L38: Together

"No one claimed any of their possessions as their own"
"They had all things in common"
"What you do to the least of these, you do to me"

Thanks to a Wooster education and a set of key experiences, I'm more opposed to most forms of individualism than most these days.  That definitely isn't where I was when I got to college, but to say those are 4 formative years is an understatement.  Even, I think, if you come through college thinking most of the same things you come to college thinking, there's growth that happens by being around others and engaging thoughts, new or not, on a deeper level.

But I'm not trying to write about college right here.

There is real value in community and most especially community that is knit together in understanding and love, able to be transformative and transform the members of the community.  But it starts in love and it grows people together.

I don't understand exactly how all of Jesus works into the atonement framework of most theologians.  I know we're saved by grace through his sacrifice and it's the greatest form of love. But if that were 100% of the story, Jesus wouldn't have been here for so long.  He wouldn't have come and walked among us.  The rough and ready gospel just says he lived a perfect life, died, and rose from the dead.  I don't see any stipulation on that life except that it was sinless.  Maybe though, it was more than sinless, or, that is to say, that sinlessness is but part, and maybe but a small part of perfection.  Jesus came and calls people, me, you, us, to a life in which we give up things that are our own in response to God's love for us.  But he doesn't just say to hand them over and let them be abandoned.  Giving up self, in Jesus' terms, involves doing so for the good of others...other people.  Something about his perfect life knits people together on a truer, deeper, more sincere level.  That's the life I want.  I do not want to sin, but given the choice, I would rather struggle in a loving community than purify myself of all sin and be utterly alone.  If Jesus' life is any indicator, perhaps that would be a sin itself.



-Zack

"It's a sad situation when we have to resort to keyboards as a means of making relations"
-Gym Class Heroes