I’ve been concurrently reading Becoming Human and From Brokenness to Community, both by Jean Vanier. Jean Vanier is the founder of the L’Arche Communities; intentional communities focused on the care of the disabled. In From Brokenness to Community Vanier quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community.
I hope I’ll never be dumb enough to try to improve on anything that Bonhoeffer has said; what I intend to do in this post is to confess conviction. This quotation caused myself to ask me the question; “Do you love your community more than the individuals in it?” My honest answer to self was; “Mostly.”
I realized that it’s much easier to have a relationship to an entity than an individual; whether the ‘entity’ be God, a company, a church or even abstract conceptual entities such as “family”, “country” or “fellow NASCAR fans”.
In Becoming Human Vanier convinced me that a deep barrier to personal belonging-ness lies in my own desire to be special, to compete, to be recognized as valuable and important. How can I belong if my belonging, by necessity, means something more important than everyone else’s belonging?
Walking with Christ is often paradoxical; it is a paradox that 1.) my own desire for community would become a block to realizing the same; and 2.) the tendency that I believe to make me attractive to others…my ’special-ness’…does in fact become a hindrance to experiencing community.
[...] John, a Jean Vanier in From Brokenness to Community included a Bonhoeffer quote that that I found totally convicting. He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community. Posted by: Kent Runge @ 1:57 pm | Trackback | Permalink [...]
Pingback by The Boar’s Head Tavern » — Thu, 19 Jul, 2007 @ 12:57 |