Wholeness: community vs individualism

The church was always meant to be a community. A fellowship of people that support and help one another. However, there are many well-meaning people who have rejected this idea. All because of the emotional hurts they have suffered in said communities. In life, there are healthy relationships, just as there are unhealthy ones. Unfortunately, church communities are no different, although we should know better. Yet so much of this unloving behavior in church communities comes down to a misunderstanding of the intended church dynamic. This all became rather obvious in an online discussion I engaged in this last week when someone tried to convince me that something I saw as a problem was actually a positive. Yet, through the discussions, I did better understand where the confusion lies. Yet again it comes back to opposite extremes.

Yes, the church is supposed to be about community, I'm not denying that, but it needs to function properly to be healthy. Despite that, some people still think anything and everything that keeps the fellowship together is good. This has led many people to draw the conclusion that individualism is the enemy of community. Granted, if we just follow human nature, as opposed to the spirit, individualism will likely end up being very shallow, superficial, and about self, not others. Such people don't help anybody but themselves and turn communities parasitic. So by quenching all individualism, and making no distinction between the self-centered and the community-centered individual, we end up making a very uniform church. 

A church that is too uniform is not a healthy community, nor is it scriptural. When everyone has the same, strengths, talents, and gifts; we really have little to offer one another. Since nobody will need what you have to offer since they already have what you have. So when a problem arises, that everyone has a weakness too, but nobody has a strength against it. Said communities will fall apart, and hurt a lot of people over the course of their slow fall. I dare say that is happening at an alarming rate.

By now, you probably see where I am going with this. The church was not meant to go to either extreme. We are meant to be a community of individuals. Our unique and special talents, strengths, and gifts are meant to benefit and build up the church; not-self. If a community is truly being symbiotic, then there is no reason to serve self alone.

As I have said before, no one person can be all that Christ was, but as a community, we can; provided we are diverse enough to build a well-balanced body. A well-balanced body can lead to a healthy environment that can produce widespread wholeness and a strong fellowship. Where an unbalanced body that centers around the comfort, and convenience of a specific type of person more than God, will only create more brokenness, and a very weak church. What does your church community resemble?

One final thought to ponder. If wholeness is seen as a vital step at becoming righteous, a healthy symbiotic environment can emerge within a church. This is how the Kingdom of God was meant to grow. However, if righteousness is viewed as a choice only, their idea of help will likely only take the form of bullying and criticizing people into submission. Since we are only trying to change behavior, not hearts. This alienates and hurts people; hence, the rejection of the notion of a church community that this post opened with. Do you see how this simple misconception about holiness can ruin a church community?

The Visual PARABLEist

1st Corinthians 12:12-31

Wholeness: healing

One of the more obvious elements of wholeness would be healing, but it can be a sensitive subject. Let's face it, when you look at healing in the church it often conjures images of preachers who like to make a huge spectacle of such things. Which often causes some people to just stay away from the subject, to distance themselves from these hucksters. As I have already said before, going to the opposite extreme isn't necessarily the right answer, and it definitely isn’t here. So maybe it's time we stop looking at the subject with such tunnel vision and consider all the variables.

One problem I see when it comes to healing in the church is we tend to only look at it in the frame of physical healing. Yet, when you look at the world it seems that most of the brokenness is more emotional and spiritual, not physical. Yet, these illnesses are just as infectious as any disease, since broken people tend to hurt people and make more broken people. Yet it's potentially more preventable if we would treat the problem as seriously as it deserves.

Our suffering in developed countries is primarily psychological, relational, and addictive: the suffering of people who are comfortable on the outside but oppressed and empty within. It is a crisis of meaninglessness, which leads us to try to find meaning in possessions, perks, prestige, and power, which are always outside of the self. -Richard Rohr

The second major problem I see is that we see healing merely as a matter of faith only. That righteous people get healed, and unrighteous people don’t; period. Which often leads to judgment upon mere appearances. (John 7:24)

Scripture doesn't absolutely support either of these cut and dry ideas. Take the story of Jacob, and when he receives the blessing of Israel. (Genesis 32:24-32) That blessing was synonymous with him getting a crippled hip. Afterward, we see him utilizing fewer schemes from that point on. So it appears that he needed that bit of humility to be more surrendered to God. So this physical limitation leads him to be more spiritually whole.

