What does it take to make a community?

As part of our children's study of colonial America, we have been watching Colonial House, a reality tv program from PBS. A group of people try to recreate the experience of the Massachusetts Bay Colony of 1628. The gentleman serving as the governor of the colony has been faced with the difficulty of trying to enforce 17th century Puritanical law with a group of 21st century individuals. It just didn't work. People, especially women, complained about what we would now consider ridiculous regulations - required Sabbath worship attendance, no profanity, modest hair coverings, corsets, etc. Finally, the governor suspended enforcement of all Sabbath laws. What resulted was an gradual protest against all such laws.


The problem was not with the ridiculous nature of the laws. The problem was that not everyone had a shared worldview. One atheist woman wondered aloud whether she would have kept her mouth shut in 1628 or martyred herself. What she failed to see is that had she lived in 1628, her worldview would have probably been quite similar to that trying to be enforced. (Not all the laws were simply Puritanical. Some were actually commonly accepted English customs of the time.) It does cause one to wonder more deeply about the gradual evolution of societal norms that led to the more pluralistic society we have today. Who were the ones to begin the question and rebel? Had they always been there, choosing to remain quiet? What caused them to finally speak out?

More importantly to me are the questions that begin to arise about religious belief. What is that binds a group of people into a religious community? Even in the Christian community, you have many different types of communities. You might even think of them as denominations. Even within denominations you get different flavors on the local church levels. There MAY be a common agreement on what the Core is, but usually the common bond centers more around a very specific set of convictions or interpretations. In today's society those do not even hold as people move on to the next church (community) when something about their current situation is not satisfactory. Or, they will fight to make it like they want it.

After pondering these thoughts for a couple of days, I came up with the following conclusions. I think the root of it all has to be a certain degree of self-sacrifice. In order for to community to remain together and function properly, everyone has to be willing to sacrifice specific preferences. The hard part is choosing which preferences those would be. As idealistic as it sounds, if everyone sacrificed everything, would that be better or would it simply lead to anarchy because there would be no standard.

Which leads me to what is the greatest example of self-sacrifice I know - Jesus death on a cross as payment for our sins. When we accept that sacrifice, we become part of the body of Christ that assembles into local communities. It is this standard that we sacrifice our personal preferences to. We sacrifice our personal preferences to the will of the Holy Spirit that dwells within us. When the Holy Spirit is able to govern our interactions with one another in our self-sacrifice, true community is formed AND maintained.

The problem comes from the fact that as human creatures, we still struggle with that notion. Local churches (communities) experience rifts all the time. There is a failure to maintain the unity in Christ. Which is sad because we don't have to create the unity - it's already there.

Just a thought.