In this episode, Matt and Luke discuss one of Christ the Redeemer's core values: Community
Welcome to the Here Below podcast, a ministry of Christ the Redeemer in Greenville, South Carolina. The great doxology exclaims,
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This is our attempt to do just that, to join our voices with that great heavenly chorus, providing reflections that are grounded in scripture, formed by the great tradition, and oriented towards spiritual formation in the everyday stuff of life here below. Enjoy the episode.
Hey, my name is Matt Weirman, and I serve as one of the pastors here at Christ the Redeemer Church, and I'm joined by Luke Stamps, who is one of our members and community group directors. In this episode, we begin a series of reflections on the core values that we strive for as a church, and we hope that they will be instructive for others as well.
The five core values here at Christ the Redeemer are:
Community
Discipleship
Liturgy
Mercy and Mission
Simplicity
These core values are not to be confused with our confession of faith. For that, we have adapted a version of the New Hampshire Confession of Faith, a historic Baptist symbol. Instead, the core values provide some signposts and guardrails as we seek to focus our attention on what matters most in our own community of faith.
So today we're going to focus our attention on the first core value of community. In our church documents, we describe this value like this:
We believe that inherent to being human is being in community. We were never meant to live in isolation from each other. We want people to know others and be known in their joys and in their struggles.
So let's begin by a very big question as we consider what is a good starting point in theological anthropology, or to put it in layman's terms, an understanding of who we are as people and what is that vision of humanity. So let me ask you, Luke, what would you say is presupposed in our conversation as it relates to community, who we are as humans?
Yeah, I mean, I think part of the answer, a big part of the answer of what it means to be a human being is that we are relational beings. We see that already in the creation narrative of Genesis 1. There we read, God says, let us make man in our own image. That plural we there, us and our, has been understood variously by different scholars and theologians. But the historic Christian interpretation of that text sees it as a kind of sort of cryptic reference to the Holy Trinity, which I think is a legitimate reading of what's going on there, that our God is not simply a monad, a singular individual, but is three distinct persons. In fact, that's how we understand historically the doctrine of the Trinity. The persons are distinguished only by their relations. So person and relation are closely related in historic Christian teaching. They're not distinguished by any attribute or any level of authority or by anything else as regards the divine nature, the divine essence, and that they are numerically singular. The three persons are the same God. We don't believe in three gods. So they are essentially the same, that is, they are the same in essence, and they're only to be distinguished by their relations to one another. The Father begets the Son. The Father and Son eternally breathe out the Holy Spirit, as it were, so that the persons are distinguished by their relations. And so that's part of what it means to be a person is to be in relation in this I-thou relationship with another. So that when God creates humans originally, that's part of what it means to be made in God's image, that we are relational beings. That's why the text goes on to say, male and female, he created them, so that both males and females, all humans, bear the image of God.
Part of what that means is to be relational. There's a historic definition of what it means to be a person that has been offered by the Christian philosopher Boethius. Many people may be familiar with, others may not. But Boethius defines a person in a kind of, this is kind of a heady philosophical definition, but it's become fairly standard in Christian theology. A person is an individual substance of a rational nature. In other words, a person is individual, they're distinct from another. Again, this sort of I-thou relationship.They're a substance, an individually existing thing. But that substance is defined by rationality, being possessed of reason and free will. As substance is defined by rationality, being possessed of reason and free will, this is why we can speak about not only humans as persons, but also the angels are also persons. And analogically, we speak about the three divine persons. So all that to say, what it means to be a person, at least in part, is tied up with our rationality. But that very reason that we possess entails within it an ability to reflect upon oneself and on the world, and especially reflect on oneself in relation to others.
So I think if I were to be so bold, we might even adapt Boethius' definition to say that a person is an individual substance of a relational nature. What it means to be a person is to be a who, not just a what. We speak about rocks and trees as whats, right? But only a human in the earthly realm, and we could mention angels as well, and then the divine persons, only those who have this capacity for self-reflection, reflection on others, are properly so-called persons. So that's just a theological underpinning of what it means to be a human.
I think a lot of times we tend to adopt a kind of Enlightenment modernist understanding of the human person that really starts from our own individuality, where each person is kind of a discrete choosing agent. We kind of enter into a voluntary agreement with each other. But in the historic sense, the classical and Christian sense, a person is someone who's already embedded in relationships. And so what we're trying to do with this core value is just to sort of live in accordance with our natures as relational beings.
