on their personal growth. Granted, many of us have a hard time committing to this, and we often fall short. But, we at least (in general) are making efforts towards, or feeling guilty that we aren’t, personal holiness. But, we I don’t know how much we feel in commitment toward being part of a community of faith. How much do we change our lives and schedule our lives so that we not only can be a “witness” of the way of Jesus as individuals but so that we can also be a communal witness. I wonder if we have placed such a high priority on personal holiness thus have individualized our faith so much that we loose sight of what it means to commit to a community (often at the expense of ourselves).
We are still reading through I Thess. together and we continue to get an amazing picture of how these people lived. Their lives, their whole lives, were about the gospel (of course, they fell short, and we see that…but there is a sense in which they understood their calling to be a communal witness…and they were somewhat successful! or Paul would not have praised them so much!). Again, we are not talking merely about personal holiness here…we’re talking about giving their lives to a greater calling: the testimony of the community of faith called to live in the way of Jesus.
Of course, don’t hear me say that personal holiness is not important…of course it is! Personal holiness calls us to commit to a community of faith, and committing to a community of faith calls us to personal holiness. What David Bosch would call a single movement…we do both at the same time. it is not a matter of balance, it’s a matter of tension….
Just some thoughts, what do you think???
Jayne said...
102/24/05 7:43 AM | Comment Link |
Hi todd. These are interesting thoughts. I had a thought as I was reading your post. I might be helpful to develop a definition of personal holiness. The term is being thrown around with little weight and seems to carry much assumption of what we THINK it means.
To begin the thinking, the analogy that comes to mind is deconstruction. It is the trendy word now-a-days, so it will help to cross the bridge of our thinking. We love to decontruct…other people, their ideas, their lives, their fatih, etc. You get the idea. Sometimes I like to think of it as… Deconstruction of Love.
Personal holiness also involves decontruction. But it does not look outward to others’ lives, it looks inward to our own life. It is an opening of our interior selves to the deconstruction by the Holy Spirit. And maybe this is where the analogy breaks down, because it isn’t as violent and destructive as the word indicates. But in the Spirit’s work of deconstructing our selves, we are reconstructed into His image.
Under this defintion, I would disagree with you that we, as American Christians, place a high priority on personal holiness. Maybe a high priority on the Deconstruction of Love, but not on the deconstruction of our interior lives.
Personal holiness…or maybe we should just call it holiness…is sometimes done in the quiet solitude of the early morning hours or in the dark, painful hours of the night, and sometimes with three other women sitting around a dinner table. How we pursue our holiness doesn’t seem nearly as pertinent as if we are actually getting it done.
But those are just my thoughts. Interesting conversation.
Jayne
LT said...
202/24/05 9:22 AM | Comment Link |
what about witness as being “good” and extravagant. in a way that doesn’t always make sense to the world as in the woman annointing Jesus. i’m posting a series about the place of art and public space before i spend more time on that quote from last week. let me know what you think…
Todd said...
302/24/05 10:35 AM | Comment Link |
Jayne, great thoughts….
I do agree with this where you say:
“Under this defintion, I would disagree with you that we, as American Christians, place a high priority on personal holiness. Maybe a high priority on the Deconstruction of Love, but not on the deconstruction of our interior lives.”
Maybe I should say that we like to “talk” a lot about this, and we think we are doing it, and we talk like we have done it, but we really don’t do it as it really should be done. (as you correctly point out). Not many of us really know what it means to really allow ourselves to be deconstructed and allow ourselves to be then reconstructed into his image. I like your analogy…very good thoughts….
though, perhaps the phrase “personal holiness” is misleading and i should use a different phrase. . its not something totally personal. as you point out our transformation into his image could be done in quiet AS WELL as sitting around a table with other followers of Christ. Its inherently communal.
perhaps the phrase, “spiritual formation” is a more full understanding… (another phrase we like to throw around these days but i think is really good…) . This does not make it about “only me” but it makes it about having my spirit be formed (therefor, more than just doing good things!) in the ways i personally interact with God and the ways in which i interact with God through my community.
still, i am now thinking, this is still a very inward focused activity. the church is then still about me, how i can be i a community to have myself be spiritually formed. again, its this living in both….not in competition to eachother, but in conjunction with each other…
hhmmm…..
Kat said...
402/24/05 12:57 PM | Comment Link |
I am not a scholar, so please forgive me if my rhetoric seems a little too
simplistic.
Every phrase, every command of scripture does not have to exist in
“tension”; another favorite buzzword of late.
If we seek to be Holy (the personal self), we will actually become more
communal in our thought; without the destruction of the self; the self that is spiritually formed in the image of God. As C.S. Lewis said, we will become even more the individuals, God always meant us to be.
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and the rest will be added unto you.
Jayne said...
502/24/05 2:26 PM | Comment Link |
Yes, Kat, I completely agree with you…the more we reflect the image of God…Holy…the more that we become communal in our thought (our lives even). Isn’t it inevitable?
When I wrote “destruction of selves” I meant denying of selves or putting away of the flesh, but just didn’t want to go there with the language.
I need to read more CS Lewis. Thanks for taking the thought a step further.