Everywhere I go in Christian circles I fell like these is group-think. Who can inspire the biggest “mmm.” It’s like a competition, causing many to laugh and not enough to feel sick. Somehow, I tend to long for the culture of the secular. Not because Jesus is not there, but because of its rawness and fictitious nature. There is usually cataclysmic disagreement and yet a resolve to find compromise. But in the Church, there is more laughter than challenge, nodding heads instead of turning them.  We tend to spend so much time attempting to look through another’s eyes that we inherit their astigmatism and cause four eyes to lose sight than the two.

I suppose true community does require a certain degree of like-mindedness or common cause. What makes a group of butchers and bankers, Catholics and protestants, federalists and anti-federalists to overthrow their oppression but for love of country? Every movement in history required an inward energy that made people remain despite their many differences. But to me, there has to be something more than just the struggle that promotes corporate growth. True community is the moment one says to another “I see the world differently than you, but I am willing to love you deeply all the same.” I think when you carve away all the tradition of Christian culture and you push towards what is central, what really gravitates two people together, it is respect that brings together community.

Which lost quality do we forget about most in a broken culture such as today? My answer is respect- our honor and trust towards others. We do a great job with an edifice of it, but towards the end of disagreement we dehumanize instead of evangelize. The players in the game stopped being friends long before we began labeling them as opponents. The process of community happens at the very beginning of a relationship. We predetermine every moment of corporate progress with a label of relationship. What’s troubling is that we only deserve as much respect as we give out. A man too prideful to be humbled is one too arrogant to lead.

How do we as the Church bring Christ back to the center of our community without tailgating His message with an agenda of our own? Imagine if there was an exquisite masterpiece in the middle of a city. However, as the people came to view it they took paint of their own and added their own creations to the original, slightly alternating it to best fit their own artistic perspective. True faith is personal, but the Gospel of Christ cannot change upon context. We constantly take the tapestry of Scripture and fit it into words that deliver well. Beyond this, some of those citizens in the city will drape a large tarp over a section of the tapestry to cover what they feel is detracting from its beautify someplace else. But they are wrong. Let me tell you this, anything less or more than the total and complete Gospel of Christ is nothing but mere vandalism. We are Christians called to a very specific purpose, to know God and make Him known. That is our common cause, taken from John 17:3. Why do we as believers insist in complete conformity? Why do we push agendas that were not there to begin with or more notably cover up and reinterpret parts that were? Do we think we have more artistic talent than the Creator? Is our articulation of perceived wisdom more beautiful than the ancient truths of the Bible? Therefore I return to where I started- at its center, Christian community is about respect, not theology. This is why we include, we love, and we listen to those we disagree with but we never compromise ultimate truth and we never forget the original painting.