So you would say part of our essence as humans is that we are relational. Would that be fair? Yeah, that's right. An essential component of what it means to be a human is to be in relation. When you think about it, we already come out of the womb literally attached to another human being, right? We have to be cut from our mothers. And so, you know, there's no such thing as a discrete individual. What it means to be an individual, we certainly honor that, our individuality. But what it means to be an individual as a person is to be in relation with others.
Yeah, so would Tom Hanks, when he was on the island in Castaway, was he less human by being by himself? Oh, he had Wilson. Well, that's kind of where I was going with it, right? There was something within himself that he needed to make even an inanimate object a person that was endowed with a personality. I think, if I remember correctly, it's been a while, but I think Wilson told jokes. Wilson made him angry. Wilson didn't do what he told him to do, and he did what he didn't want him to do. It's kind of like he imbued him with human qualities because that actually is the overflow of who we are as people.
Yeah, that's right. He sort of had to simulate what he couldn't have in reality because we're aching for that kind of relationality. That's why God said, it's not good that man should be alone. None of the animals could satisfy that thirst, that yearning, aching for an I-thou relationship with another who, another person.
Yeah, and just maybe parenthetically, I just want to say, at least in the broader sense as it relates to Genesis, it's not good for man to be alone. We're not saying that you have to be married to be a complete person. That's where a lot of times it can go because that's the most clearest connection that you make, but that's not what we're talking about because even back in Genesis 1, male and female, he created them, and then specifically Adam and Eve in the garden and those kind of elements because otherwise, if we say that you have to be married to be complete, right, doing the Jerry Maguire thing, you complete me, the fact of the matter is you're already complete as a human being because Jesus himself was single, but he also had vibrant relationships with his disciples, right? In fact, that's one of the very first things he does in his public ministry is to call people to himself instead of just preaching in isolation. He comes down from the mountain and he calls the disciples to himself. I think it's very formative for our Lord, so it also needs to be said for us too.
Yeah, and with his mother and father as well, youI know, he partakes of Mary's humanity as he's conceived in the virgin's womb, and Mary shows up a number of times in the Gospels. Joseph is not mentioned as much, but we do read that Jesus was the son of the carpenter. So Joseph, as his earthly caretaker, was no doubt formative in his life early on.
So the minute human beings start reproducing with Cain and Abel and Seth, we extend that relationality beyond just the husband-wife relation.
Yeah. So other than having a really gnarly beard when he was done on the island, what are some of the other dangers that we can have in living in isolation? What have you seen in your own pilgrimage, but then also as you've interacted with folks, what do you think are some of the other dangers if we are isolating ourselves as not just humans, but specifically as Christians?
Yeah, I mean, we have this natural desire for relations that we've mentioned even before the fall. Adam, it was not good that he was alone, right? So there's the first time that God says something is not good in his creation. It has to do with Adam not having a help meet, right, who was suited to him. And so we have this natural desire for relations. And so something is amiss even in our fundamental natures if we don't have relations with others.
But given the fall, isolation from others can produce all kinds of maladaptive behaviors in terms of sin and temptation and depression and anxiety. You know, whenever we are just sort of turned in on ourselves, you know, to use Luther's phrase, we become the only voice inside our head. And our voice is not always reliable, right, because our thoughts can misfire. That's why we need others in our lives to call out sin, you know, and rebuke. Or sometimes this doesn't often get emphasized as much in the church. We often need other Christians to come alongside and encourage us that we're doing okay, right, that we, you know, we're certainly not perfect. We certainly still stumble in many ways, as James says, but that we still have our faith. We're still pushing forward, you know. There's evidence of God's grace in our lives even in the midst of trial and struggle with sin.
And so isolation can cause us to, you know, have all kinds of, you know, serious problems, both with sin and just in terms of our own kind of warped thoughts about our lives.
Yeah, you know, one of the things I find interesting is that in prison, you would think, like, that's where people are put away so that they're not a harm or menace to society. And that's punishment, right, to be living in a, you know, a cell and, you know, not having your autonomy taken away. But there's actually a level deeper in punishment that can happen, and that's isolation, right? You're going into solitary confinement, and, you know, and it's been deemed abusive to be doing it for too long because as people have done that, they begin to lose some of their humanity just by being in this, you know, sleep-deprived state but then primarily relationally deprived state. I just have found that so interesting that actually there's an even worse place to be, and that is in isolation. We're going to put you there as further punishment for bad behaviors amongst this society within the prison.
