73 Sermon Illustrations on Community

Christian community is not hippie communes but a gift of the rich (heavenly) life God has in store for us.

1. A way to see Christ in others.

2. A source of accountability and guidance.

3. A place to pray and worship.

4. A place to serve.

5. A witness to the world.

6. Ambassadors of God's love.

7. Function over form.

8. Getting small.

9. A call to community.

A three year national reasearch project reveals how small groups are dramatically changing our communities and churches. Not all the changes are good; small groups can suck vitality out of churches and not bring in new blood. To encourage growth and evangelism, fresh groups should be started every year and people encouraged to reach out to their unchurched family and friends. Small groups can be a great source of nurture for new believers. Sunday School used to be a powerful small group system but no longer is.

Series of articles on Anabaptists. Their history, distinctive beliefs and

trends are discussed. Side articles give personal glimpses of the Anabaptist

way of life and separation from the world.

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As we’ve said before on BreakPoint, America has a growing heroin epidemic. And as tragic as this is, it is an opportunity for the Church to be the Church.

Do you remember the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaigns of the 80s? One ad showed a rat frantically licking a water bottle laced with opiates. And a voice declared, “Only one drug is so addictive, nine out of ten laboratory rats will use it. And use it. And use it. Until dead ... And it can do the same thing to you.”

This ad was referring to research published in 1978 that found when lab rats were given access to large quantities of opiates, they drugged themselves to death. These experiments supported the “chemical hook” understanding of drug addiction.

But in a recent TED talk, writer Johann Hari claimed that everything we know about addiction is wrong, including the ‘chemical hook’ model that most of us take as settled science. Hari came to this view after talking with medical researcher Bruce Alexander, who noticed that the rats in the original experiments were locked alone in cages with nothing else to do but use the drugs.

Alexander wondered if the rats would behave differently if they weren’t isolated and bored. To find out, he created an elaborate colony called “Rat Park,” which had plenty of food, fun, and company. In his experiment, the rats in isolation drank up to 25 milligrams of morphine-laced water daily, compared to less than 5 milligrams for the rats in Rat Park. Alexander concluded that isolated rats almost always become junkies, while rats living among other rats almost never will.

That experiment, along with other research, led Hari to conclude that the “War on Drugs” is missing a crucial point. It is focused more on stopping the supply of drugs than on figuring out why people feel the need to use them in the first place.

Hari argues that the problem “of addiction doesn’t lie in what you swallow or inject — it’s in the pain you feel in your head.” Or as one recovering crack and heroin addict told him, “Addiction is a disease of loneliness.”

If Hari is right, there are incredible possibilities for the real-world mission of the Church since we live in an increasingly isolated world. Greater numbers of people seek escape from pain, fear, and the loneliness that comes from family and social breakdown. Hari suggests that we don’t have an addiction problem so much as a bonding problem. He writes that “if we can’t bond with other people, we will find a behavior to bond with, whether it’s watching pornography, or smoking crack or gambling.”

This situation is tailor-made for Gospel-centered churches. Christians have always been a community of the walking wounded. Rather than presenting churches as places of perfection, we can reach out to substance abusers with vulnerability and honesty about our own need for recovery from the ravages of sin.

Yet, that’s easier said than done. In his book, “Life Together,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer described a big challenge Christians have in creating healing communities. He said that although people “have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and the fellowship.” If this describes your church, you might have a problem.

Alexander believes that we’ll only find lasting healing when we move past treating individuals and embrace what he calls “social recovery.” He asks, “How can we rebuild a society where we don’t feel so alone and afraid, and where we can form healthier bonds? ... where we look for happiness in one another rather than in consumption?” The answer, of course, is the Church, the body of believers living in fellowship with Jesus and with each other. As Hari says, “The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. It’s connection.”

Resources

Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong

Johann Hari | TED talk | June 2015

Hard-Wired To Connect: The Field of Social Neuroscience

Chuck Colson | BreakPoint.org | April 30, 2007

[HolwickID #34499]

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Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Lupton’s neighbors are church-goers, but “un-neighborly.” They are very involved in their church but do little in the community. Often the church competes with the community for our time instead of allowing us to be involved in both. Society needs Christian influence.

At the battle of Chancellorsville in the Civil War, confederate general Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own troops. His last words as he lay dying in the bedroom of a nearby farmhouse were, "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees."

In this sentence, perhaps the most famous dying utterance in American history, Jackson concentrated a lifetime of prayer and struggle and aspiration - his, and that of the young country he had fought to divide. So many crossed water to get here, so many wanted to rest under the shade.... In the staccato rhythm of the words I can see each step of the action. The sentence ascends in terraces to rest and peace, it undoes knots inside me, it exhales like a sigh. I can see the shining, whorled river sliding by and the gently rising bank and the shaded grass trodden down after a day-camp picnic, across the river and under the trees. I see the columnar trunks almost in a row and the high ceiling where the leaves begin and the sketchier clouds and sky, somewhere above. And then I get kind of carried away and I extend this landscape indefinitely in every direction and I imagine it as the new good place America in its best moments has hoped to be and I populate it from the whole globe and I fill it with faces like those in a poster from an old epic Western movie with cooking smells and music and maybe even a few car-burglar alarms for verisimilitude - I will spare you all the details. Suffice it to say that all of the drinking fountains work, across the river and under the trees.

Before the Civil War, America didn't know if it was a country or lots of different Promised Lands. People invented the America they wanted to live in and then struggled to live there. Across the river and under the trees combined all these invented countries into one. Across the river and under the trees descended like a beneficence in the last moments of a fierce man's life and crystallized his fierceness to purity. Across the river and under the trees carried no demurring subclauses or riders. It included us all - people Jackson considered infidels, men he would have shot unblinking in life. Across the river and under the trees was poetry equal to the nation-making poetry of Lincoln, and the only line of public poetry to come from the south in the war. Even though Stonewall Jackson fought for the Slave power and though his faith is beyond me and though ... the flag of his cause still scares me when I see it on the radiator grille of a truck in my rearview mirror and though I am more than glad his side lost, I dream of across the river and under the trees.

#3193

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Henri Nouwen is a man in whom opposites seem to dwell side by side. A Catholic priest, author of dozens of widely acclaimed books on spirituality and ministry, Nouwen writes often of Christians' desperate need for reflection and solitude. Yet his gangly, slightly stooped frame moves with nervous, almost frenetic energy. People are in and out of his home and office at all hours, usually beginning around 7:30 A.M. and often until late at night. Every day he is involved with at least one Eucharist service, gives spiritual direction, attends to personnel issues, and offers care to many at Daybreak, the community for the mentally and physically handicapped where he ministers just north of Toronto.

And this eloquent exponent of prayerful silence loves to talk. In one interview I managed to pose only three or four questions to Nouwen in as many hours. Each question triggered an unstoppable flow of observations, stories, biblical references. Sometimes he sheepishly apologizes: "Sorry I talk so long." But his talk is more than words. He brims with insights about the spiritual life. Once he told a gathering of Baptist ministers, "Ministry is the least important thing. You cannot not minister if you are in communion with God and live in community. A lot of people are always concerned about: 'How can I help people? Or help the youth to come to Christ? Or preach well? But these are all basically nonissues. If you are burning with the love of Jesus, don't worry: everyone will know. They will say, 'I want to get close to this person who is so full of God.'"

Perhaps the greatest irony concerns Nouwen's present work. This former professor at Notre Dame, Yale, and Hazard now devotes his energies to those whose IQs and disabilities place them on the margins of society. Books such as "The Wounded Healer" and "Creative Ministry" have been textbooks for untold numbers of seminarians, yet Nouwen frequently addresses those who can understand only the barest rudiments of faith. There is, however, a certain consistency in the midst of the opposites and ironies, one found not in Nouwen's career accomplishments, but in his faith. ...

Life at Daybreak requires patience for the long haul. It is part of L'Arche (French for ark), an international network of ecumenical communities where mentally handicapped persons and their assistants attempt to live together according to the gospel. The first L'Arche community was founded in Trosly, France, by French Catholic layman Jean Vanier in 1964. Nouwen has lived in Daybreak since 1986. One of the oldest and largest L'Arche communities in North America, it is home to more than a hundred people.

"Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are those who care for the poor.' He said, 'Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.' It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself. I find it very important," Nouwen adds, "to stress that we are wounded healers; we don't have to run away from our vulnerability as if we don't hurt."

One evening I went for a long walk with a member who had severe brain damage as a child. I was touched by his humor, insight, and empathy. Without Daybreak, he--and others in the community--could end up on the street. Many people in L'Arche are rejected and outcast in the world. But L'Arche embraces everyone, handicapped members and assistants, reminding all that God loves us in our brokenness.

Nouwen insists that those who want to understand him must encounter L'Arche. Interviewers are encouraged to spend time at Daybreak, absorbing its unique dynamics. He told me, "L'Arche exists not to help the mentally handicapped get 'normal,' but to help them share their spiritual gifts with the world. The poor of spirit are given to us for our conversion. In their poverty, the mentally handicapped reveal God to us and hold us close to the gospel." Many times, as he travels, Nouwen brings along one or more handicapped members to his speaking engagements. "I'm not just Henri Nouwen anymore," he often says.

The community indeed seems exceptional. Assistants are not do-gooders who come in a short burst of naive idealism. Many serve in L'Arche for years or even decades. And I met people from around the world: Italy, Germany, Australia, the Dominican Republic. Assistants often quickly engage in intense spiritual conversations. (You also hear much "shop talk" about wheelchairs, lifts, and illnesses. )

One morning, as I sat in the semidark chapel praying, Scan, an assistant from Ireland, opened the door and pushed in a large wheelchair bearing Michael. Michael is profoundly handicapped: unable to walk, talk, or feed himself. He was elaborately draped in a poncho to protect him from the cold. Scan carefully removed Michael's poncho. They sat, praying. From time to time, Scan shifted or massaged Michael's body. At L'Arche, physical care and spirituality are deeply interwoven. ...

