back to community

I am not pretending to have the answers or the recipe for a great church or community, but i can look back and analyze the good that came from the way we lived in our community:

First, you saw others for who they really are inside. Many times, we make early or inaccurate judgments about people that simply are not the truth. You probably see your pastor as a great guy because he always has great messages, is always smiling, and you may have other reasons for thinking this. But what if he's not the great guy you think he is? What if he has huge faults in his life that you don't know about? What if you discovered these faults? Would that change everything for you? WHen you live in a community, you quickly come to reality. No one is the perfect person you'd like to think they are. That's not to say they don't love the Lord, or that they don't do a lot of things right. But that is to say we are all human, and your pastor is not that much "better" than the next Christian. It is hard to face facts like these, but you must face them in a community.

Second, you saw yourself for who you really are inside. We all tend to think better of ourselves than we ought. When you live in community, you find that others might not think well of you, and you come to see your faults like you have never seen them before. You have to work through that as well. That's not to say we are all doomed to failure, but when you see where you have failed, only then can you make changes within yourself.

Now these two things, seeing others and yourself how you really are, seeing the faults, having the walls removed--can surely work to make you a more genuine, stronger Christian than you were before. However, it also has the potential to make you worse off than before. If you are too proud to admit your faults and work toward changing your ways, you will only build up that pride and cause yourself to be blinded. You will walk away from the hard situation justifying yourself and becoming bitter. In the same way, if you cannot suffer through the faults of your brothers and sisters, then you will again become proud and bitter toward them. You will have evil thoughts about how YOU could NEVER do what that person has done. You will find it hard to forgive them and go on in friendship with them. These situations could make you into a peacemaker, which is pleasing in God's sight, but too often they can make you more stubborn and blind to your faults than before.

Here is where i have many examples, but i will have to choose...there was a couple that came to live with us. They were in their 50's but had only been married a couple of years. At first, you would think this woman was the most delighful, sweet-natured, godly woman you ever met. That is what i thought. You would think she and her husband had a good relationship because they always got along in front of you and joked around together. You thought he was a happy man, filled with the Spirit of God. But as they lived among us, day after day, you began to see that was not the case. Their marriage was unraveling right before our eyes. He was bitter toward her because she stopped loving him. She was bitter toward him because he was not who she thought he was when she married him. She felt justified in refusing to love him the way he needed to be loved. Finally, sadly, she gave him an ultimatum (this is what she told me it was). She said he could either change this and that, or he had to leave. He left! I can testify that she loved her dog more than she loved that man. It was so incredibly sad. I could not believe it even as it happened. She went on to get remarried, and she sees herself as totally justified in her actions. I don't know what became of him.

In the prayer meetings, you have to understand, she knew all the right words, all the songs, she knew how to pray, she knew how to be sweet toward everyone...everyone except her own husband. Now i'm not saying her husband didn't have faults; of course he did. But it was not enough to justify her behavior by any means!

The saddest part of this story is that there are so many situations/relationships like this one in the church, and we have no idea. Why do we have no idea? Because our relationships with each other are weak. They are like a dream. We aren't living in reality. We think more highly of some than we ought; or we think more poorly of some than we ought. I have another story about a girl that you may judge at first as ditzy or weird, but on getting to know her, she is actually very godly and full of wisdom! The Bible warns us, "Stop judging by the flesh and make a right judgment!" In the church, we are judging by the flesh and living in a lie because we don't know each other.

So at least i can say for community, the truth comes out...and more often than not, it's a painful truth you're dealing with. You can't just go on to think about lunch after the meeting is over.

Ahh, but joy comes in the morning!...and that's what i'll talk about next time.