Yeah. One of the things that I ask folks in our membership class is what do you think inhibits community? What do you think inhibits community? Because I think, you know, if we're honest, everybody who wants to be in a church would say, I want to know other people and I want to be known. But inevitably, people, I've also said, people don't really want that. Because you talk to folks about their past church stories, and, you know, we'll get into some of these a little later, but I just wonder what have you found inhibits people from actually saying what they really want? They say they want to be known, but then when the rubber hits the road or when they actually get known in all of their good and their bad, they don't like it.
Yeah. I have a friend who says that most of our sins,most of our struggles in life are motivated by one of three emotions or maybe a combination of them. We're either motivated by fear, by shame, or by grief. Those aren't thankfully the only emotions we have. We also have joy and peace and other positive emotions. But whenever we're, again, whenever we're maladaptive, whenever we're not reacting to life in a positive way, it's usually those three big ones. We could add anger to that as well, I think.
So the way he often puts it, this may not be original to him, but he says we sort of have five main emotions:
Glad
Mad
Sad
Bad (or a sense of guilt and shame)
Fear (the last one of the rhyme)
But those are kind of the core emotions that are going on deep in the fundament of our souls that sort of come up to the surface in the various ways that we sin and transgress God's law and so on. So I think really kind of fear and shame, I think are part of it. We don't want to be known for who we really are because we're all really bad. In the church we sort of put on a happy face and pretend like everyone's living holy and healthy and happy lives. But in reality, at some point in our lives we all struggle, struggle with sin, struggle with sadness, and just as R.E.M. puts it, not everyone can carry the weight of the world.
I think that's an important... I thought you were getting ready to say everybody hurts. Yeah, that too. Maybe you lose your religion. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. R.E.M., you know, who formed in Athens, Georgia and raised in the South, still have that Christ-haunted Christian background, I think, in a lot of their music. But that line, not everyone can carry the weight of the world. We all go through times like that where it's just difficult to bear the burdens of life and death and sickness and broken relationships and, you know, our own bad choices and all the rest.
And so I think we're afraid to be known for who we are. Coupled with that, really, this kind of goes hand-in-hand as a sense of shame. We're ashamed of what we've done, you know, sometimes rightly, you know. But we're also sort of crippled by that sense of shame that we don't want to let others down. We don't want to be perceived. Shame is kind of others-oriented, and that way it's sort of distinct from guilt. You know, guilt and shame are sometimes distinguished in lots of different ways. But the way I think about the difference is, you know, guilt has to do with this sense of having broken some standard, you know, especially, you know, there's a right sense of guilt that we've violated God's standard and therefore we've incurred His wrath and judgment and this curse.
But shame really has more to do with a kind of others-oriented posture. We're ashamed of what others might think of us or the ways that we might not meet others' expectations. And so I think that's a huge challenge to seeking community with others is sort of learning to let go of that sense of kind of self-preservation and learning to be honest.
I think Brene Brown, who's written a lot on shame, has given me a helpful definition, not personally, but in her writing, that guilt is I did something wrong. So that's actually a good thing. Like you were saying, there's a standard that was not met. I lied. I broke the law in some way. It's actually good that you feel guilty. If you don't feel guilty, then there's probably something askew in your moral judgments.
But then shame moves from I did something bad to I am bad and makes a value judgment on who we are. And I think you're exactly right that so many times as a pastor, what I see is that people don't know how to put those pieces together of guilt and shame. But I really think that the answer a lot of times, you're talking about the relational component of shame, I think the answer resides in the very thing that caused the problem. So what I mean by that is where maybe we shared something that we did wrong, guilt, right? But then the person that we confessed to in the past, we started to feel shame,like I am a bad person because I lied. You are invaluable, or you are less than or less valuable than you could be, making this value statement on who they are. Because what I'm talking about is previous church hurt that people bring into the church a lot of times. And I sympathize with that tremendously because I've experienced that myself.
And so the knee-jerk reaction is to then distance ourselves when we do falter and fall, is that I'm not going to share this because last time I did this, it hurt when someone says, how could you do that? What's wrong with you? But I think the answer is where the problem was, is that you have to learn how to slowly trust another person to show you that not everybody's going to react that way. Not everybody's going to do that way.