Many evangelicals find their way to Nouwen tier [to?] help with their walk with God. Some time ago, Mike Yaconelli, iconoclastic editor of "The Door," and other evangelical youth ministry leaders came for a lengthy stay. Yaconelli wrote of that retreat: "I knew what it meant to believe in Jesus; I did not know what it meant to be with Jesus. ...I found it easy to do the work of God, but I had no idea how to let God work in me."

Working with experienced evangelical pastors, Nouwen sometimes senses fatigue and spiritual exhaustion. They might wonder: "How can we-who talk about Jesus and want to bring people to Jesus, and want to help others bring people to Jesus-keep living a vital spiritual life?"

About a retreat with evangelical leaders, he remembers: "Our time was fruitful because they discovered what it would mean to live a Christ-centered life. To live in communion with Jesus was very central. We discussed what John the evangelist says about a relationship with Jesus. Jesus wants to dwell in us. Out of our intimate communion with Jesus we can start to minister. So Jesus is not just someone who lived a long time ago and was the Son of God and whom we follow. He is also the one with whom we live in constant communion and whose life is our life."

Evangelicals do not just come to Nouwen, he also goes to them, accepting many invitations to speak at Bible schools or to even bigger audiences. Nouwen appreciates evangelicals' openness about faith--"I love the directness that's involved, speaking about Jesus without embarrassment or complications"--but he argues that evangelicals have "a great need for a mystical dimension to their lives so they could be more free in living and not driven. The question is not 'How many people did I bring to Jesus?' but 'How faithful has your life with Jesus been?' Jesus was often not very successful, either. The question becomes 'Can I live a life of faith in the world and trust that it will bear fruit even when it has not many successes?'

"The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church --like the corporation-- to be successful. On that level, the mystical tradition of communion with Christ is important. 'I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain connected with me, then you will bear fruit.' The fruit is not success?'

At the core of life at Daybreak is worship. Although the community is ecumenical and there are variously striped Protestants present, the Eucharist is usually "high church --Roman Catholic or Anglican. Candles burn everywhere. Here is a picture of Francis of Assisi, there a Russian icon of Jesus. The priest is arrayed in a liturgical robe with a colorful stole. Handicapped community members sit on either side, ready to assist. Chairs encircle a huge, ark-shaped wooden table that was built in the community's wood shop. In one corner is a large bean bag for those handicapped people whose bodies cannot fit into a "regular" chair.

The service is an unlikely juxtaposition of the unexpected. At times we sing Greek, Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy). Then the formality, ritual, and candles feel "high church." At other times, we sing "Kumbayah" or other simple, folksy ,songs. Not all voices are on key. Not all the worshipers sing: Some moan or groan; some loudly gnash their teeth; some are silent. Some sway and moan the whole service through.

During the sermon, some interrupt the preacher with their editorializing or rebuttals. Handicapped members assist with preparing the emblems, wafers, and wine, and then help serve. Sometimes this works and sometimes not. During my first Communion here years ago, one person finished the wine before it circled half the room. We smiled, and as we touched the empty, fragrant cup to our lips, we had Communion.

Nouwen admits that at first he needed to learn to be patient with such interruptions. But ministry is two-way: "The handicapped people in their poverty were able to communicate to me God's first love." Thus, the Daybreak experience has shaped his understanding of the Eucharist; his most recent book "With Burning Hearts" (Orbis), explores the "eucharistic life" as a journey through failure and loss to thanksgiving.

As the community's pastor, Nouwen gives spiritual direction and encourages assistants to see their whole lives as opportunity for prayer: they do not just work with the handicapped during the day and pray at night. God speaks at all times and in all places, Nouwen counsels, not just in routine times of prayer. Regular disciplines are crucial, but all our lives can be prayerful. Developing this sort of consciousness, in accordance with Paul's injunction to "pray without ceasing," is a way of making our daily lives into a "window" for how God works.

Indeed, Nouwen's work is a constant, repeated, and emphatic reminder of the call to prayer: "Praying at all times means keeping our eyes always fixed on Jesus the Christ. As Peter began to sink as soon as he moved his eyes from Jesus to the restless waters on which he walked, so will we lose heart as soon as we stop praying. But as long as we keep the eyes of our hearts and minds focused on him, we can walk confidently in this world, bringing peace wherever we go."

Another recurring theme of Nouwen's life is his search for a spiritual home. "When I was five years old, I wanted to be a priest. I don t have any memories of wanting anything else. As a very tiny child, God was important to me. I've never had doubts about that. In those days, young boys were sometimes encouraged to act like priests. I had a little altar, tabernacle, and vestments. That was a way of playing then. It was normal in those days," he told me.

From early on, however, his vocation was tugged by different urges. "One voice said," he remembers, "'Show me that you can make it in this world, be an independent person, and compete with others. Show me that you're going to accomplish something.' This voice encouraged me to work hard, do much, set high goals for myself.

"And another voice ,said, 'Whatever you do in your life, don't lose contact with Jesus. Being known or having a big job is unimportant. It is important that you continue to carry Jesus in your heart and that you don't lose his light.'"

Nouwen, always restless, has often been on the move. He has lived in Bolivia, Peru, the Trappist Abbey of Genesee in New York State, the North American College in Rome, and other religious communities, exploring and testing.

Although a permanent home remained an elusive hope, its promise and symbolism spoke deeply to him: "How often images connected with a new dwelling place are used in the gospels! Jesus not only invites his followers to live with him in the same house, but he himself is the house," he writes in Lifesigns (Doubleday).

Restless longing is also reflected in the sudden changes in vocation that have punctuated Nouwen's adult life. After ordination in 1957, he expected to work in a diocese in the Netherlands. But at his bishop's request he continued school, studying psychology for six years. Next, he spent two years at the Menninger Clinic in Kansas, integrating theology and psychology. Finally, in his thirties, he began to teach psychology at Notre Dame. He loved teaching there. "But deep within me, I soon knew that psychology would never be my main field. I had such a desire to speak about God and to announce the Word. I felt that if I stayed in the university I should do theology." Copies of his lectures evolved into his first book, "Intimacy" (HarperSanFrancisco). Although he had never intended to be a writer, his writing career was launched.

After Notre Dame, he returned to the Netherlands, taught for two years in a theological institute, and pursued further theological studies. Then he was offered a position at Yale. "I was impressed by the opportunity to proclaim the Word in a school like that." He got permission from his bishop to teach for a few years and stayed ten. He eventually became a tenured professor.

Nouwen liked Yale, but it was not where he felt called to be. "I felt I needed something else because my spiritual life was not deep. I'm just a fragile person, and I knew that I wasn't rooted deeply enough in Christ. I wanted something more basic."

Nouwen prayed about this. "Something happened that, while a small thing, was important." He received a surprise visit from a L'Arche director, Jan Risse, who brought greetings from L'Arche founder Jean Vanier. "I expected this greeting to be followed by a request to give a lecture, write an article, or offer a retreat," Nouwen recalls, but the visit had no strings attached. Instead, Risse visited Nouwen for a few days, cooked a beautiful meal for him, and helped him in practical ways.

"Later, I saw how much in the spirit of L'Arche that was, although at the time I was just surprised. She didn't ask me to do anything. It impressed me deeply because it was a radical shift from how people usually related to me. They all want something from me, and that's normal. I remember thinking that this was something of God's response to my prayer." In 1981, Nouwen burned his bridges, resigned from Yale, and went to Latin America. "I'd been there many summers and felt that's where God was calling me. Or at least that it was what I should do." His motives were a mixture of guilt about his affluence and an earnest desire to know God's will. His journal, Gracias! (Orbis), recounts his attempts to find a vocation there. "I was coming up with great schemes of what I could do if I went to Latin America, but gradually discovered that it wasn't God's call," he told me. Later, he visited Nicaragua and embarked on a two month U.S. lecture tour. This exhausted him and raised new questions: "I've never been so tired. My soul was in danger from preaching the gospel: It was akin to preaching to the whole world and losing your own soul. I was very lonely and broken."

Nouwen spent six weeks in the original L'Arche community in Trosly, France, recovering from his lecture tour and re-evaluating his involvements. L'Arche gave him room to be healed. "There was this whole feeling, 'Maybe here you can be held and cared for; we don't want anything of you. We love you and want you to experience God's love.'"

Nouwen returned to the United States to teach at Harvard. There was much that he liked, but it also tore him apart: "Something inside was telling me that my success was putting my own soul in danger." Harvard was not a good experience: "It was one of the hardest places I'd ever been. It's an ambitious school, sometimes even somewhat arrogant. I didn't know how to deepen my heart and my soul, how to stay close to Jesus in the midst of it all."

He sought out the one home he knew, living for a year in Trosly and keeping a journal, which evolved into "The Road to Daybreak" (Doubleday). He was invited to be pastor of Daybreak in Toronto. "It was the first time in my whole life: that I felt called to do anything. The rest I'd done. I'd made a lot of initiatives. This was the first time that I felt that God was calling." He gratefully accepted. The move startled many. This successful writer and Ivy League academic moved backwards from the way society recommends. He wrote that, in going from Harvard to Daybreak, he went from "an institution for the best and brightest" to work with people who are often most despised in society.

Ironically, this one place where he experienced God's call is also the least interested in his expertise as a writer and lecturer: "If [the handicapped people] express love for you, then it comes from God. It's not because you accomplished anything. These broken, wounded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self--the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things--and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I'm completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments."

Nouwen has also never been more aware of his own needs. In finding a physical home, he had not yet resolved a deeper inner issue. Outer restlessness was a symptom of an unwillingness to rely primarily on God. "When you expect from people what only God can give," he confesses, "you cling and ask more from them than they can offer. A friend's love is for you but not to replace God." He experienced both physical and emotional exhaustion. With the support of Daybreak, he took a six-month leave in 1988.

Years later, Nouwen is still surprised--but convinced-that his work at L'Arche is precisely what God has called him to do.

Has Henri Nouwen finally found his home? While he cannot be sure he will remain at L'Arche for the rest of his life, he believes his call to L'Arche is different from when he went to Yale or Harvard. He has no plans to leave. In his house at Daybreak, he has some antique furniture he inherited from his family and also a large collection of religious paintings and sculptures. It feels like a home. This might not be his final address, but Henri Nouwen has moved much closer to his longed-for House of the First Love.

