Principle #1: Imagination Beyond Individualism
Introducing the Four Principles
As I’ve shared about my research with people in many places, the most common question is “What can I do?” People want to know how they can take action to address the problems.
Usually, my response has been something like this:
“ don’t really know! I don’t think this is something that ‘you’ can do, or that ‘I’ can do. It has to be something that we do. I only have one part of the puzzle, and you have one part, and there are others in your community with their part. I don’t know your community or your situation. I can share with you a few of the things I’ve learned from others, but this will take a gathering of your community, an ecclesia, to come together.”
Here are those principles and provocations, also featured in the upcoming book One New Humanity. We’ll start here with the first one.
Principle #1: Imagination Beyond Individualism
The first thing is growing our imaginations beyond individualism.
In some traditional cultures, thinking communally is natural. But even then, theology has often been dominated by individualistic lenses. Our theology has taught us to look at our relationship with God in individualistic terms, and so all of us can find it difficult to think theologically about the structures of our communities. But, we can do theology differently, benefiting our own cultural gifts and resources in the Body.
In individualistic cultures, this task is even harder. Not only do we think about theology and our “walk” with God as an individual task, but we think of nearly everything this way—education, finances, career, health, etc.
We talk about how to build personal structures to further our spiritual growth and keep us from sin: “If you struggle with alcohol, don’t go to a bar!” We also talk about setting aside times for daily prayer and devotions. We talk about the need to forgive. We talk about how the way we spend our time and money is an indicator of our true priorities. We will say that we need to “look at the fruit” of a person to see how the tree is doing.
But how often do we talk about how to structure our shared lives, and build corporate habits to further spiritual growth? Do we step back and think about why we gather the way we do, why we structure our sunday mornings the way we do, why we spend money on what we do? How often do we look at the fruit of our entire community?
In Rwanda, the community approach was taken. Reconciliation has happened sometimes because people chose to think and move forward together as a whole community. Individuals had to be dealt with, yes—but this could not happen outside the context of their villages. This allowed for the opportunity to be reintegrated rather than simply eliminated or permanently cast out. It allowed shame to move in a direction of transformation and restored glory.
If John Braithwaite and Te-Li Lau are right, then many of our communities (especially in the United States) are not set up to make this possible. We are not living in the communitarian, interdependent way that the early Christians lived—or that the majority of our ancestors did. We are isolated and fragmented, and continue to address problems in a highly individualistic manner.
So before we get to the question of how to make change, we need to ask who do I need to bring along first? What relationships do I need to cultivate? Who’s voice are we missing? Who have we overlooked? While there may be urgent needs, we need to also slow down to spend time honoring and cultivating relationships and people first, so that we can have the sustainable help we need to accomplish together.
Addressing the walk of a whole community is not easy, because by myself I don’t have everything that’s needed. It requires that I first enter into deep relationships with others which are characterized by interconnection, interdependence, and trust.
Next up, we’ll talk about Principle #2: Focusing on the Tangible and the Local. We’ll discuss how following the command to love one’s neighbor with action helps us to cut through things which might normally keep us apart.