We see a similar story in The New Testament with the apostle Paul, and his "thorn in the flesh." (2nd Corinthians 12:7-10) There are plenty of theories on what his "thorn" was, but the specifics are not important. What is relevant is that he was not healed of it, despite his pleas. You would be hard-pressed to make an argument that Paul lacked faith. However, much like Jacob, he was once a very prideful man who depended on himself. While he was still Saul, he often rationalized many evils in the name of what he saw as the greater good. So also like Jacob, it seems that God thought he needed that bit of humility to become more spiritually whole. Paul even seems to acknowledge just that in the passage.

The conclusion of the matter is this humanity gets fixated on the flesh in healing because we want more comfortable, convenient, and easy lives. Yet, God realizes that ease can keep us from growth, maturity, and true wholeness. In the end, God is more concerned about your heart than your flesh. Since the heart has a far greater effect on your wholeness than your flesh does. This point about the heart is a constant in scripture, so why do we have such a hard time applying it to wholeness and healing? If you have been denied physical healing, I would strongly suggest that you have a long hard look at your heart. It may just be your real obstacle to wholeness.

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God does not see as man sees, since man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” -1st Samuel 16:7

For from within, out of the hearts of people, come the evil thoughts, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, murders, acts of adultery, deeds of greed, wickedness, deceit, indecent behavior, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile the person.” -Mark 7:21-23

The Visual PARABLEist

Wholeness: Understanding

In 1964, the song Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood was first recorded by Nina Simone. Since then it has been covered many times by many artists. Most notably by The Animals, and Elvis Costello. A testament to just how much we value being understood. Yet, the song itself acknowledges that they are part of their own problem since there is an incongruence between their actions and feelings. Are we as honest with ourselves as that? I dare say no since we often expect to be understood even when we don't understand ourselves, or able to put our feelings into words. Let alone put as much effort into understanding others as we expect others to do for us.

To delve further into the idea, it's a well-established phenomenon that when sad people listen to sad songs, they feel less sad. So obviously there is great solace in being understood. It's also not unheard-of for people to tell the latest rock star that their music saved them, even if that was never the musician’s intent. I'm sure the belief all comes back to feeling understood, which begs the question; Do we really equate being understood with salvation, or does it just make us feel less broken and alone? Or maybe it the closest many people ever get to salvation.

Either way, why is the church so quick to dismiss the feelings behind sinful behavior, even in ourselves? Right or wrong, these emotions have a big influence on our behavior and offer tremendous insight into our lack of wholeness. Without wholeness, we will never be able to become morally righteous. Until we seek to understand and deal with said feelings, we cannot achieve wholeness.

Yet, this dismal of the feelings of others makes them question the validity of our love. Where the dismissal of our own feelings may explain why we often don't understand ourselves. As well as why we are looking to others for the understanding we crave. Which is quite backward and unrealistic if you think about it. We should be seeking our creator, and savior if we struggle with this. 

This is just another prime example of how we are trying to skip ahead to the end result of holiness, without first going through the transformative process of wholeness, or guide others through the same process. When we address behavior only, yet ignore the root of the problem, it is like painting over rust, it may look good for a while, but it will bleed always through, eventually.

In our fiction, we often give the heroes depth, but our villains we like to paint as evil incarnate, with no hope for redemption. That's how we rationalize cheering for their destruction. We the church shouldn't view the lost in this way. We only sabotage our outreach efforts in doing so, since we will only judge them, not try to understand them. If we don't try to understand them, we can't really help them. As I've indicated already, there is great power in offering our understanding, specifically the power of empathy. A loving power the church should embrace, not deny. Since the loving action of understanding plays a vital part in leading people to wholeness, including ourselves.