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Arthur Boers is the author of "Lord, Teach Us to Pray" (Herald) and "Justice

That Heals" (Faith and Life).

Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY magazine

FELLOWSHIP is a word that Christians often throw around. What does it really mean? An outsider looking in at Ledgewood Baptist might think it means a potluck dinner, shooting the breeze in a small study group or even being part of a volleyball game in the church yard. Any social activity is thought of as fellowship. It certainly can be but it does not happen automatically.

Fellowship, as the Bible describes it, is much more than socializing. Social events have their place but they are not true fellowship. Even when God is the focus and we pray and read the Bible we are only scratching the surface of biblical fellowship. The Greek word for fellowship is KOINONIA and it has two primary meanings: 1) to SHARE TOGETHER in the sense of partnership, and 2) to SHARE WITH in the sense of giving what we have to others.

The first emphasis focuses on relationships, not activities. We share a common life with other believers just like we are supposed to have with God (1 John 1:3). Classical Greeks used KOINONIA when talking about business partnerships and Luke uses it concerning the partnership Peter had with James and John in the fishing business (Luke 5:10). In the spiritual realm, Paul called the Philippian church his partners in the business of spreading the gospel (Phil. 1:5). Every business has an objective and ours should be to glorify God and spread salvation to those around us.

The second main meaning involves sharing with others. Acts 2:42 gives an important description of the first century church when it says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the FELLOWSHIP, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” They shared spiritual encouragement, Bible reading and prayer with each other. One gripe I hear at times is that our Bible studies and Sunday School classes end up discussing everything except the Bible and spiritual truth. True koinonia seeks a deeper spiritual level.

Sharing had a more concrete aspect as well - they literally gave money to each other (see Acts 2:44-45). Sometimes it was because of special circumstances like the explosive growth of the early church in Jerusalem but the sharing of material blessings was characteristic of the first Christians (see Rom. 12:13; 2 Cor. 9:13 and Heb. 13:16). Our concern for each other should not be superficial but practical and deep. If you are involved in the life of our church more than an hour on Sunday morning then you will find plenty of opportunities to have real KOINONIA. I invite you to share in our work for Jesus.

How the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., blends commitment and service in an attempt to recapture New Testament community.

We need a community around us. Years ago, when speaker of the house Sam Rayburn heard that he had terminal cancer, he shocked everyone when he announced that he was going back to his small town in Bonham, Texas. Everyone said to him: They have got the finest facilities in Washington, D.C., why go back to that little town? Rayburn's words have been quoted so often that some of you have probably heard them. He said: “Because in Bohman, Texas, they know if you’re sick and they care when you die." We need community.

In his autobiography, Robert Brooke told of a trip he made from England to the United States, aboard the C. C. Cedric. When he arrived at the dock, he noticed that everyone had relatives standing there to send them off. In the midst of the embraces he felt terribly lonely. He thus called a young boy over and paid him a schilling to wave at him as the boat pulled out of the dock. And sure enough, the young boy stood there waving with all his might, and Brooke waved back. Everyone needs a community to love them and recognize them.

[see also #18722]

BUILDING COMMUNITY

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I. Rootless.

II. People are not meant to be alone.

A. Loneliness is a great plague.

B. We crave structure.

C. God's answer to our loneliness is relationships.

III. The Special Community of a Congregation.

A. Key to God's plan.

B. Features.

IV. Building Community.

A. Give effort.

B. Give heart.

C. Give mind.

D. Give soul.

V. Reaching our community.

A. God's plan for earth doesn't wrap up till we reach everyone.

B. Practice what you preach.

C. Watch the grumbles.

VI. God's ultimate community.

A. God doesn't want people divided, but together.

B. God's Community requires a choice.

C. Will you be a member?

Did you know that the envelopes at ATM machines can kill you? Or that sitting down in a movie theater can cost you your life?

Preposterous, you say? Not to millions of people on the Internet -- a place where even the most absurd urban legend can gain an audience.

For the past few months, millions of Internet subscribers have received an ominous e-mail describing a Toronto woman who died after making a deposit at her bank's ATM machine. According to the e-mail message, police found cyanide in her body and traced the poison to the glue in the envelope. Someone had been putting cyanide-laced envelopes in machines across the city, the e-mail message explained, and banks were powerless to stop it.

The e-mail concluded by advising people to spit at bank envelopes instead of licking them.

The story was a hoax, of course. And so was another e-mail message describing a Dallas woman who sat on an HIV-infected needle left in a movie theater seat. Similar occurrences are being reported across the country, the message claimed, citing the Centers for Disease Control.

Both hoaxes sounded plausible enough to prompt millions of concerned Americans to forward the messages to friends and relatives all across the world. Thanks to e-mail,rumors, even absurd ones like these, now spread almost instantaneously.

How could so many people be so gullible? David Emery, an expert in so-called "urban legends," says that stories are "an expression of how many people feel: generally mistrustful; wary of their fellow human beings, particularly strangers." Many of these stories suggest that we are in dire danger when undertaking "the most ordinary of daily activities," such as going to the bank or to a movie.

Yet, Emery's explanation leaves out the role played by the Internet itself in the spread of urban legends today: the creation of ever-greater isolation.

The explosion of the World Wide Web and so-called e- commerce has created a world where you can do almost everything without leaving your home. You can buy groceries or shop for a car without stepping outside your door. You can even buy a home and apply for a mortgage on-line. In fact, just about the only thing you cannot do on-line is move.

In a culture where interaction with others is increasingly optional, is it any surprise that mistrust and suspicion are also increasing? How can we trust our neighbors if we don't even known them? No wonder so many people fall for bogus e-mail warnings that warn of hidden dangers lurking in the most innocent settings.

The Bible makes it clear that God intended us to live our lives in community, surrounded by people with whom we have real, not virtual, relationships. We all need to make sure we and our kids are not spending our whole lives on-line. We need to take regular breaks from the computer, go outside, and talk with our neighbors.

Christians need to take a stand against a fragmenting society and not be carried along unthinkingly by social trends.

It's the only way to protect ourselves -- not from killer envelopes but from the mistrust and suspicion that destroys a community.

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Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Posted by Doug Showalter on January 11, 1998: -

The Bible occasionally looks to creatures of the natural world for life instruction. Jesus spoke about the birds of the air. [Matthew 6:26] The book of Proverbs advises lazy people to "go to the ant...consider its ways, and be wise." [Proverb 6:6]

Milton Olson wrote the following passage in a similar spirit. It is entitled, "Lessons From Geese." One approach would be to weave ideas from this passage into a sermon. Such a sermon might be particularly effective if it was delivered in an outdoor setting -- especially with the possibility of geese flying overhead. [edited slightly for clarity.]

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1. As each bird flaps its wings, it creates an "uplift" for the bird following. By flying in a "V" formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if the birds flew alone.

LESSON: People who share a common direction and sense of community, can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

2. Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to fly along. It quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the "lifting power" of the bird immediately in front of it.

LESSON: If we have as much sense as a goose, we will stay in formation with those who are headed where we want to go. We will be willing to accept their help, as well as give our help to them.

3. When the lead goose gets tired, it rotates back into formation and another goose flies at the point position.

LESSON: It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership. As with geese, we humans are dependent upon each other.

4. The geese in formation honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

LESSON: We need to make sure our honking from behind is encouraging and not something else.

5. When a goose gets sick or wounded or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it is able to fly again or dies. Then they launch out on their own, join another formation, or catch up with the flock.

LESSON: If we have as much sense as geese, we will also stand by each other in difficult times, as well as when we are strong.

*

see also lesons from a goose at HolwickId 9231

THREE BULLS for a long time pastured together. A Lion lay in ambush

in the hope of making them his prey, but was afraid to attack them

while they kept together. Having at last by guileful speeches

succeeded in separating them, he attacked them without fear as they

fed alone, and feasted on them one by one at his own leisure.

Where there is union, there is strength. For this reason, Christians

should remain united so that Satan won't succeed in attacking them or

the Church.

There is one country whose flag you will not see flying outside the United Nations headquarters and whose athletes will not compete in the Olympic games: “Cyber Yugoslavia,” population 16,573. That's because it exists only in cyberspace.

The lack of any physical contact between its “citizens” hasn't stopped “Cyber Yugoslavia” from adopting the trappings of real countries: a flag, a constitution, and even a national anthem of sorts. The plan is to petition for UN membership as soon as its “population” reaches five million.

While it may sound bizarre, the people behind this “virtual nation” are not alone in how they have forgotten the requirements for creating real communities.

The impetus behind the founding of “Cyber Yugoslavia” were the wars that tore the former Yugoslavia apart during the 1990s — fractured into separate states like Serbia, Bosnia, and the like. That left people like Zoran Bacic, the virtual country's webmaster, without “a physical land.”

So they created an idealized country, one that avoided the conflicts and other messiness associated with physical proximity, simply embracing the old name.

“Cyber Yugoslavia,” of course, is a clever gimmick. But it is the poster state for the Internet age: what happens when people are linked together only by their keyboards.

As Quentin Schultze of Calvin College writes in HABITS OF THE HIGH-TECH HEART, Americans imagine cyberspace as a “location for recreating community.” We see this belief on display in the millions of websites that bill themselves as either a community or part of a larger community.

The problem is that while information technology can help us communicate with others, it cannot build what Schultze calls “communities of virtue.” “Virtual communities” he says, cannot build “moral lives of gratitude and responsibility.”

The reason is that social networks based on shared interests, like the Internet, do not require us to think about more than ourselves. On the contrary, in cyberspace, it's easy to forget that anyone else — any real people — really exists.

In the online world, there is no need to be neighborly, hospitable, or generous — not just because you can't be held accountable, but because it is not possible. The “community” is not physically held together, and the mode of interaction precludes acts of meaningful self-denial. The practice of virtues like self-denial shapes character and builds friendships — friendships that, in turn, hold us morally accountable. It just can't happen in cyberspace.

