Community

I don’t know how many people just sit back at your theology of God, or more specific your belief in your local church. Do you ask yourself is it working,is it making a difference.

The one aspect of this paradigm of belief is that I see alot holes that the belief’s of certain things don’t actually work. One aspect that I would like to hit on, is the aspect of the community of the ‘christian’ family. One thing that I have to make it quite clear with this ‘community’ thing, it seems that the ‘church’ is emphasizing that they must be a influence in the community around them,(think on this concept that they are pushing for a minute) they are trying to be a influence to people that are that they might come into contact for 2 hours on a saturday for a feed the neighbors thing, and then go home. This is not what a community does or is. But that is another story. The point of community being the followers of God is that they are together in body,spirit, and mind. I would like to use a depiction of community from a movie to show the difference one’s community can make if it is realized in what it is.  The movie “Paul” that was in the theater’s months back, did an excellent job of portraying the foundation of the community in the first century. The ‘community’ were together as one being ‘one’ in mind,body,and spirit in everything they were. It was one of the things that stood out in the movie as I watched, it was a different perception that we have that is different than now.  One thing that in this instance that brought them together was this ‘persecution’ of their time with the Romans, but although we might think that this is an anomaly, it is going on still.

Our understanding of what the paradigm of God getting back his creation entails, we will not understand persecution from now until God fully take’s control!

Community is one of that ‘believers’ are apart of, because they are of one body,spirit, and mind. Now, why would ‘outsiders’ be invited to participate into this community unless they were already believers of this community? This sounds harsh, but let me explain. God, Jesus work in a an upside down kinda way, it is not of our thinking and doing. This goes back to God’s choosing a people(Jews) to be his representative of him in the old covenant, they were to be a mirror of God, an image of him in his temple(earth,world) this was to be the catalyst for the nations to see them at the top of the mountain with God, and be inspired to also be with the creator God.

It is at this point, that it is upside down in our ways of doing things the usual way. We must ‘be’ believers, just ‘be’. If we are just ‘be’ing’ then we are being the witness of who God wants us to be, his image! As it says in 1 Peter 2.9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 

This is the opposite of what the ‘church’ is trying to do now. The church is trying to make the world a community when in fact the church is not a community itself!

Let me shed some light to this in two different ways, one, the community of the believers do not take care of their own. It is sad that we are not perfect in this example of caring of ‘others’, if we don’t do it towards our own, let alone people outside of us. I fault the system(paradigm) that we are in for this tho. (I see that maybe it is changing some in this arena.) Only because the paradigm is changing.

Two, the community of the outsiders have problems themselves that they cannot conform to a community of ‘family’, common interests, or even just a friendships. It is just sad to see, when we step back in our lives and see how things are working around us, or not working. I see this in a personal way from a unique way, that surprises me, but on the other hand it doesn’t because of how we have  no foundation to ‘see’ as a foundation to work with.

Community, It’s so much more than what we are knowing it is supposed to be. It’s so much more, it’s an influence to the ‘all the nations’.  Oh, if it was only so!!