And so the very answer to the problem is found in community, is found in, okay, I'm not telling you to air all of your dirty laundry, right? I've heard there's a church, and maybe some of our listeners have been to a church where you sit in a community group and you're just supposed to divulge all of your deepest, darkest secrets. And that actually will build community really quick, but it also puts you in a place that I think is unnatural because you're not called to share everything with everyone. There are levels of intimacy that you are welcoming people into.
And I do think one of the healing places that we can have is in the church itself. If you've been hurt in the church, which is a real thing, I think that if you can gather around yourself just a couple people, I'm not talking about 100, I'm talking about a couple people that you say, hey, I struggled with X this week. And then you just share that, and then they begin to say, hey, here's the gospel.
Because what I'm also thinking of is in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, where he talks about in Life Together, he says, how do we move into the gospel? Well, we need to hear another brother or sister in Christ say, you are forgiven. And that is Christ's very word of forgiveness to you is a reminder of what we so often forget.
And I think that we can read the gospels ourselves, but I can attest to this when somebody says, Matt, you are loved. In fact, I did this a couple weeks ago in our service where I just felt this acute need to be able to, before we took the Lord's Supper together, I said, I just want you all to know that you, as an individual, and I started naming people's names, you are loved. And you could see their whole countenance was changed when they heard another person telling them the truth of the gospel.
And I think that that is where the church can mediate the grace of God to people is by speaking those words of assurance and of love to them. But how do you do that? A volleyball on an island is not going to do that. You need to open yourself up to other people, even if it's scary, and especially when it's scary, because Satan's ploys are to isolate and condemn and keep you in a place of isolation.
And the way to break through that isolation is actually just to, it doesn't have to be your deepest, darkest secrets, but it could be a deep secret, a struggle. Hey, I'm really struggling with my faith, and see how the other person handles it. And if they don't handle it well, next. You can go on to somebody else that seems to be trustworthy in that.
I think that's one of the ways that you build community in a church is you provide the space, provide grace, provide a common playing field that everybody here are sinners, period. And then you move towards people.
And that's actually where I've seen the most healing happen is if you can picture two avatars of people where you've got this marriage is struggling here, and they isolate themselves. They never get past the issue. Whereas the other couple that has issues in their marriage, and they actually open themselves up to other people speaking in their life, they actually let people till the soil of their life and get past some of the superficial actions that we oftentimes are comfortable with.
And so our Christianity a lot of times with couple A is going to stay at the superficial level. Whereas the couple B, the second couple that actually opens up their lives, even though it's painful, actually gets to the deeper heart of who they are as relational beings with one another in a marriage, but then primarily in their relationship with Jesus.
Yeah, there's this initial inertia that you have to overcome there. So there is a price of entry for that. You don't need to diminish, you know. And someof that is shaped by, again, past hurt where people maybe weren't trustworthy, maybe manipulated or blackmailed you, you know, even whenever you are honest about... I even think just assuming the word... This is one of the things I'm at pains within Redeemer for us to... This is going to sound trite, but it has a ton of merit, at least as I've interacted with folks, is that you assume the best about each other. Our culture right now is so bent on cynicism and skepticism that when somebody says X, like, hey, I love you. Oh, yeah, I heard that before.
But you're exactly right, and I'm sorry for interrupting you. I just was really struck that the way forward is to go theological. This person, they're a Christian. They're a member of a church. They are indwelled by the Holy Spirit. I'm going to assume that the Spirit that raised Christ Jesus from the dead is also dwelling in this person, and I'm going to assume the best. And even though this is painful, that price of entry you're talking about, I'm going to just kind of offer a little bit here and see how it's handled.
Because not everybody, I'll just say this as a reprieve from people, not everybody deserves all of you. And what I mean is that not everybody deserves to know all of your deepest, darkest secrets because they maybe aren't safe people. Maybe they don't know how to handle that, and that's not an indictment on them. They just haven't been given the tools in their own life to be able to handle that, and that's okay. But there might be a handful of people that you could open yourself up to, but that takes time.
And we'll get into that in our subsequent podcast, but it takes time to actually form community. I've been really influenced by Wendell Berry, and I'm just so grateful for his work talking about place and being rooted in a place. And the only way for us to really experience genuine community, the utopian-like, heaven-like community that we want, is by being in a place. And I'm only going to be able to see if you're able to handle my junk after several months or even in some cases years. And over time, that tilling of the soil can happen.
