I can’t think of one individual in the world that would ever turn down belonging to a community of people especially if they share things, believes, and interests in common. As we know this directly appeals to our inner design and is very much part of our DNA as we have been made to be relational beings and not isolated ones. Our hearts long for fellowship. We see this outplayed in many facets of life from bikers clubs, chess clubs, fan clubs, churches, and bands of brother and sisters.
My experiences on these kind of clubs or communities has been mostly limited to professional communities and the Church. This last one I joined back in my teen years when I had just turned 19. I found so much warmth, care, and love as I began to get to know people yet as time went by I realized that the initial welcome and warmth turned into a routine where people met together to do no more than share a set of beliefs they had in common.
Over time due to the circumstances of life I ended up in a job that meant I had to travel most of the year which meant not being able to regularly attend a community of people as I had done until then. This as you can imagine meant having serious withdrawal symptoms not to mention the anxiety and fear I carried knowing that I had been warned that people like us on their own faded away. I battled through many days of forcing myself to keep the same illusion I had when I was part of the community but eventually like all things that are forced it broke down.
My faith slowly but surely faded and as I got to the end of the barrel I realized that my believe in God was simply a mental illusion I had picked up from others and my experience was no more than an often rehearsed play. I realized that my understanding of God was limited to the revelation of the person that I chose to listen to every Sunday and those I hang out with at the community. The love and affirmation I craved so badly for was never really met as I suddenly found myself pining for others to be around me. In other words much of what I believed was memorized by what others taught and not caught from a living and ongoing relationship with God.
As I considered over time what had happened I realized that communities are good as long as they are complimentary to our faith and not central. You see I discovered that when they become central they actually have the potential and often do become our God and the ones we serve and follow. We live to attend them, to keep them, and we even in some cases fight for them. We fall into the trap that we have to attend them in order to be fed and that without them we will fade away like a coal that falls away from the furnace, though there is of course no scripture that supports this point of view.
As I look back I believe God purposely used a difficult and emotionally charged situation to take me away from this situation. I know some of you or perhaps many of you will be thinking “Pablo are you telling us to leave the Church”? to which I answer a resounding no. What I am encouraging us to do is to allow the illusion of organized Church to leave us. To allow the false net of security it provides for us to go. To allow it to stop supplying us with the balance and spiritual health that can only come from the Kingdom and King within us as well as being the source where we go to have all of our problems solved. Choosing to keep it as a central part of our journey will only rob us of the healthy role Church was really meant to play in our lives.
When we realise the above we suddenly become free to undertake the real journey that has the potential to transform us as we discover our own personal God and not the distant one the whole group spoke about and followed corporately. You see I believe that we need to desperately realize in the Church today that our revelation and experience will only be able to go as deep and be as real as the one we follow. The man at the front is only meant to be responsible for sharing his discoveries and his vulnerable journey with us as he too learns what it looks like to love God, himself, and others. Him like the community were never meant to be the ones we followed as much as they were meant to be companions of ours as we follow together the only one that can take us as deep as it goes.
Remember – Our interconnectedness as a body was never meant to come through an institution or a membership. It was meant to come from within us where we realise that we are all connected in and through him whether we attend a Church on a Sunday or not.
Have a great and FREE week!
-pablo-
Photo by Unknown
