Left to ourselves, we are failures at building true community. We prove this over and over again. We divide ourselves off from others in a great multiplicity of ways: by race, ethnicity, nationality, class, gender, sexual orientation, politics, ideology, religion, values, personal morality, self-interest, and so on. We form into groups, camps, and parties that go to war with each other. Both political conservatives and progressives can be quite smug about their own positions and demean each other. They can essentially write each other out of the realm of compassion. Our divisions cut us off from the humanity of others (and from our own humanity).
Eberhard Arnold, founder of a community deeply oriented to social justice in the early part of the last century, a community patterned after the church of Acts which shared all things in common, says this about their community: “What we are seeking together is not any dogma, any stringing together of religious words, but a power. The essence of this elementary power is love and unity, a love and unity that extends into the outermost aspects of life and action and work.” He was very clear about this power: “Only through the Holy Spirit, which comes upon us, are we enabled to achieve a unity of consciousness, which brings about a complete unanimity of thought, willpower, and emotional experience.”
There is no other source of true, abiding unity than the Spirit. Our divisions are the outcome of our alienation from God who is the source of our ability to be and remain in relationship. The unconditional love of God “poured into our hearts by the Spirit” makes true community a reality.
The fact that we see so little unity in the world, including in and among churches and religions, points to the deeply spiritual roots of our problem. In our alienation from God, we try every kind of foundation for our unity other than the foundation of the Spirit. Churches have attempted doctrinal unity and moral unity. They have attempted unity on the basis of a way of thinking, a way of interpreting sacred texts, and a way of acting. And then they have fought over these things and often tried to impose them on others.
Right now the Taliban, with their particular interpretation of the Koran, are prepared to impose their beliefs on an entire nation. There are forms of Christianity that attempt something similar, that promote the idea that Christians are to have dominion and therefore must move into positions of power in order to impose their theological and political constructs on others. Clearly, Jesus’ words about being servants and not lording it over others are ignored.
In our alienation from God, we run from the Spirit. We prefer churches founded on elements of our own making. What if the Spirit were poured out on us like the Spirit was poured out on the disciples on the Day of Pentecost in Acts or on those gathered at the Azusa Street Mission in 1906? Outpourings of the Spirit give us the impression that, by the Spirit, we are taken up and empowered for God’s purposes and, at the same time, released from control over our own self-proposed and constructed purposes. We fear surrendering control, even when it is to God’s purposes of love—especially when it is God’s cross-bearing love. The truth, however, is that, in the Spirit, we receive true control and our true selves. As one theologian has put it, “Our independence is found in direct proportion to our dependence on God.” We receive the “freedom of the children of God,” the freedom of love. Ultimate dependence on anything else is tyranny.
Where there are communities formed in the unity of the Spirit, there is outwardly directed love, compassion for others, mercy, inclusion, liberating action, and works of healing. These communities do not pour condemnation upon others but offer grace and healing. They often operate out of the limelight but are themselves light. When we encounter them, we know them by their fruit: they do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God.