But anyway, so I'm sorry for interrupting you because you were going somewhere good. I took a little detour because I just think so much. I just want people so much, particularly in our church, to feel like I can trust this person, not with everything, but maybe just with a little bit. And to say they say they love Jesus. Let me just kind of test the waters, dip my toe in, as it were.
Right. Yeah, all I was going to say is that if you're willing to ante up, so to speak, and pay that initial cost of honesty, then the payoff on the other end is remarkable. Whenever you can say, hey, I'm struggling with this sin, or hey, my marriage is in trouble, or hey, I'm struggling with doubts or whatever, and to hear someone tell you, you're loved, you're forgiven, your story is not over. The relief of that is enormous. And so that's how we sort of mediate God's grace to one another.
Have you ever experienced that before, Luke, that kind of experience? What does that look like?
Yeah, I mean, I feel blessed in many ways to have that kind of relationship with my own pastor, which is you. But yeah, just to be in a place where you can trust not only their theological judgment, but also their pastoral judgment as well. It's a gift. And again, maybe not everybody has that. Maybe not everybody's in a place where they can enjoy that. But if you don't, pray for it. Seek it out with discernment.
Again, you don't want to just be foolish in who you entrust your life to, your soul. But if you can find someone that you trust and, again, kind of slowly begin to invite them in to help you with your own soul, this is a great project. It's not just me with my Bible in my prayer closet. Those spiritual exercises are essential. And there's a lot that takes place there in the inner room as we meditate on our own souls and in conversation with God through Scripture and prayer. But we also need others invited into that.
Yeah. Well, and our relationship didn't start off on that foot either, right? And I think maybe somebody who's listening who's in a church where they don't know their pastor, I wouldI hate for someone to say, well, they're my pastor. They need to know this. I'm going to hit the pause button and say, please don't do that. The operative word in what Luke just said was that you know this person, right? And unfortunately, even in smaller churches, but especially in larger churches, you are not called, just because someone's your pastor, you're not called to just go share everything with them. I've seen so many horror stories or heard of so many horror stories of people doing that. And I think they do it from a place of just wanting to, for one, get the relief that they're seeking from their brother or sister in Christ, namely being able to confess your sins one to another, right? I think that's why James is exhorting us to do that. But I think part of the problem is that they're doing this with someone that doesn't know them. And so they don't know all of their particularities of their personality to be able to say, okay, I get it. And so then they're importing a whole bunch of other stuff on them. And so if you don't know your pastor, that's somewhat of a problem. We can talk about that at another time. But don't assume that just because someone has a certain title of elder, pastor, deacon, whatever, that you are required to go share all of your stuff with them. There needs to be a level of trust. And part of that is what we're talking about here is slowly learning how to be vulnerable, transparent, and to receive the grace of God through relationships. And again, that just takes time.
I wanted to also ask, so we've looked at kind of the negative side of it, if you were, the darker side of, okay, I'm struggling, I'm doubting, I'm having fears and anxieties and what have you. What are some positive ways that folks in our church and folks in churches at large could implement on a positive, like a proactive way to be able to build that kind of community? As I like to tell folks, I wish I could remember who said this. It might've been Gandhi. I don't remember. But be the change you want to see in the world. I think it's such a beautiful statement that so many times, and I will say this and I'll let you talk, but so many times, and I cannot remember who said this, but I'm going to find out and I'm going to mention it on a subsequent podcast. But a lot of times we are looking for a community to be a part of. We're looking, we honestly say, I'm not looking for the perfect church. I'm just looking for a church that does X, Y, and Z. Okay. But at the back of our minds, we're looking for certain things that we can then latch ourselves onto and become a part of. And so we're looking for this kind of intimate community, but I've found more often than not, the answer is actually to form the community that you want to be a part of. Like if you see there being a gap in this certain ministry or this way of talking to one another or praying with one another, form the community you want to see. Don't look for it necessarily, but you need to be an active agent in the forming of that community. So I'll hit the pause button there, but wanted to find out just very practically how we can put the feet on the ground as it were, because we want in here below, we definitely want to have the theological underpinnings. We want to have the high view of God, high view of scripture, but we also want to always bring it back to feet on the ground. How does someone then proactively form that kind of community?
