Community as a concept is nearly universally appealing. The problem is that our fantasies of community and our experiences of community rarely line up.
”Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8
I have dedicated the better portion of the last 20 years of my life to teaching and sharing about the necessity of Christian community. I have seen countless young adults in tears as they’ve been swept up into the beautiful vision of feeling loved, connected and unified with other people. I’ve seen it heal their loneliness, insecurity and rage. Year after year, I’ve seen God take a room of strangers and make them into a family of faith.
Community as a concept is nearly universally appealing. Everyone likes the idea of friendship. The problem is that our fantasies of community and our experiences of community rarely line up.
Fantasized Community vs. Real Community
We want undivided attention from people who are juggling life. We want fun when we may need accountability. We want affirmation even if it means compromising the truth. We demand service and favoritism.
When we bring our unrealistic ideas and unfair relational demands to our community, we inevitably run into problems. The wider the gap between our fantasy and our reality, the bigger our resentment will be. Why? Even the greatest friend makes a terrible savior. When we place ourselves at the center of our community, we believe that friendship exists solely for us when it actually exists for each other.
”The wider the gap between our fantasy and our reality, the bigger our resentment will be. Why? Even the greatest friend makes a terrible savior.
We cannot come to our community as consumers. If we come as consumers, we’ll approach our friendships the same way we approach our plumber, our grocery store or our phone plan. The friendship will only exist as long as the transactions meet our preferences. We will assume that others see us as a temporary transaction as well and so we will hold back.
This is not friendship. R.C.H. Lenski writes, “It is the best and truest friend who honestly tells us the truth about ourselves even when he knows we shall not like it. False friends are the ones who hide such truth from us and do so in order to remain in our favor.”
We must come to our community as friends – people who both give and receive love, who serve and are served. In his classic book about Christian community Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”
This is why the New Testament calls us to love one another. The New Testament gives us a map for building community. We build community through love, devotion, encouragement, longsuffering, accountability, hospitality and consistency. Love is woven of sacrifice. As Fyodor Dostoevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov, “Love in action is a harsh and terrible thing compared with love in dreams.”
”The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
We show up to our friendships with honesty. And this honesty means that we must show up as sinners. Bonhoeffer goes on to write, “It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!”
Just as Jesus has met us as wounded sinners, we must offer the same to each other. We must muster the courage to confess our sins as well as to receive the sins of others.
If we insist that our idealized fantasy of community is the only option, we will live discontent lives. As one theologian said, “Unrealistic expectations are just premeditated resentment.”
Fantasies are built on getting everything we want without flaws. But that’s not being part of a community. That’s just being a consumer. Jesus invites us to something far better.
Jesse Eubanks is the Founder and President of Love Thy Neighborhood. He’s been leading urban missions programs for young adults since 2005. He is the host of the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast and an ordained minister. He is the author of How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself and Others Through the Enneagram from Zondervan Books and is passionate about the intersection of social action, relational health and Christian spiritual formation. Relevant Magazine named Jesse one of the top 50 Christian artists and activists making an impact on culture in America.
