Where the Hell is Community?

I used to wonder about the emphasis that some preachers would put on “community” within a church. I went to my church, community was not stressed, and I was content as could be.

Until, of course, I developed issues. Spiritual issues, physical issues, addiction issues, sexual issues, and in the background of all these issues, I was hit with deep emotional issues. I was in pain. I was struggling. I was depressed. And I was alone.

The church that had become nothing more than a stage to share with a number of fellow puppets was of no help. To the contrary, my attempts to continue to look as wonderful and perfect as my fellow church-goers only made my depravity more obvious to myself. You never realize how much you’re bleeding until you try to wear white over the open wound.

Enter church. Smile, grimace. Shake hands. Say “hello.” Sit down, stand up, sing, bow head, pray, sing, exit. Repeat. Like a weekly rehearsal, I repeated the same thing with the same people, everyone as shallow and listless as the last, every Sunday more painful than the one before. Our version of community was the easy, comfortable kind, where everyone is friendly and amiable and jolly. Sincerity was far too dangerous. Our “community” was just a prop on our stage. We faked it. And it was hell.

When Bible scholars talk about hell, many of them emphasize loneliness. They say that the experience is one of absolute solitude - to be cut off completely from God and man. This absence of God is what makes it purely evil, what makes it torment beyond what our God-seeking souls can bear.

My personal depravity was compounded by the necessity to suffer through it alone. Community was not something that was available for those in need. The broken were not our specialty; save that for other places. We were there to worship and perform. So I stiffened up my upper lip, and I performed, becoming another part of the problem.

This self-defeating cycle is perpetuated by the ideas that pain is weakness, suffering is shameful, and openness is scorned as a terrifying discomfort. Real topics, real pain, real suffering, real humanity, real people, these are the very things that non-communal churches avoid at all costs. They are afraid to open up the floodgates, even though it is through that ocean of grace that healing comes. They seal themselves off from one another. And thus they become initiators of hell.

Walking into a church that has no community is like sailing the ocean in a boat with no floorboards. The structure is there to keep you afloat, but without the essence of a watertight ship, you will sink into the depths and eventually drown, your death an ironic and sick joke for all to see.

Community with other believers is a way that we experience God. His Spirit working among us is a way that allows us to break in each other’s arms and wash each other with the Word (are we not the body?). Something spiritually beautiful comes from the vulnerability of transparency: Love. 

Romans 12:4-5 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

One of the best functions of community is the puzzle-piece arrangement that our differences can compose. Alone we are weird-shaped bits; together we are whole.

1 Timothy 5:8 But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

We are brothers and sisters! A family bound together, apparently with the ties of love. The blood that has cleansed us has bound us together in the household of God. This is the true location of "God's House" - wherever we Christians have community with one another. Wherever love is encouraged and practiced. Wherever we are not just being His hands and feet, but also His eyes, ears, nose, and elbows. It takes a messy, diverse, and scrappy assembly of truly strange and beautiful people to make up the whole body. Let's make sure we aren't just letting in those pieces that are easy to look at. Let us not turn those away who are hard to bear with, either because we don't understand them or we don't want to open up ourselves to their vulnerability. 

If hell is the absence of God, and Community is a God-experience, without community, we are welcoming hell under our steeples with open arms.

Where the hell is our community? Let us break for all to see. Let us find healing, for ourselves, for others. Let us Love one another.

Let us try to follow Christ.