Yeah, I mean, for me, at least in my experience, anecdotally, the most meaningful Christian relationships that I've had happened organically, not programmatically. I don't think programs are bad. I don't think it's wrong to have community groups as we do in our church or to have men's groups, women's groups that have more intentional discipleship structure. I think all of that can be very positive. And that can produce those organic relationships. That can be the context in which the organic relationships kind of come to the surface. But for me, the most meaningful relationships I have have just happened around initially common interests. I mean, Aristotle talks about three different levels of friendship. At the first level, we have a kind of friendship that we share with, say, our coworkers, right? People that we have some common cause with. We probably wouldn't be friends with them otherwise, but we have a friendship at the level of what we do. There'sanother level of friendship around common interests. So if you're especially interested in barbecuing, as I am, or in sports or in reading, you know, you might find friendships around those common interests. And then the deepest level of friendship, Aristotle talks about, is a friendship of virtue, where we come to will the other person's good, and especially their supreme good, and living a life of virtue. And that's where Aquinas picks up on his definition of love, right? Yeah, yeah, that's right. The good of another, yeah.
Yeah, so Thomas is building on Aristotle and putting it in more explicitly Christian terms. But yeah, so for Thomas, to love someone is a kind of twofold desire. It's a desire for the other person's good, and it's a desire for union with the other person. And so what we're aiming at is kind of taking like a funnel, like we, in the church, we kind of already have the sort of lowest level of friendship, you know, just that we're all in the same room together. We might find kind of common interests, you know, within the body of Christ, that we can then form these deep and meaningful friendships of virtue with.
Now, that's not to suggest that we just form, you know, cliques in the church around common interests or anything like that. We still have an obligation to love and serve all. And that too can be, you know, the positive kind of community we're seeking is whenever we go out of ourselves to love people who are very different than us. And we find, you know, relationships of love in that way as well. But I mean, it doesn't have to be overly complicated. Again, you can just kind of start with, who do I like in this church? Like, who do I have common interests with? Where it doesn't take a lot of work to just have a regular conversation. You may not have to go to level three, but hey, it just, yeah, that was enjoyable. And there's nothing wrong with that either.
I think sometimes too, I tell folks, everybody in the church is not called to be your best friend. Like I think sometimes we feel this weird kind of guilt of, well, they kind of rubbed me the wrong way. That's okay. You're not called to like be buddy-buddy with everybody, but you are called to love one another. Those are two distinct things, right?
Right. And you can have your own inner circle. You know, as Jesus had, you know, with James and John and Peter, there can be levels and layers of relationship. And so, but you know, if you're talking about finding those deepest, you know, friendships, it can just start with like, who do I, and this is, there's no like, you know, magical criteria for this, but who do I sort of click with? Like who do I, I mean, I have friends like this who are just from the first conversation are just kindred spirits, you know? I have a friend here in town who's a dentist, who's like that. Whenever we first met, we had kids that were friends and played sports together. We just immediately had a connection. And some of it was around, you know, common theological interests and just sometimes just a common sense of humor. But those natural gifts of bonding can be the starting place for growing into deeper friendships and intimacy and so on.
And so I think that's just a good place to start is just hang out with people, you know? One of the best things we do as a community group is have a meal together, you know? You know, we will go on to talk about, you know, the scriptures and to take prayer requests and pray for each other. But you really start to build community, this sharing of life together whenever you find out what makes people tick. What are they really passionate about? What are they really afraid of? And so on. So you sort of get to know people in the context of that more, those more organic, you know, avenues for friendship.
Yeah, I think one of the things that as you're talking about having friends at that level three, so to speak, I think a word of caution is on two levels. For one, always let that inner circle be open. In other words, a lot of times in an effort to foster intimacy with a group of people, I see this a lot of times, not necessarily in the church, but just within human nature itself is these are my besties. These are the three folks and there's a fear of inserting a fourth person is gonna mess up whatever you have, right? It actually, the Christian view instead of a fixed or closed mindset would be actually by inserting another fourth person in here could actually cause it to blossom even more because you're introducing another mind, which enhances that mind of that group, so to speak. So I would just have a word of caution as it relates to that. But thenSecondly, to not be jealous that there are people that have those inner circles. A lot of times we can say, well, I wanna be that person's best friend. Well, you can be; there can be multiple best friends. You know, like I think maybe we do ourselves a disservice by calling people best friends. But there is a, you know, I think sometimes we have to just be careful, you know, that, oh, man, I can't ever be that because they've already got that need met. It's like, well, if we're living in a fixed mindset that we can't grow and continue to be nurtured. And I think even embracing our own finitude, that we are in process all the time, there are relationships that will come and relationships that go. And I think our grasping after permanence is going to always frustrate us as humans. And I can riff on that some other time. But I do think if we can open ourselves up by saying it's a both and, and you're going to hear me saying that a ton. And Luke as well, like there's a ton of both ands within the Christian life, is that you can have the inner circle and you can also welcome people into that inner circle.
