Among all of the shocking news to come out of the recent bridge collapse tragedy in Minnesota, one report saddened me more than all the rest. It wasn’t the large number of people involved. It wasn’t even the bus full of children teetering on the edge of catastrophe. It was a report that said that one of the cars underwater did not match any of the missing cars reported.
Can you imagine it? Falling off a bridge and plunging into the mighty Mississippi and no one even knows you are gone. No one reports that you are missing. How sad.
Only in America. Only in a land that is so focused on individualism can one actually become so isolated that they can disappear without anyone noticing. People in America are so focused on themselves and their own lives that they often lose contact with the most obvious settings where they should find community. Often, they are even removed from the most basic form of community all are born into, family.
This rampant individualism in America is toxic. Humans are not designed to live isolation from one another. This truth was made evident in some of God’s first words about the man he had created. “It is not good for man to be alone.†We are, to our core, people who need other people. That is why God places us in families. It is why he has us live in communities. And it is why he places those whom he calls to faith in a unique gathering of people we call the church. And when the church functions as it should, it is the most authentic sense of community that exists.
And yet many people set out to live their lives and craft their faith in such an individualistic way that they refuse that community which God gives. And that choice brings isolation. And if that attitude flows out into other parts of their lives, they often end up isolated all together, dangerously close to being that one who falls into tragedy without anyone taking note.
But is their isolation completely their fault? Or is their attitude at least understandable? Maybe it is not solely the emphasis on the individual that causes isolation but also the lack of true community even in those places where it should be that contributes to it. Many leave their family because is it more a place of conflict than refuge. They leave the community found in their local town because it is more about reputation building that caring for one another. And they neglect the places where the church gathers because looking in from the outside they see people fighting one another instead of loving one another as God intends. And so perhaps they are isolated not only by their attitude of individualism but also the corruption of community pervading our culture
We who are the church must repent that we have not let the Spirit form true community in our midst. And those who have willfully rejected the very places where God wishes to ease their isolation must do the same. While we may not be able to cure our culture’s obsession with individualism or completely stop the demise of the other institutions where true community should be found, God has promised to bring healing to his church as his people repent and has promised in his grace to connect us to one another as he connects us to our head, Jesus. So let us repent and receive his goodness. Then we and all who join us will have community. And if we go missing, it will be noticed.
Phil,
Is this a veiled attack against our fathers and mothers among the saints such as Anthony the Great, St. Seraphim of Sarov or St. Mary of Egypt who practiced an eremetic form of monasticism?
Just wondering.
No, it is a open attack on our culture. But no doubt eremetic monasticism was a misunderstanding of God’s plan for his people…just in case you wanted commentary on that.
Phil,
Thanks for clarifying about what yo meant. However, I fail to see (nor will you convince me) how living the angelic life is a misunderstanding of God’s plan for his people. Not all people are called to it and there is abuse of that position, but it is perfectly in harmony with living the Chist-like life.
Based on semantics alone, I would think the angelic life for angels.
Then I suppose the Christ-like life is only for Christ? Are we not supposed to live according to
His will and walk in His ways? Come on, Phil.
Chris,
Just an honest question for you. You are making a great and big and right deal about walking in the way of Jesus yet isn’t the way of Jesus being involved in and with culture? Being involved in and with people? Not removing oneself from them? Yeah, there were times he was alone and by himself…but he always came back to live, work, breath, play, eat, laugh, etc. among and in the midst of people. Just asking.
Chris, we are called to be Christ-like, not angel-like. And since when did the angels stay away from people either. Last I checked they are intensely involved with the affairs of men.
The angelic life is in service to Christ perpetually singing the thrice holy hymn of “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth! Heaven and Earth are full of thy glory!” They coincide in that respect.
You’ve got to get off of this red herring of socialization. Not all monks are eremitic monks, most are cenobitic. I don’t know why you are constantly suggesting there is a false gospel in ascetic retreat from the snares of this earth.
Chris, whose definition is that? It is certainly not the scriptures portrayal of the life of God’s angels. Singing Holy, holy Holy is no doubt part of their life, but not the whole of it. There will be plenty of time for that in heaven.
And the problem is not retreat from the snares if the earth, but from the people of the earth.
Chris,
Geez…everytime you write I have to run to dictionary.com…which, trust me, can ONLY make me smarter.
I certainly understand that many monks live communally (spelling?) together…which is cool. But yet I have trouble finding anywhere that God calls us to live only by ourselves (even if in the midst of other Christ-followers).
When I think of some of the prophets (and John the Baptist included) their work and ministry was always in the midst of people….not removed from them. It seems that those who go to live out in the deserts or in the caves or in the monasteries…are seperating themselves from the very ones that God has called us to rub shoulders with and serve and be a blessing to.
And removing ourselves from the snares of the earth seems counter to the Christ-like life you so rightly highlight. Christ came into the snares of the earth…and asked us to follow him in his footsteps.
It seems that this is God’s world…why would i want to flee it? It is imperfect, it is in need of repair and restoration…but it still is his. And he calls us to follow in the way of His Son to be ministers of reconciliation and restoration but it seems that is done more often than not and done better in the context of working around and with people not removed from them.
Just asking…and I will have dictionary.com already opened up in a tab waiting for when you reply 🙂
Tom,
Please forgive the lateness of my reply. School started this week and so I’m still trying to get my bearings.
When you say that you have problems finding anywhere that God calls us to live only by ourselves (even if in the midst of other Christ-followers), I will assume you mean that you cannot find strict scriptural support. That argument to discredit monasticism will not work with me as I am EAstern Orthdox and I subscribe that the Tradition of the Church, of which Scripture holds a hallowed and inscrutable place. I subscribe to teh Catholic Principle whereas this is nowhere refuted by Scripture.
I’m sure that you and Phil would both be in agreement with the following words of Jacob Andreae and Martin Crusius, the scholars of Tubingen, who in their second letter to His All-Holiness Patriarch Jeremias II, wrote the following: “They [Christ and John the Baptist] taught, but they did not urge anyone to live in solitude. No, indeed, even the fiercest preacher of repentance, the holy Forerunner, did not omman anyone to withdraw into the wilderness. He did not prescribe monastic exercises for anyone, but he ordered each to abide to his own calling and to live in piety.” (2nd letter to Constantinople 16).
His All-Holiness responded, “To this you may wonderingly say that neither in te Old nor in the New [Testaments] was teh monastic life lied. However, be assured that in those times, thre existed such a way of life,save that it was practice in theory as Elijah and the Forerunner in the Old and the Disciples of Christ themselves, being celibate and living a cenobitic life, also running the risk of being separated from Christ, were models of such a life as we learn fromthe Gospel and Epistle texts. Indeed, the Holy Fathrs, in what is now by the grace of God, passed on to the Orthodox fatih not some new religion which they invented, nor some contrived, strange and unusual manner of life ,but the truly angelic, the holy and admirable life.” (2nd letter to Tubingen 12). Jeremias II aleady referred to how to deal with monks who could not handle the monastic burden, recalling that it should never be such that one cannot break free from, but reaffirmed its goodness by citing St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, various Holy Synods and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.
ONe shoul mention that the Tubingen “scholars” in no way disredit that monasticism may be a calling. However, they immediately jump to condemn it outright without any trace of a train of thought. It seems that immediately in the genration following Luther, the Catholic Principle was abandoned in the Lutheran Church. I can only imagine what may have happened if the dialogue between Tubingen and Constantinople was conducted by Martin Chemnitz, who as actually educated in the Fathers of the Church.
We are called and ordained for good works and that can be in the manner of asceticism. One should not dismiss it out of hand.