“O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;” -Prayer of St. Francis

Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers. ” She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me, ” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” -Genesis 16:9-13

The Visual PARABLEist 

Wholeness: impatient extremists

As I have said elsewhere, humanity is a species of extremes. When the church sees people going to the extreme of self-indulgence in the misguided pursuit of a full life; as well as the ensuing consequences that lead to death. We automatically assume that the opposite extreme must be true. Hence, the practice of making Christianity all about a joyless, and dispassionate existence. Let's face it, when we make holiness about righteousness only, there really isn't room for much else. So this opposite extreme is ultimately a dreary, fruitless, and doctrinally unsound existence. (Galatians 5:22-23)

The irony of these extremists is that they are often accusing the other side of preaching an incomplete gospel. Despite that their gospel is also just as incomplete, with it lacking in love and grace; just as their notion of holiness is incomplete. Since their theology, as practiced, only seeks to avoid death not seek wholeness, or embrace life. How can you preach a gospel with so little "good news" to it? This extremism often leads people back to the opposite extreme of worldliness again.

There is more to life under the gospel than just being a good girl or a nice guy. Just as there is more to holiness than just righteousness. Until we embrace all three dimensions of holiness, we will be stuck in this pendulum of opposite extremes. Doesn't John 10:10 say Christ came so that we may have life in abundance? Just as Jeremiah 29:11 says God has plans to prosper us. Where John 14:12 says those who believe will do great works. None of this fits in with the single dimension definition of holiness as righteousness only.

As self-destructive as sin is, it is often engaged in a misguided attempt to fill the lack of wholeness in our life. By simply removing sin, we widen the gaps in the voids, leaving us to feel even less whole. (Matthew 12:43-45) Where the best method of dealing with sin is to replace it with something good. (Galatians 5:16, Romans 8:13) Yet many churches, offer only the blanket answer of Jesus to this problem, with no practical application. This leads me to wonder, do they really understand what God means by an abundant life of prosperity and purpose? Or how to seek wholeness. Or have we let our feeble understanding of life and holiness caused us to settle for far less than what Christ wanted for us. Or defining our goals in life no differently than the world does. Which hasn't delighted or inspired the outside world in the slightest since we aren't "set apart" this way.

God really does have a plan for your life, but you do not find it via extremism. You find it along the way of pursuing the full spectrum of holiness, not before, or even after. But, if we try to raise the roof of righteousness on the house of holiness before we've raised all the walls, don't be surprised if it all comes crashing down on you. However, we can preassemble some of the rafters before the walls are done. Yet, it often seems like extremists are expecting people to raise the roof before the concrete on the foundation is even dry yet. As a friend of mine told me, after first finding salvation, the first thing a pastor asked him was. "Have you stopped sinning?" I dare say this is not an isolated incident, and the transformative process of holiness gets denied far too often.

We must learn to seek our creator, and teach others to do the same. Only he can reveal the places of brokenness in our life, only he can heal our emotional wounds, only he knows what can truly fill the voids in our life. Only he knows where we fit in the body of Christ. Only he can tell us what it means to live in abundance. It's not an easy or quick answer, but it's a real one.

“True Christians are very like oaks, which take years to reach their maturity: many March winds blow through them before they are well rooted, and oftentimes tempest, and flood, and drought, and hurricane exercise their tremendous powers upon them.” -Charles Spurgeon

The Visual PARABLEist

Wholeness: Foundation of Identity

There is an episode of the Flintstones where Fred becomes a rock star for a week. In the show, we see a group of teenagers swearing allegiance to Fred since he's the latest thing that understands their problems. Granted this scene is an exaggeration made for laughs. However, for it actually, to be funny, there needs to be a thread of reality behind it. Teenagers are indeed apt to wrap their identity around anything that acknowledges a feeling that the world will not, or their parents actively try to quench. The reality of it is anything but funny though.