Similarly, cyber-communities lack what Schultze calls “orality.” E-mail is a very different form of communication from actually speaking to another person. Listening to a person talk, especially on an intimate level, is not the same as reading their messages. Our disposition and our willingness to be present to them all change.

It's actual communities that require us to think about the needs and interests of others. And it's in real communities, starting with the family, that character is formed. And for all the talk about Internet diversity, only a real community — one based on shared space, not just interests — can teach us how to live with people who are different from us.

As Schultze reminds us, this is the biblical model for community. Messy? Sure. But if our goal is real virtue, then there is no avoiding real people.

THIS COMMENTARY FIRST AIRED ON MARCH 5, 2003.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Chris Nuttall, “Birth of a cybernation,” BBC News, 6 August 1999.

• Quentin J. Schultze, Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age (Baker Books, 2002).

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030304, “More Than Duct Tape: Cyberculture's Values.”

• Paul Mitchell, “Gods and Their Kingdoms,” BreakPoint Online, August 28, 2002.

• Budziszewski, “'Little Platoons',” BreakPoint WorldView, March 2003.

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Copyright (c) 2003 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #4515]

One of the sublime realities of the Christian faith is what we commonly call the Trinity - three persons in one essence of the Godhead. The Trinity does indeed present a mystery, but as one of the great philosophers and legal scholars of our times, Mortimer Adler, noted, any knowledge of God would be expected to bring both rudimentary clarity and legitimate mystery. Adler's scrutinizing mind led him to his own conversion to Christ.

Obviously, a troubling question may be raised as to how there can be a "three-ness" and a "one-ness" without equivocation. We must bear in mind that God is a person. There has to be a dimension where, by analogy, we understand how He can be infinite and yet be personal. C. S. Lewis does a masterful job in helping us approach this mystery. Here's what he says:

You know that in space you can move in three ways - left or

right, backwards or forwards, up or down... They are called the

three Dimensions. Now notice this. If you're using only one

dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you're using

two, you could draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is

made up of four lines... If you have three dimensions, you could

then build what we call a solid body: say, a cube... And a cube

is made up of six squares.

Do you see the point? A world of one dimension would be a world

of straight lines. In a two-dimensional world, you still get

straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a three-

dimensional world, you still get figures but many figures make

one solid body... As you advance to more real and more

complicated levels, you don't leave behind the things you found

on simpler levels; you still have them, but combined in new ways

- in ways you couldn't imagine if you knew only the simpler

levels. [1]

This helps us get an albeit slender grasp on how the concept of personhood can contain a complexity and yet retain a meaningful simplicity.

In practical terms this concept of unity in diversity has fascinating implications for life. For only in the Christian message can we explain unity and diversity in the effect of this universe, because there is unity and diversity in God the first cause. God's blueprint for us is unity, diversity, and community. God's gift to us is our individuality meant to express itself best in community.

What a glorious gift this mystery unfolds. Try explaining unity, diversity, and community in other paradigms and you will see not a sublime mystery but systemic contradiction.

_________

1. C. S. Lewis, Beyond Personality (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1944), 14-16.)

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

On August 24, the year 410, the unthinkable happened: The Goths, under the leadership of Alaric, sacked Rome. Although, by historical standards, it was a fairly “restrained” sacking, there was nothing restrained about response to the news that the “eternal city” had been pillaged.

Pagans blamed the downfall of Rome, and other calamities as well, on Christianity. This prompted a reply by a North African bishop that shaped the course of Western civilization. That bishop was, of course, Augustine of Hippo, and his reply was the classic apologetic book entitled THE CITY OF GOD.

To fully appreciate Augustine’s masterpiece, you need to understand the man and his times. You see, Augustine understood clearly and enunciated the classic Christian truth about the fallen nature of man and the pervasiveness of sin.

For Augustine, sin is a revolt against God and refusing to accept one’s status as a creature. This rebellion causes us to turn away from things that are divine and truly abiding and, instead, turn to things that are changeable and uncertain.

Our desires, and not the love of God, become the center of our existence. Sound familiar? This self-centeredness, absent the grace of God, blinds us to the truth and enfeebles our will and will cripple our institutions.

In the book, Augustine contrasts the City of God versus the City of Man. While the first, the City of God, understands its rebellious nature and therefore submits to God and His purposes, the second city — the secular one — is simply trying to “rival God.”

The City of God is “social” and “seeks the common welfare.” The City of Man is “selfish” and seeks “selfish control...for the sake of arrogant domination.” The City of God “desires for its neighbor what it wishes for itself,” while the City of Man “desires to subjugate its neighbor.”

Augustine makes a great apologetic defense of Christianity and its powerful influence in the welfare of the state. And he makes a powerful critique of the City of Man. Rebellion against the true God is what led to the fall of Rome and other earthly cities. The Romans worshipped false gods, and it was their pride and corruption, not Christianity, that brought catastrophe on Rome.

Contrary to what ancient and modern pagans believe, it is Christians who make the best citizens. We know that the various earthly cities are transitory. We do not see earthly governments as a means to power, wealth, or self-aggrandizement.

Christians fulfill the requirements of citizenship out of obedience to God and love for Him, and in the hope of creating the kind of society where we can live peaceable and godly lives. Of course, this kind of society is good for our non-Christian neighbors as well, which is exactly the point.

There is so much more about THE CITY OF GOD than I can cover here. For one thing, it influenced me to write a book of my own entitled KINGDOMS IN CONFLICT, now republished as GOD AND GOVERNMENT.

So THE CITY OF GOD is indispensable to an understanding of a proper Christian worldview.

________

Copyright (c) 2010 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #11348]

Dofleen, an explorer in tropical jungles of South America, noticed an unusual nest built in the jungle foliage above ground. The leaves were sewn together with tiny silken threads. Puzzled, he looked for spiders. There were none. Could this be the work of the ants that he saw scurrying about? Knowing that ants don't have the ability to spin silk as spiders do, he wondered what mysterious method they used to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat.

He carefully cut the silk threads that held the leaves in place, then settled down to watch. Immediately the ants set to work to repair the damage. First they removed the old strands of silk. When the cleanup job was finished, a long chain of ants, one hanging on to the other, formed a bridge from the edge of one leaf to the other. Carefully the first ant pulled the leaf to the next. He in turn handed it to the ant behind him until the edges of the leaves touched.

At that moment from the inner part of the nest came workers, each carrying a baby ant. These totally helpless ant larva spin cocoons about themselves as they change into adults. Holding the ant larva to the leaf edge, the adult ant banged on the hind end where the silk thread emerges. Expertly he moved it up and down, back and forth like a zigzag sewing machine. Each time he wanted to make a new stitch he hit the hind end again and continued.

________

Stop, Look and Listen by Eileen E. and Jay H. Lantry, Copyright(c)1976 by Review and Herald Publishing Association; submitted by Mary Thayne

Acts 4:32–5:11 — Things in Common (outline by F. F. Bruce, NICNT) « Leader information shown in this fashion »

{A.} The Birth of the Church (1:1–5:42)

{1.} The Forty Days and After (1:1–26)

{2.} The Day of Pentecost (2:1–47)

{3.} An Act of Healing and its Consequences (3:1–4:31)

{4.} All Things in Common (4:32–5:11)

A. Community of Goods 4:32–35 (NKJV)

1. 32 Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. 33 And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. 34 Nor was there anyone among them who lacked; for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, 35 and laid them at the apostles’ feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need.

2. What is fellowship? – « not having a pot-luck supper, or a social time together with other Christians (these may be elements) — literally it is ‘a commonality.’ — » Illustrate fellowship in general and in these verses. — « unity of participation and partnership in worship, service, joys, sorrows, needs, sufficiencies »

3. Some say that this passage (along with 2:44–45) teaches communism; discuss. « — communism imposes the sharing of goods; denies God and Christ; is a humanistic political system — Christianity is free-will generosity; empowered by Holy Spirit; based on changed nature; actually kept possession of things but they surrendered their use of these possessions »

4. What made a community of goods appropriate at that time? — « existence of significant need among the church; lingering of new converts to learn further of their new-found faith — » … in the middle ages? — « monasteries as enclaves of care and learning — » … today? « – 2 Cor 8:1–15, 9:1–15, 1 Tim 5:3–16, 2 Th 3:6–15 »

5. What specific results were there from this community of goods? « — great power (evangelism); great grace (Christian virtue of beauty reflecting the character of Jesus Christ); needs being met »

6. Is it really legitimate as Christians to say that we own something? « — well, if we cannot decide, let’s come back to this question. »

B. The Generosity of Barnabas 4:36–37 (NKJV)

1. 36 And Joses, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles (which is translated Son of Encouragement), a Levite of the country of Cyprus, 37 having land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

2. to be distinguished from Joseph Barsabbas Justus in Acts 1:23 (who had been part of company from beginning of ministry); this Barnabas was from Cyprus. The word “Encouragement” can be variously translated as “consolation” and “exhortation.” The Aramaic equivalent for Barnabas has been taken as Bar-newaha (son of soothing) or Bar-nebuah (son of prophet, with exhortation and consolation being roles of the New Testament prophet, 1 Corinthians 14:3; see Acts 13:1)

3. what is significant about where the money was put?

a. « it recognized the authority of the apostles »

b. « it deprecated the value of the gift itself »

c. « it (probably) left the handling of the funds to others »

4. Was Barnabas the first to do such a thing? « — probably not as the preceding verses indicate others doing so … but this may be further detail provided regarding a preceding overview »

5. why this special mention of this man? « — the first introduction of one found later in this book of Acts, a special associates of Paul »

6. some information about this man

a. Acts 9:27 « — one of first to stand by newly converted Saul »

b. Acts 12:25, 15:37–39 — « companion with Paul »

c. Colossians 4:10 — « John Mark’s cousin (KJV from Vulgate) »

d. Acts 12:12 — « Mary of Jerusalem’s relative; brother(in-law)? »

7. what about his owning and selling land?

a. Numbers 18:20, 24 (also Deuteronomy 10:9, 18:1–2) « — did not get an inheritance of land as did the other tribes »

b. Leviticus 25:32–34 (also Numbers 35, Joshua 21) « — land of the Levites about their cities could not be sold; houses could »

c. Jeremiah 1:1, 32:6–15 « — a priest, his is instructed to buy land »

d. could have been land in Cyprus or land he purchased

C. Deceit and Death of Ananias 5:1–6 (NKJV)

1. 1 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession. 2 And he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. 3 But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? 4 While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” 5 Then Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed his last. So great fear came upon all those who heard these things. 6 And the young men arose and wrapped him up, carried him out, and buried him.

