Ordinary Church: A Long and Loving Look by Joseph Beach

Author:Joseph Beach [Beach, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spirituality
Amazon: B07SGYX1W9
Goodreads: 46164185
Publisher: Spello Press
Published: 2019-06-05T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN First Church of the Individual

“The tune of radical individualism has been playing in our ears at full volume for decades. We are dancing to the music with gusto. And it is costing us dearly.”

– Joseph Hellerman

“Do you despise the church?” This is the angry question asked by the Apostle Paul to his former congregation at First Church Corinth (I Cor. 11:22). Another translation: “Do you show contempt for the church?” Paul may very well want to address this question to many American Christians in our day. This contempt for the community has been around for thousands of years and is alive and well today. From the beginning of time, it seems that anti-communal individualism has always been a major temptation for the people of God, and for human beings in general. We may, however, be living in the most communitydespising, hyper-individualistic time in human history (so far, at least). There are many major studies that discuss the current state of western civilization. The works of Charles Taylor (A Secular Age), Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue), and Christian Smith and Melinda Denton (Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers) are examples of some of the significant works of our generation. These types of books and several others are discussed and summarized in Rod Dreher’s recent book, The Benedict Option. One of the many things he draws from these various studies on our current cultural condition, is that we are suffering from a serious form of hyper-individualism.

For many centuries, the individual seemed to get pushed aside in favor of the community. In the last few centuries, the pendulum has swung in the other direction. Individual rights and individualism have come to dominate the thinking of most people and the needs of the community have been pushed aside. In the broader scope of world history, there are many good and noble consequences of this enlightened pendulum swing towards individualism. Human beings have experienced great advances in the area of individual rights, dignity, and freedom. In the church world within modern American society, however, we seem to now suffer from the opposite problem: hyper-individualism. The pendulum seems to have swung too far. Individualism, taken to its logical extreme can also be ugly.

FIRST CHURCH OF ELEUSIS REVISITED There was a famous religious shrine in the ancient world at a place called Eleusis. For a thousand years, from around 600 B.C.E until 395 C.E., countless people visited this shrine hoping to obtain salvation, inner transformation, renewed strength, increased happiness, and even the promise of a happy afterlife. These benefits were promised to each individual who visited the shrine - that is, the blessings were offered and received entirely individually. There were no social elements or social consequences attached to these spiritual gifts. According to New Testament scholar Gerhard Lohfink, men and women from all over the Roman Empire - even Roman emperors - came to Eleusis in search of these benefits. They came for over a thousand years until the shrine was destroyed by Christianized Goths under King Alaric in the year 395 C.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.