Sep
13
2008
Afraid of a Living Community
If God-as-Trinity is the core reality of the universe, that means that the core of reality is community.
This is not easy for someone like me to accept. I have been suckled since infancy on the metaphor of the social contract: we are individuals first who then band together when it serves our self-interest. The community exists to help me self-actualize. I take it or leave it depending on whether it helps me do that. So, I never really commit to community.
My lifelong participation in the church seems to belie that, but I’ve learned the fine art of participating without being fully present, of doing a flurry of work for the church but hiding my deeper self from others. I never get deeply involved in the lives of others, because, well, that just complicates my life. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living community…
But the truth is that the core of my identity lies not in my individuality. Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau notwithstanding, it is not “I think, therefore I am.”… The deeper truth is this: “God speaks, therefore we are.”
- Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells, 31-32.