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think our relationality is expansive in that way. Like the Bible says that God has placed eternity into the heart of man. There is a capacity for infinitude in some qualified sense that's within all of us, that we have this capacity for eternal life or relationship with the eternal God, for ultimately citizenship in the city of God and glory. And so we shouldn't limit ourselves, again, to that, because I think sometimes relationships can become kind of unhealthy attachments with some people, almost like an idol in people's lives. And it could be an idol that you envy, that you don't have, or it can be an idol of an unhealthy attachment to a person in your own life. And learning to differentiate yourself from others is an important thing to throw in here as well. This sense of community doesn't mean that we lose our individuality, but a healthy community is always going to have a sense of differentiation as well, that we have our own integrity as human persons.
Yeah, I do think of C.S. Lewis. I think it's in The Four Loves, maybe, where he talks about when they had this inner circle called the Inklings that they would hang out in a pub and talk theology and life and what have you. And one of them died. I can't remember which Inkling died. But he thought that, oh, I'm going to have more of Tolkien to myself. So Lewis and Tolkien, J.R. Tolkien, were in that Inkling group. And one of the others died. And he said, oh, I thought I was going to have more of Tolkien to myself. I thought, you know, because there's this other person is not pulling him away, but I'm going to be able to absorb more of and have more time with him, more energy, more everything. He says, actually, there was less of him to be shared because that person that died pulled out something in Tolkien that I could not. Because we all are being shaped and formed by multiple kinds of relationships. And it only makes us actually healthier when instead of just having a one-to-one relationship, we have a one-to-three, one-to-four, one-to-five. To be able to pull out all of the pieces of our personality that honor God, that God has put within us, but that we need someone else to actually pull out of us.
Yeah. And different friends do different things. Somebody might really challenge you intellectually. Somebody might really challenge you in the sense that they draw out, again, your sense of humor. Somebody might really challenge you in their marriage. And so we kind of, and in the body of Christ, we have an embarrassment of riches, right? We have all different kinds of people from all different walks of life and all of their unique personal histories. And why would we want to limit ourselves to just learning from one? Again, we might have those deepest kind of inner circle friendships, but we don't want to impoverish ourselves from the riches that are available to us in the broader body of Christ. That also expands to outside of the local church as well. I mean, I think about this in terms of learning from other churches. We don't have to have this competition mindset where it's just our church is doing everything right. We can't learn anything from that other church and other Christian traditions as well. We're a Baptist church. We obviously draw on Baptist theology and heritage, but we're open to learning from other traditions as well. And each tradition sort of brings its own gifts to bear. And so it expands not just to the local church, but the universalchurch as well, that we are a part of the same body. And even with the glorified saints in heaven, a part of the communion of saints, so that we share. Body, and even with the glorified saints in heaven, a part of the communion of saints, so that we share in what has gone before us as well. Yeah, well put, well put.
Well, we need to close this episode up on community. Are there any closing words or encouragements that you would have as we do that? I mean, just as a practical point of application, you know, I think about this as a preacher, you know, like leaving people with application. I mean, I would just start by praying.
If you already have close friends, pray that those friendships would be friendships of virtue. If you don't have any close friends in your church, just start praying. You have not because you asked not. Begin asking God to open your eyes to see those around you that you, that not only can, that you can, that can be a friend to you, but you can be a friend to them. So maybe start by thinking about how you can serve and love another and support them. But just begin praying that God would foster this kind of community in your church.
That's great. Great. Luke, do you mind just closing us in a word of prayer? Sure. Happy to.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have made us for yourself, that you have given us this capacity for relationships with others and supremely a relationship with you. Father, for the good of your church and for her health, we ask that you would indeed foster this kind of community in our own church and in the churches in our own country and in churches around the world that the body of Christ would be distinctive, would be a draw to others who are lonely and isolated, and they would see in the church a place of love and friendship and community. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen. Thanks, brother. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Here Below podcast. You can visit us online at RedeemerGreenville.com and you can drop us a note, a question or comment there. And who knows, we might use it on one of our next episodes. We do hope that this has helped you in some way in your offering in the great doxology here below. Until next time, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his glorious countenance upon you and give you his peace. Amen. Amen.