2. What constituted the wickedness of Ananias? « — his lying to God in his deception respecting his giving »

3. many have tried to explain away Ananias’ (and Sapphira’s, later) death as a later embellishment to the history when they later did die; what in these verses discredits that theory?

a. Ananias’ death « — is recorded as right following Peter’s words »

b. only this accounts « — for the fear of those who heard of it »

c. his burial « — follows immediately before Sapphira enters »

d. looking ahead, Sapphira « — dies before the burial party has returns from their first duties, within about three hours »

4. About Peter:

a. what ability does Peter have here? … in whom has this been previously shown? … how do you explain this? « — he knew what was in Ananias’ heart; Jesus knew what was in men’s hearts; it was an apostolic endowment of the Holy Spirit »

b. Peter had shortly before been forgiven; should he not have shown more forgiveness? « — this was not within his purview; Ananias had not lied to men but to God »

5. Back to the question we asked at the first: is it really legitimate to say that we really own something? — check 1 Timothy 6:17–18 « — discuss »

D. Death of Sapphira 5:7–11 (N‘KJV)

1. 7 Now it was about three hours later when his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8 And Peter answered her, “Tell me whether you sold the land for so much?” She said, “Yes, for so much.” 9 Then Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” 10 Then immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. And the young men came in and found her dead, and carrying her out, buried her by her husband. 11 So great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard these things.

2. Verse 11 is the first occurrence of the word church (”ekklesia”) in the book of Acts; this word (along with “synagogue”) was used to translate the Old Testament word, “assembly,” particularly when it referred to all of Israel, “the great congregation”

3. Were Ananias and Sapphira the only liars in Jerusalem that day? … why this extreme treatment? « — like the extreme treatment of those who transgressed during the Exodus and law-giving, God was emphatically demonstrating what was to be the character of this new society the was being instituted. Why do we not see more of such direct judgment of God? … discuss »

4. To what temptation did they succumb (Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13)? « — trying to have the best of the world along with Christianity; seeking praise of men in the spiritual realm »

5. What did Jesus call this sin? … why is it particularly detrimental for this to exist in the church? (What is the problem at this time with the Canadian $10 bill? « — right now there is a prevalence of counterfeit $10 bills; hypocrisy; it reflects adversely on Jesus Christ Himself as the church seeks to evangelize; »

6. what was the double-barrelled result of God’s judgment? « — fear in the church, ie., understanding that the body of Christ is to be holy (repentance is not a once-for-all excuse for all of our future actions); fear outside the church: this is a people of a holy God where God works and is not to be entered lightly – more about this in a couple of Sundays in the next section of this book »

7. How does this history relate to 1 Corinthians 3:16–17, 5:5, 1 Peter 4:17? « — as the temple (dwelling-place) of the Holy Spirit holiness is compulsory; so God will deal with this as a priority »

In the 50 years since he was hanged by Hitler’s henchmen outside Flossenbürg prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer has achieved impressive crossover appeal among strikingly diverse Christian traditions and has drawn the attention and praise of ethicists -- both secular and religious. Bonhoeffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship” continues to sell at an amazing clip, finding readership on every continent.

But why? What accounts for such sustained and widespread appeal?

The clue may lie in perhaps the most widely know Bonhoeffer quote: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Penned almost three years before his fateful decision to abandon the safety of Manhattan and wade into the murderous vortex of Hitler’s Germany, Bonhoeffer seems to have taken Jesus’ call for self-denial to heart, and succeeding generations of believers continue to take notice.

I suspect that there is something deeply imbedded in the believing soul that must celebrate the offering of a kind of obedience to our Lord that perhaps we ourselves have withheld. We long to see our Savior receive the response His call deserves, even if offered by another. Bonhoeffer seems to meet the yearning in some way. And when we turn to his published writings, Bonhoeffer offers help for 21st century disciples on numerous fronts:

• Authentic discipleship.

First, Bonhoeffer not only lived boldly, but also wrote boldly -- calling for a rediscovery of costly grace, genuine Christian community, self-sacrificing service to the world, and death-defying witness to Jesus Christ. And since he made good on his audacious vision of discipleship by knowingly exposing himself to death and then actually suffering execution, discerning Christians should sit up and take notice. The secret of Bonhoeffer’s continuing appeal can be summarized in one word -- authenticity. He talked the talk and then when the fateful moment came, he walked the walk. Such things do not make a man right every time he writes or speaks on a subject -- but agonized exposure to martyrdom does demand a hearing, and Christians appropriately continue to give Bonhoeffer just that.

• Bible-driven discipleship.

His rediscovery of the Bible out of the fog of pretentious, unbelieving, and eventually abortive higher-critical abuse of the biblical text has borne impressive fruit. Against the hankering after daily divine guidance so prevalent among evangelicals, Bonhoeffer calls us back to the concrete divine instruction in the Bible itself and simple obedience to the clear will of God. Perhaps God is not playing hide-and-seek with His will for our lives after all.

• Discipleship in community.

In a culture increasingly hospitable to isolation and anonymity, Bonhoeffer reminds us that God’s purposes center not on the Christian alone but on the Christian within the church, the body of Christ. Whereas churches compete in a Christian-consumer, winner-take-all landscape that affirms and rewards the spiritual shopper for spiritual products, promising to make him holy, Bonhoeffer proclaims an intrinsically relational discipleship where mutual interdependency between covenant-bound brothers and sisters defines the path to holiness and indeed to Jesus Himself.

• Discipleship, truth and heaven

Finally, at a time when the achievement of felt-relevance stops the mouths of many who detect seeker-sensitive compromise of the Gospel message, Bonhoeffer insists that the issue is not how to make the Gospel relevant to the world but rather to expose how irrelevant we have all become in our rebellion against the living God. Although born to privilege and aristocratic escape hatches of safety and comfort, Bonhoeffer plunges himself into the trials of his people, taking seriously his own status as a pilgrim and stranger on the earth, longing for a city not made by human hands.

We cannot make Bonhoeffer walk and talk like an evangelical -- he was not one. But what Bonhoeffer got right belongs to the entire Church and, I suspect, has special application to evangelicals who point to Scripture as the sole authority for their faith and practice.

When a man risks and then sacrifices his life because of his commitment to Jesus Christ, it does not make him a saint or even right, but it does seize our attention and demand a fair hearing. Bonhoeffer does not disappoint. His life and work continue to stand as welcome challenges to obedient discipleship for us today.

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Mark DeVine is associate professor of Christian Theology at Midwestern Baptist Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri.

“You are the light of the world,” said Jesus. But what on earth did he mean?

There is a certain quality within the mission of Jesus that he seems to expect his followers to duplicate. In the approach of Christ to the world, the implications of the Trinity are always at play. Where he says of himself, “those who have seen me have seen the Father,” he says similarly of his disciples; we are to love one another “so that the world may believe” (John 14:9, 17:21). “As you sent me into the world,” Jesus tells the Father, “So I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18). Evidently, conceding to the truth of Christ’s identity is never a static decision, a confession that can be made only in private; it is one that immediately moves the conceder into new realms. “Do you love me?” Jesus asked of Peter. “Lord, you know that I love you.” “Then feed my lambs” came the reply (cf. John 21:15-18).

Wherever claims are made of Christ, a community inherently follows. We are ushered into a kingdom with a vastly different order, with a vastly new authority. The private confession “Jesus is Lord” is simultaneously made into the communal confession -- both in the sense that upon confessing we join in the proclamations of a great cloud of witnesses, but also in the sense that we are ushered into a missional community by design: “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify” (John 15:26). In other words, the universal invitation to believe the gospel is simultaneously an invitation to enter into the missional community and confession of the Trinity.

In this community, even what Christ calls us to claim about ourselves is far more than most feel comfortable claiming as true or real -- or even possible: You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. I am the vine and you are the branches. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. Yet it is specifically these claims that Christ makes on our very identities which compel us to become these people, to receive his words, and to make real the promises of the God we profess. Confessing Christ, we have entered a kingdom marked by nothing short of the reign of God among us. Confessing Christ, we continue to be moved further into this good news even as we become representations of the very kingdom we proclaim.

This identity, though it is Christ who clothes us, is not always an easy one to wear. As light that shines and branches that extend from the vine of Christ, we are ourselves to be the signs of God’s reign on earth, working for peace and justice here and now, showing the world that the God of peace and justice is near and also coming. We are those who confess the reign of God is at hand and then work hands-on as a means of that confession. As one author notes, “By its very existence, then, the church brings what is hidden into view as a sign and into experience as a foretaste.”(1) This is how we are able to be the light of the world; we are millions of mirrors reflecting the God of light.

Such reflection means there will be times when we ourselves are the light in the darkness, the hands that must deliver the cup of cold water or invite inside the one who has been deemed an outsider. There will also be times when our reflection of God’s reign calls for something more of us: light that refuses to be hidden though it would be easier, hands that work in opposition to injustice, confessions that fall in opposition to the world, lives that challenge the very systems that foster oppression and counter the hope of God. The identity Christ has given us, like the identity of the kingdom he came to announce, precludes us from living as lone confessors, independent and unaffected by the cries of the world around us. Our mission to the world is our hope in action.