Adolescence is often a confusing time for teenagers as they grow into and try to understand their new feelings. This can be compounded greatly when parents refuse to roll with the inevitable changes. There is far more to this stage of development than we give it credit, so we shouldn’t just blow it off or scoff at it. We are all born with the eight basic emotions, yet as teens, the eight higher emotions emerge. So our emotional spectrum doubles at this critical time. Do most parents realize this?

Maybe on some level, parents don't really want their children to grow up. We want them to remain good boys, and nice girls, since we know exactly what they will have to face as adults. As futile as it may seem to fight it. Maybe we just want to force them down the path we wish we would have taken. Which often produces the opposite result we want. Maybe on some level we really do believe in a one size fits all path to prosperity, and are trying to impose it on our children. Regardless, These are all too common mistakes that most experience from one end or the other, if not both. Which can stunt our sense of identity.

This is often the genesis of teens looking to something else for the acceptance, approval, and validation we all crave. Which ultimately leads to all the cliques that public schools often revolve around, which serve as substitute families. As social philosopher Eric Hoffer once said, "When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." So at that critical time of self-discovery, we break ourselves into factions, imitating a group of people who have no better sense of self than we do. All bound together via some rather superficial element of pop culture. The irony of it all is; it's done in the name of "individualism." Maybe this is why the word unnecessarily has such a negative connotation in the Church. Naturally, this is not a very good foundation for identity.

As a long-time adult Christian educator, I can assure you this very poor start in life can linger far into adulthood. Most are motivated by mere survival, comfort, and convenience; not an "abundant life" as Christ indicated. (John 10:10) Not that we have any idea what he means by that. Yet, we wonder why so many succumb to the mid-life crisis and try to go back to that time before our life went off course. To reclaim what we lost, our sense of identity. Not that these mid-life crisis behaviors ever achieve that.

One other big issue in identity is the world makes it all about self-indulgence, fame, fortune, comfort, and convenience. The church should be showing people what it means to really live, not just avoid the fires of hell. By helping people find their individual role in the body of Christ. Revealing who we are in the creator, as well as the wholeness we can have in Christ Jesus. Yet since we get so hung up on the singular dimension of holiness that is righteousness, we aren’t doing that. So we don't seem all that "set apart" from the jr. sr. high school experience we all endured that has lead to our emptiness.

There are ills in the world, and the church has answers. Yet, it doesn't seem like it when we try to skip over the process of holiness, to jump to the result of it. The church has problems right now too, and the solution is right under our nose. But, we can't see it because we just aren't going deep enough, and only addressing the surface. It is time for the church to step up, and ironically enough that means taking a step back. So we can embrace the full spectrum of holiness again.

The Visual PARABLEist

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. ” -Jeremiah 1:5

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. -Jeremiah 29:11

Wholeness: doubt

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: -Luke 24:1-6

At the Easter service I attended, the pastor pointed out that the women taking spices to the tomb of Jesus was a sign that they did not believe Jesus would be rising from the dead, as Christ said he would. Then posed the question, why did those closest to him doubt this? A valid question for Easter Sunday, but another valid question we need to pose to ourselves beyond Easter is, why do we still doubt Jesus? It seems rather evident that many often still doubt that they can be forgiven. Many still doubt that they can be delivered. Many still doubt that they can be made whole again. With such doubts, it is no wonder that we continue to seek life among the dead. 

Why do we always think of ourselves as an exception? Why do we think things like this only happen to other people?

It would seem that faith has a big role in our wholeness, just like most everything else in our Christian walk. I would advise that you honestly ask yourself, do you believe your wholeness is a priority to God? As well as, do you doubt that you can be made whole again? If yes, then really consider the why behind it. Then have a heart to heart with God about this.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. -Hebrews 11:6

I also challenge you to specifically ask God, what does that mean for you? For some, you may have never even considered the concept of wholeness before now. For others, you may have very specific ideas about your wholeness. Especially if you have a physical ailment or limitation. Will you still have faith, if God defines it differently than you do? Will you still earnestly seek him, if God is more focused on your heart than your flesh?

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”-1st Samuel 16:7

The Visual PARABLEist