Belonging

Hello blogspot my old friend. It's been a while since I have practiced engaging myself and others through writing. Lately, transition and general life-things have left room in my soul, longing to grapple and synthesize what I see in the world, what I feel in my heart and the vision I pick up from great leaders into one, cohesive understanding. In short, what the heck is going on in the world? What is God's plan, if any? How are we to be transformed and actively proceed in this world?

Unemployment has granted a lot of reading and listening to many social leaders and pastoral thinkers. My general interest has been social psychology - how the dynamics of an individual changes in a group setting. What has really stood out to me is the perversion of belonging. I heard Jay Pathak of the Vineyard movement say although there is a God-shaped hole in our heart, Christians rarely speak of the human-shaped hole that often remains, even in our communities. It's easy to make the story mundane - God created the world good, apparent perfection. Yet when Adam walked through the garden alone, God saw the one thing that was not good - a lone wolf, of sorts. Adam was seemingly created with this need but even the entire original cosmos nor God himself did not quench this need.

Fast forward millions of friendships and romances, births and betrayals, wars and acts of reconciliation, and we find ourselves today with the same need, along with the original temptation. 

Delusions present a little truth slightly distorted. The deep longing for social wholeness begins with the blessed desire to build up others and be edified ourselves. A simple slight of hand and we suddenly arrive in groups of people that generally think, look and act like our self. Diversity is outcast in order to protect our values, comfort, children or even to defend God himself! Fear creeps in and we suddenly find ourselves unable to hear those outside of our group, but blindly supporting those inside of it.

Jesus warns us of the death of community. The toxicity that flourishes in divisiveness stems from our separation of our individual or communal selves from the larger whole of humanity. In Matthew 5:21+ Jesus warns of an act more divisive from the originally blessed "other" than murder - anger, insult and exclusion. The death of our neighbor's humanity in our hearts.

How can we be blamed for this? We rarely have access to the entirety of a group, others have taught us more about another group than we have experienced and even our minds are hardwired for confirmation bias! 

More so, our identities are greatly defined by group affiliation. Our initial questions of an acquaintance are to more easily understand and interact by categorizing them. A demonstration - I am a husband, barista, Pentecostal, son, brother, craft beer drinker, independent and am currently unemployed. What nuances about my story, worldview, passions, fears, experiences, dreams or even work ethic were overlooked by initial assumptions when reading this social profile example?

We are a people quick to devalue diversity and exalt conformity. We belong to groups when we have the same (not similar) morals and self labels. Jesus warns us the symptoms are simple: "Whoever says, "Raca (or, you fool!)" will be liable to the hell of fire." (Matt 5:22) We feel this manifest in our guts when out of frustration we cry "Idiot!" to the driver (granted, most likely making an endangering error), political adversary or even when we have been truly wronged. Even worse is that our groups focus on our differences from other groups instead of the goodness our affiliation affirms!

The devaluing of the humanity of our neighbor. When the common humanity is lost, we have committed a sin against the other and God far more dangerous than murder, we have committed an image-bearing suicide; laying down the inherent goodness of our role as fellow creators and peace makers for the cheap substitute of social superiority or being found right.

I could do more to love my neighbor through creatively engaging before rebuking, researching before reposting, affirming as fellow instead of fool, and being intentionally aware of the struggle of humanity we all know to be more common than shared views.