In a lecture on the nature of the church, given just a few years before he would stand in formal opposition to the Nazi influence on the church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer proclaimed: “No one can pray for the kingdom...who thinks up a kingdom for himself...who lives for his own worldview and knows a thousand programs and prescriptions by which he would like to cure the world...”(2) On the contrary, the kingdom we foster and for which we pray is one we profess with the whole of our lives because it is God who reigns within it. We are able to reflect the God of light amidst the troubling darkness of the world because the reign of God is real, because we could no sooner have invented this kingdom then we could have invented God Himself, and because we know of no other kingdom that is worth confessing. We are the light of the world because of this hope we are sure: The kingdom of God is near!

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1. George Hunsberger, “Called and Sent to represent the Reign of God,” in Darrell Guder, ed., MISSIONAL CHURCH: A VISION FOR THE SENDING OF THE CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 102.

2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Thy Kingdom Come: The Prayer of the Church for the Kingdom of God on Earth,” in A TESTAMENT TO FREEDOM: THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS OF DIETRICH BONHOEFFER (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 34.

________

Copyright © 2008 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

The Amish are famous for shunning technology. But their secret love affair with the cell phone is causing an uproar.

________

Technology is my native tongue. I’m online six hours a day. I have a cell phone, voicemail, fax, laptop, and palmtop. I’m connected - and lately, I’ve been wondering where all this equipment is leading me. I’ve found myself asking a question that’s both disquieting and intriguing: What kind of person am I becoming as a result of all this stuff?

Of course, I’m not the only one asking. And a while ago it occurred to me that, in addition to measuring my reactions against those of others in comparable circumstances, I might learn something entirely new by looking at a civilization of which I am not a member. The Amish communities of Pennsylvania, despite the retro image of horse-drawn buggies and straw hats, have long been engaged in a productive debate about the consequences of technology. So I turned to them for a glimpse of the future.

Amish settlements have become a cliché for refusing technology. Tens of thousands of people wear identical, plain, homemade clothing, cultivate their rich fields with horse-drawn machinery, and live in houses lacking that basic modern spirit called electricity. But the Amish do use such 20th-century consumer technologies as disposable diapers, in-line skates, and gas barbecue grills. Some might call this combination paradoxical, even contradictory. But it could also be called sophisticated, because the Amish have an elaborate system by which they evaluate the tools they use; their tentative, at times reluctant use of technology is more complex than a simple rejection or a whole-hearted embrace. What if modern Americans could possibly agree upon criteria for acceptance, as the Amish have? Might we find better ways to wield technological power, other than simply unleashing it and seeing what happens? What can we learn from a culture that habitually negotiates the rules for new tools?

Last summer, armed with these questions and in the company of an acquaintance with Amish contacts, I traveled around the countryside of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Everywhere, there were freshly planted fields, farmhouses with handsome, immaculate barns and outbuildings. At one farm we passed, a woman was sitting a hundred yards from her house on the edge of a kitchen garden. She wore the traditional garb of the conservative Old Order - a long, unadorned dress sheathed by an apron, her hair covered by a prayer bonnet. She was sitting in the middle of the garden, alone, the very image of technology-free simplicity. But she was holding her hand up to her ear. She appeared to be intent on something, strangely engaged.

“Whenever you see an Amish woman sitting in the field like that,” my guide said, “she’s probably talking on a cell phone.”

“It’s a controversy in the making,” he continued. A rather large one, it turns out - yet part of the continuum of determining whether a particular technology belongs in Amish life. They’ve adopted horses, kerosene lamps, and propane refrigerators; should they add cell phones?

Collective negotiations over the use of telephones have ignited intense controversies in the Amish community since the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, a dispute over the role of the phone was the principal issue behind the 1920s division of the Amish church, wherein one-fifth of the membership broke away to form their own church.

Eventually, certain Amish communities accepted the telephone for its aid in summoning doctors and veterinarians, and in calling suppliers. But even these Amish did not allow the telephone into the home. Rather, they required that phones be used communally. Typically, a neighborhood of two or three extended families shares a telephone housed in a wooden shanty, located either at the intersection of several fields or at the end of a common lane. These structures look like small bus shelters or privies; indeed, some phones are in outhouses. Sometimes the telephone shanties have answering machines in them. (After all, who wants to wait in the privy on the off chance someone will call?)

The first Amish person I contacted, I reached by answering machine. He was a woodworker who, unlike some of his brethren, occasionally talked to outsiders. I left a message on his phone, which I later learned was located in a shanty in his neighbor’s pasture. The next day the man, whom I’ll call Amos, returned my call. We agreed to meet at his farmstead a few days later.

I couldn’t help thinking it was awfully complicated to have a phone you used only for calling back - from a booth in a meadow. Why not make life easier and just put one in the house?

“What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a telephone. It’s not just how you use the technology that concerns us. We’re also concerned about what kind of person you become when you use it.”

The Amish are famously shy. Their commitment to “plain” living is most obvious in their unadorned clothing - Old Order Amish even eschew buttons, requiring humble hooks instead. Any sign of individuality is cause for concern. Until fairly recently, Amish teachers would reprimand the student who raised his or her hand as being too individualistic. Calling attention to oneself, or being “prideful,” is one of the cardinal Amish worries. Having your name or photo in the papers, even talking to the press, is almost a sin.

Like most modern Americans, I assume individuality is not only a fundamental value, but a goal in life, an art form. The garish technicolor shirts and hand-painted shoes I usually wear sometimes startle business audiences who show up for my speaking engagements. My reasoning: If I think for myself, why not dress for myself? Dye technology has given us all these colors, so let’s use ‘em! Still, I didn’t want to make my idiosyncrasies the focus of my visit to Amish country. So I bought a plain blue work shirt, dark blue gabardine pants, and brown shoes. I hadn’t traveled so drably in many years.

Amos runs a factory of sorts in the vicinity of three memorably named Pennsylvania towns: Bird-in-Hand, Paradise, and Intercourse. The sun was setting as I drove slowly down his unpaved driveway. I found myself inside a tableau that must have looked almost exactly the same 200 years ago. Several men and young boys in identical black trousers, suspenders, and straw hats were operating horse-drawn equipment in the fields beyond. One of Amos’s grandsons pointed me to a plain wooden building beside the barn.

The aroma of cows gave way to the pungent smell of diesel fuel and wood chips as I entered the workshop. The whine of a wood-milling machine made it futile to talk. This was not the serene place the words “Amish woodshop” conjure up. My host finished cutting a 12-foot-long plank before we greeted each other. He then lit a kerosene lamp in the small office next to his workshop and invited me in. The office had no modern technology in it, but railroad posters were tacked on the walls, and wooden locomotive models sat on the shelves.

Amos had sawdust and hydraulic fluid in his beard. His blue-gray eyes fastened on me as he bounced back his own questions in reply to my queries. He had received the same eighth-grade education that all Amish youth are given, but it was obvious that Amos did some outside reading. When I asked him to describe his sense of community, he started out, “Hmm, how do you pronounce s-c-e-n-a-r-i-o?”

Amos runs a successful business crafting wooden furniture, which he sells throughout Pennsylvania and beyond - primarily to the “English” (the Amish term for non-Amish). It’s a trade more and more Amish are getting into. Inside Amos’s home there are no telephones, radios, televisions, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, or other electrical appliances. In his shop, routers, mills, and sanders are powered by specially adapted hydraulic mechanisms connected to a diesel engine located near a large open door, exhausting outside the building.

This was a good case study in Amish reasoning: Far from knee-jerk technophobes, these are very adaptive techno-selectives who devise remarkable technologies that fit within their self-imposed limits. The price of good farmland and the number of Amish families are both increasing so rapidly that in recent decades they have adopted nonagricultural enterprises for livelihood - woodworking, construction, light factory work. This, in turn, has forced the Amish to adopt technologies that can enhance their productivity. And the interface with the English brings its own set of demands: When the State of Pennsylvania refused to certify Amish-produced milk unless it was stirred mechanically and refrigerated according to state health codes, the Amish installed stirring machines and refrigeration - operated by batteries or propane gas.

Amos, like many other Amish craftsmen, uses electricity in his workshop for certain tools. But the electricity does not come from public utility lines. Amos runs a diesel generator to charge a bank of 12-volt batteries. The batteries’ DC charge is then sent through a converter to create homegrown 110-volt “Amish electricity.” To generate more, he has to haul the diesel fuel in from town on his horse-drawn buggy.

To the obvious question why allow Amish electricity but not public electricity, Amos answered slowly and deliberately, “The Bible teaches us not to conform to the world, to keep a separation. Connecting to the electric lines would make too many things too easy. Pretty soon, people would start plugging in radios and televisions, and that’s like a hot line to the modern world. We use batteries and generators because you can use the batteries for only a short time and because you have to fuel and maintain the generator yourself. It’s a way of controlling our use of electricity. We try to restrict things that would lead to us losing that sense of being separate, to put the brakes on how fast we change.”

Despite the reputation today’s Amish have as old-fashioned diehards, their departure from Europe several centuries ago was driven by their success as innovators. They started out as radical religious libertarians - at a time when the price of religious radicalism was martyrdom. Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in a major religious war, but both sides took a serious dislike to these defiant theological purists, known at the time as Anabaptists, for their emphasis on adult baptism. (Today, every Amish household has a copy of MARTYRS’ MIRROR, a text of more than 1,000 pages that details the excruciating and humiliating public executions suffered by Anabaptist martyrs in Switzerland, Germany, and Holland.) The Anabaptists developed a soil technology based on crop rotation, planting clover in their pastures, and sweetening their earth with lime and gypsum; they dramatically increased the yield of their land, and some of them became wealthy.

Ironically, those same Anabaptists helped set the stage for the fast-paced changes of modern life that today’s Amish reject. It was the widespread adoption of Anabaptist practices that eventually produced enough food to free other agricultural laborers, creating the workforce that would be needed for the industrial revolution.

Toward the end of the 17th century, one of the Anabaptist leaders, Jakob Ammann, decided that his Swiss brethren had not been radical enough. Ammann and his followers, who came to be known as “Amish,” broke with traditional Anabaptists, moved to the New World, and started farming in Lancaster County in 1710.

In today’s Pennsylvania Amish country, a group of 20 to 30 families who live near one another constitute a “district.” Each district has a bishop, and the bishops get together twice a year to discuss church matters. This includes raising the recurring questions about which technologies should be permitted in the community, and which banned or regulated.

While the say of the bishops is binding, the Amish come to their decisions quite consensually. New things are not outright forbidden, nor is there a rush to judgment. Rather, technologies filter in when one of the more daring members of the community starts to use, or even purchases, something new. Then others try it. Then reports circulate about the results. What happens with daily use? Does it bring people together? Or have the opposite effect?

Despite the almost organic ebb and flow of this evaluation process, the common goal is constant submission to the judgment of one’s peers. On my visit, I was constantly struck by what seemed an alien conception of community. As a kid I was encouraged to “do my thing” while being nice to others; I’ve lived in five states and dozens of neighborhoods. Amish communities are not just tightly knit and immobile, they’re authoritarian.

Yet there is some room for disagreement; consider how the bishops judged the automobile in the 1960s. Typically, the Amish have large extended families; most have dozens of cousins within walking or buggy distance. Every other Sunday, instead of attending church, the Amish are encouraged to visit relatives and the sick. Over time, it was felt that the automobile was enlarging people’s traveling radius too far beyond their extended family, to diversions and recreations not related to the community, decreasing the social cohesion and personal connection the Amish so cherish. Some bishops accepted the use of the automobile under certain conditions, while others rejected it outright. The Amish are now split into traditional “Old Order” Amish who still stick to horse and buggy, “New Order” Amish who approve use of telephones and powered farm equipment but shun public electricity, and “Beachy Amish,” named for the ‘20s liberal leader Moses Beachy, who permit both public electricity and automobiles.

While all orders now allow diesel engines in the barn to blow silage, their use is still resisted in the fields - the bishops don’t want increased efficiency to interfere with the practice of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, working together with horse-drawn machinery and handheld implements. Notably, some Old Order Amish allow some diesel-powered equipment in the fields - if it’s hauled by animals. “Does it bring us together, or draw us apart?” is the primary question the bishops ask in considering whether to permit or put away a technology.

The bishops’ rulings can take decades. In daily life, the Amish take their directions in dress, thought, behavior, and custom from a body of unwritten but detailed rules known as the “Ordnung.” Individuals and communities maintain a separation from the world (by not connecting their houses to telephones or electricity), a closeness to one another (through regular meetings), and an attitude of humility so specific they have a name for it (“Gelassenheit”). Decisions about technology hinge on these collective criteria. If a telephone in the home interferes with face-to-face visiting, or an electrical hookup fosters unthinking dependence on the outside world, or a new pickup truck in the driveway elevates one person above his neighbors, then people start to talk about it. The talk reaches the bishops’ ears.

“The Amish employ an intuitive sense about what will build solidarity and what will pull them apart,” says Donald Kraybill, author of THE RIDDLE OF AMISH CULTURE. “You find state-of-the-art barbecues on some Amish porches. Here is a tool they see as increasing family coherence: Barbecues bring people together.” Asked what kinds of questions the bishops will likely raise about cell phones, Kraybill replies, “Are cell phones being used ‘to make a living’ or just for gossip and frivolous chatter? Will permitting cell phones lead to having phones in homes, and where will that lead ... to fax machines and the Internet?”

“We don’t want to stop progress, we just want to slow it down,” several Amish told me. Conversations about technology often turn on where to “hold the line” against the too-rapid advance of innovation. Riding in automobiles to work, but not owning them, putting telephone shanties in fields, requiring battery power instead of electrical lines are all ways of holding the line.

And clearly a lot could be learned about the Amish hold-the-line philosophy by looking at those who either crossed the line or pushed it further out. So I sought out several of the more boldly experimental members of the greater Plain community (Amish and Mennonites and other religious groups sharing a kindred commitment to plain living). In ranging from farmers who ran small enterprises in barnside sheds to well-equipped machine workshops and multimillion-dollar crafts factories, I soon was directed to Moses Smucker, who runs a harness shop in Churchtown, Pennsylvania.

Moses is an early adopter. He didn’t mind if I used his real name, a liberty that has made him the subject of a few other journalists’ stories. When I arrived at his manufacturing headquarters, I took a look at some of the harnesses on display - one of them had a price tag of $12,000. If you’ve ever seen the Budweiser Clydesdales Christmas commercials, you’ve seen harness bells from Moses Smucker’s Churchtown workshop.

In the back of the store, more than a dozen young Amish men were working at modern machinery powered by hydraulics and diesel-generated electricity. Upstairs, I saw a woman in traditional plain clothing seated in front of a personal computer.

Moses Smucker might look like Abe Lincoln, in his black suit and mustache-free beard, but he bore the same time-is-money air of any factory manager taking a few minutes out of a busy day to talk to the press. Where Amos was rough-hewn and wry, Moses seemed shrewd and slick. His office was certainly in a different century from Amos’s. An electronic rolodex and an electric calculator sat atop an old roll-top desk. I noticed a clock in the shape of a horse and buggy. The whip ticked back and forth.

“When I started this business in 1970,” Moses said, “it wasn’t accepted to have a telephone in the building, even in a business. But the telephone began to be accepted through popular disobedience. More businesses put them in and the bishops didn’t stop them.”

Will the bishops also eventually allow phones in the home? I asked.

“When the telephone first came out here, people put them in their homes,” explained Moses. “But they were party lines. One time a woman overheard two other women gossiping about her. She objected. That wasn’t what we wanted for our families or our community, so the bishops met and home telephones were banned.”

I had heard the same story from several other Amish - in fact, this story seemed to be a key part of community mythology. A writer named Diane Zimmerman Umble, who grew up in Lancaster County and had family roots in the Plain orders, traced the story to its origin, a 1986 memoir written by an Old Order Amishman born in 1897. As a graduate student, Zimmerman Umble started investigating Amish community telephones for a course on contemporary social theory, and ended up writing a book on the subject, HOLDING THE LINE: THE TELEPHONE IN OLD ORDER MENNONITE AND AMISH LIFE. Among her findings was the power of anecdote in the Amish decisionmaking process.

Anecdote, of course, is a key currency on the Internet, so I asked Moses if he’d heard stories about it. Although he used a computer in his business, he didn’t believe the Internet as currently constituted would ever be permitted. Based on anecdotal evidence, he said, “It’s too unregulated, there’s too much trash, and there’s a worry people will use it for purposes unrelated to work.”

I asked another Amish workshop owner whom I’ll call Caleb what he thought about technology. He pulled some papers out of a file cabinet, handed them to me, and said, “I share some of this fellow’s opinions,” pointing to a magazine interview with virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier. Asked for an opinion he shared with the dreadlocked-and-dashikied Jaron, he replied, “I agree with his statement that you can’t design foolproof machines, because fools are so clever.”

Caleb also discussed the Amish resistance to becoming “modern.” They’re not worried about becoming people without religion or people who use lots of technology, he explained; rather, the Amish fear assimilating the far more dangerous ideas that “progress” and new technologies are usually beneficial, that individuality is a precious value, that the goal of life is to “get ahead.” This mind-set, not specific technologies, is what the Amish most object to.

“The thing I noticed about the telephone is the way it invades who you are,” Caleb said. “We’re all losing who we are because of the telephone and other machines - not just the Amish.”

In HOLDING THE LINE, Zimmerman Umble writes: “Some Old Order people feel that relaxation of telephone rules reflects a movement toward an ‘uncontrollable drift’ which must be halted. Others see these steps as pragmatic choices necessary to hold the community together economically. The paradox in the Old Order story is that the telephone does both: It holds people together by making communication among community members possible, and it separates them from the world and from each other. The telephone is both evil and good.”

Donald Kraybill, who is also provost of Messiah College, on the outskirts of Amish country, believes taboos about telephones are “a symbolic way of keeping the technology at a distance and making it your servant, rather than the other way around.”

Can they make the cell phone a servant? My questions on this score were answered mostly with anecdote. I heard of one Amish man who was going to be late to a chiropractor appointment, so he pulled out his cell phone and called the receptionist from the bus he was on. Zimmerman Umble heard of a Plain order businessman who called his stockbroker from his company car phone, pushing three taboos at once past their boundaries.

Zimmerman Umble pointed out that part of what makes cell phones so handy - the lack of a wire - also poses a special challenge for the Amish. “In the early part of the community discussion, electrical and telephone lines carried substantial symbolic freight,” she said. The wires meant that anyone in the community could easily see who was using electricity and phones. “But now, in the absence of the line, behavior can’t be monitored in the same way. It is harder to maintain separation between home and business when you have a cell phone in your pocket. In that sense it tests the community consensus about what is allowable.”

Calling around cell phone outlets in the Lancaster area, I found a merchant who has been selling cell phones to Plain folk for years. “A great percentage of my customer base is Amish and Mennonite,” the merchant told me. “More Amish than Mennonite. We opened our cellular system 12 years ago. Within the first year, I had an Amish customer. He first called from his neighbor’s house. He owned a painting business and told me he wasn’t allowed to have a cell phone personally, but his bishop said he could buy one for his foreman to use in the company truck. It didn’t take too long before I started getting quite a lot of telephone calls from the Amish.”

This raised quite a few interesting consumer technology questions. Ordinarily, for example, one needs a credit card (and good credit) to secure a cell phone. “The Amish pay in cash,” explained the merchant, who, along with most Amish-friendly shopkeepers, didn’t want his name used. “We normally ask for a driver’s license for the purpose of identification when we activate cellular service - of course, the Amish don’t have driver’s licenses. They weren’t able to get phones for several months, since we weren’t allowed to open accounts without driver’s licenses. So we had to make a policy change to accommodate them. We ended up asking for another form of identification. But the Amish don’t believe in photography, so we couldn’t get a photo ID. Eventually we told them to get Pennsylvania state IDs without photographs.

“I’ve sold hundreds of cell phones to them, primarily business phones,” the merchant continued, adding a few details about how the phones were used. “Some Old Order Amish leave their cell phones in their shanty. Some leave the phone overnight with an English neighbor, who recharges it for them; then the Amish pick up the phone in the morning.”

It’s a pretty safe prediction that when the bishops get around to their formal ruling, cell phones will not be deemed appropriate for personal use. In the 1910s, when the telephone was only beginning to change the world at large, the Old Order Amish recognized that the caller at the other end of the line was an interloper, someone who presumed to take precedence over the family’s normal, sacred, communications. Keeping the telephone in an unheated shanty in a field, or even an outhouse, was keeping the phone in its proper place.

Though the Amish determination to allow phones at work but ban them at home might seem hard to accept, I appreciate the deliberation put into their decision. In fact, similar reflection might highlight conflicts between our own practices and values. How often do we interrupt a conversation with someone who is physically present in order to answer the telephone? Is the family meal enhanced by a beeper? Who exactly is benefiting from call waiting? Is automated voicemail a dark hint about the way our institutions value human time and life? Can pagers and cell phones that vibrate instead of ring solve the problem? Does the enjoyment of virtual communities by growing numbers of people enhance or erode citizen participation in the civic life of geographic communities?

“What does the Old Order story have to say to members of postmodern society?” asks Diane Zimmerman Umble. “The struggle of Old Order groups to mold technology in the service of community provides a provocative model of resistance for those who have come to recognize that technology brings both benefits and costs.... Their example invites reflection on a modern dilemma: how to balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the community. For them, community comes first.”

Indeed, what does one’s use of a tool say to other people, particularly loved ones, about where they stand in our priorities? In my own house, we decided to get a rollover to voicemail instead of call waiting - experiences on the receiving end of call waiting convinced us that both parties on the other end of the line get irritated when you interrupt the conversation. And I’ve come to believe that face-to-face conversation should outrank disembodied conversation via cell phone or email.

I never expected the Amish to provide precise philosophical yardsticks that could guide the use of technological power. What drew me in was their long conversation with their tools. We technology-enmeshed “English” don’t have much of this sort of discussion. And yet we’ll need many such conversations, because a modern heterogeneous society is going to have different values, different trade-offs, and different discourses. It’s time we start talking about the most important influence on our lives today.

I came away from my journey with a question to contribute to these conversations: If we decided that community came first, how would we use our tools differently?

________

Howard Rheingold (hlr@well.com) is the author of VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE VIRTUAL COMMUNITY and editor of the MILLENNIUM WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.

The irony could not possibly be crueler. A South Korean couple let their 3-month-old baby starve to death at home while they spent all their time at Internet cafes — raising a virtual child.

The British Telegraph reports, “Leaving their real daughter at their home in a suburb of Seoul to fend for herself, the pair, who were unemployed, spent hours role-playing in [a] virtual reality game, which allows users to choose a career and friends, granting them offspring as a reward for passing a certain level.”

Kim Yoo-chul and Choi Mi-Sun would go home once a day to give their real baby powdered milk, and then go back to lavish care and attention on their online child. The virtual daughter was named Anima; the real daughter was never given a name.

Finally, they came home one day after a 12-hour session to find their baby dead. They were arrested after an autopsy showed that the unnamed little girl had died of prolonged malnutrition.

Tragically, on the other hand, the virtual girl is probably doing just fine.

Like me, you’re probably feeling a little sick to your stomach and outraged, and wondering what on earth could possess parents to do such a crazy thing. It’s tempting to write them off as just plain crazy, or some kind of extreme example of Internet addiction or other mental illness. But the disturbing fact is that every one of us who has ever indulged in any kind of prolonged escape from reality carries the seeds of this kind of addiction inside us.

William Saletan puts it this way in the online magazine, Slate: “Look in the mirror. Every time you answer your cell phone in traffic, squander your work day on YouTube, text a colleague during dinner, or turn on the TV to escape your kids, you’re leaving this world. You’re neglecting the people around you, sometimes at the risk of killing them.”

Saletan explains that gaming websites aren’t just games, they’re worlds — and those worlds “are becoming ever more compelling.” When real life gets to be too much to take, we can now log on to a world where everything goes smoothly and circumstances are easy to control. So we become more and more susceptible to being lured out of the real world into the artificial ones.

And this latest story isn’t the only example of the tragic results of that kind of escapism. Saletan notes, “At least two Korean men have died of exhaustion after round-the-clock video-game marathons. Another man, nagged by his real-world mother, allegedly resolved the dilemma by killing her. The dead baby is just another casualty of this war between the worlds.”

Virtual community is no substitute for real community — the kind of community we’re called on to help create in our families, churches, and neighborhoods.

These examples just show how dangerous it can be when we forget that responsibility. If it’s true that we’re facing a war of the worlds, Christians must take a stand for real life and real community. Reality may be messy and uncontrollable, but it’s a priceless gift given to us by our Creator — and so much more fulfilling than any fake world, or fake family, ever could be.

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Copyright (c) 2010 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Man was made to live in community. In Genesis 2, we’re told it’s not good for man to be alone. And in a classical world the worst punishment was to be banished from society, because you had no meaning once you were.

Our founders in America created a country that respected individual rights and liberties, but always in the context of the people. And the people united in communities and associations, which secured individual rights from an otherwise all-powerful government.

So you had a balance. And in the context of those communities, we prospered like no other nation on earth. Tocqeuville when he came to America praised the civic virtue of Americans -- their collective self-reliance in building hospitals, schools, churches, etc. But in recent times, not only in America but throughout the Western World, “individual autonomy,” the code word of modern liberalism, has become ascendant outside the context of community. And not surprisingly, as radical individualism grew, the power of government grew as well, especially in the 20th Century.

Here’s why.

Robert Nisbet argued in his 1953 book, The Quest for Community, that radical individualism caused communities to break down. Family, church, clubs, groups, associations, that came between the individual and the state, all weakened in the face of this desire for individual autonomy. So it’s no wonder we’ve witnessed an explosive growth in government over the last fifty years. But as face-to-face communities decline, people are flocking to virtual, online communities. Many see these as “communities for a new generation.”

A recent conference revisited Nisbet’s ideas in light of online communities. The results were not encouraging.

Christine Rosen, senior editor of The New Atlantis, noted that in a face-to-face community, I come as I am. In virtual communities I come as the image I want to project. The resulting interaction is too tame to be called community. Instead, as Wheaton College professor Read Schuchardt added, we end up with narcissistic groups of false selves.

Rosen acknowledged that in the online world we may have more friends than we could have in face-to-face community. But the quality of those friendships is so poor that sociologists have coined the phrase “migratory friendships” to describe digital friends who have lots of information about each other, but don’t actually know each other.

The hard work of genuine community has been outsourced, she said, to technology -- so we become the product of our technology, shaping our image to meet the demands of the market.

Well, what are we to make of this? Virtual communities cannot replace real, face-to-face communities. They can’t perform the function of providing meaning and fellowship in the same way. And they certainly can’t serve as intermediate structures between the individual and an all-powerful government. Virtual community is really no substitute for the real thing.

For the sake of our well being and freedom as men and women created not to be alone, it is so vital now that the church be a catalyst for rebuilding real communities in a very real way.

________

Copyright (c) 2011 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

If you think “civility” means behaving nicely in the public square, well, you’re only half-right.

Chuck Colson knew how to throw sharp elbows at his opponents back when he worked for the Nixon White House. But after his conversion to Christ, he quickly grasped the imperative to reach across the aisle to people of good will in order to get things done for the kingdom.

That’s how Nixon’s one-time “hatchet man” became known as a champion of civility, of speaking gently and leaving the big stick at home. As he said, “One condition necessary for living together as a people is to treat one another with a certain level of respect ... To attack people verbally or to threaten them with violence for their reasoned opinions runs counter to maintaining a healthy society. It makes rational discourse impossible. It’s knocking at the door of barbarism.”

But Chuck also knew that barbarism overtakes a society not just because of the bad things that are done, but because of good things left undone. Civility means the building up of a civil culture, and it can’t become a reality without intentionally doing the many small, positive acts too. Edmund Burke famously said “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle ... of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind.”

Unfortunately, that sense of attachment is withering among many young people today, who are largely connected to rectangles instead, or more specifically, the small virtual communities of friends and family members. As a result, more than eight in ten don’t trust other people or social institutions.

Andrew Reiner, who teaches at Towson University, wants to help his students break out of these “hyperconnected cocoons.” So he gave them two unusual class assignments: (1) Consciously commit civil acts over five days. (2) Have dinner with a stranger. Reiner said that these requirements downright scared and offended some of his young scholars.

As he wrote in the Washington Post, “This is a generation terrified of looking up from the cellphone for fear of appearing out of the loop or having a real conversation where the muck of real emotions can’t be sterilized. If they continue to hide in fiber-optic fortresses, how will they ever build real community with strangers?”

How high are the walls of these fiber-optic fortresses? Reiner notes that 30 percent of millennials are on the Web up to 18 hours a day. And he quotes a 2009 Pew study which reports that “users of social networking services are 30 percent less likely to know at least some of their neighbors.”

So how did Reiner’s students do? Well, it’s complicated! One encouraged a complete stranger who was having a roommate problem. Another gave out “free hugs” but was surprised at how few people actually wanted them. Many students just simply resented the assignments. Some even said Reiner was crazy. One verbalized what so many were unwilling to say about why they were holding back: “Honestly? We’re just terrified of being rejected and looking uncool,” he said.

Reiner offers an example of what building community and civility should look like: the late Fred Rogers, of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Rogers said that a commitment to building community is an act of heroism. “We live in a world in which it’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem’ “ he said. But “then there are those who see the need and respond. Those people are my heroes.”

What would you do if you were sitting in Professor Reiner’s class? What “random acts of civility” would you commit? Are we stuck in our own fiber-optic fortresses?

We know now, thanks to research from Byron Johnson and others, that prison inmates who are engaged in Bible studies and religious services are less likely to get in trouble when they get out. These activities take volunteers — like you and me.

Or how about looking after the elderly neighbor across the street? Maybe the stay-at-home mom next door could use a babysitter every now and again. The possibilities to practice well-rounded civility are nearly endless.

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Copyright (c) 2014 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.