[After Alex Henderson gave a thoughtful introduction to the importance of resilient Christian communities at a “Second Breakfast,” I invited him to share his thoughts as a blog post for those who weren’t there. WT].
In my view, Christian resilience is not a heavy, enduring, self-sacrificial stance, but a patient and purposeful stance. It involves the audacity to hope for good things in the face of hardships. In scripture, we are promised times when we will have to endure unjust suffering, loss, pain, and hardship – this stuff cannot be explained nor said to be a result of any kind of a deserved consequence. Pain and hardship are inherent in the natural world, which can sometimes be utterly awful/cruel or amazingly good/beautiful. Like the rest of nature, the humans around us can be fickle. But resilience is possible despite that fact, and I think a Jesus-centered community’s resilience is built on an especially powerful 2-sided kind of hope: 1) a hope that if we humans treat each other and nature rightly (which can happen if Jesus changes people’s perceptions of everything), then we will be better positioned to weather the random crap that this world will throw at us, and we will later experience more of the goodness inherent within God’s green world; and 2) a hope that if plan #1 does not pan out due to fickle reasons, we can hope for goodness from God during our suffering, even up to and beyond the point of death.
In Psalm 85:10,12-13 the Psalmist says that God’s righteousness and our faithfulness are intimately intertwined, and this results in us having an experience of peace and goodness in the world: “…righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps.”
In Proverbs 9:1-6, 12 the writer of Proverbs says that secure well-being is built upon wisdom and insight: “Wisdom has built her house; she has set up its seven pillars. She has prepared her meat and mixed her wine; she has also set her table. She has sent out her servants, and she calls from the highest point of the city, ‘Let all who are simple come to my house!” To those who have no sense she says, ‘Come, eat my food and drink the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways and you will live; walk in the way of insight.’…If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you; if you are a mocker, you alone will suffer…”
In James 5:10-11, James says that goodness is realized through patience and perseverance through suffering: “Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”
A big reason for being a ‘church-going’ Christian in the 21st century, in my opinion, includes the idea that the world is losing resilient communities.
Resilient Communities in the 21st Century.
A big reason for being a ‘church-going’ Christian in the 21st century, in my opinion, includes the idea that the world is losing resilient communities. Resilience in communities is possible with collective, sturdy, God-imbued values, like insight, wisdom and compassion and treating each other and the world with care. Communities that are full of fighting and selfish ambition maintain a kind of strength through domineering others and exploiting weaknesses around them. But these kinds of communities are not resilient when real trouble strikes – the people in these communities scatter to the wind. Many people lack a community entirely.
The world can be a scary place at times. The ‘humanity + technology’ power we see right now is revealing to many people that we can’t just modernize our way towards a bright future of collective resilience on earth. Maybe if we try Mars…? Technology without wisdom just amplifies human folly – example: the Manhattan Project. We see how with technology we have sowed unsustainable carbon emissions, and we are all reaping climate change. We have tech billionaire overlords with devoted consumeristic cults made up of sad, isolated humans worshipping their symbols and images in flickering blue screens in the dark.
Communities that value selfish ambition, exploitation, hatred of outsiders, vanity, or pride are not resilient to deal with human suffering, they amplify our suffering. Awful communities can obscure the goodness inherent within God’s green world. But since churches have been culpable of being some of the worst kinds of communities in this regard, so why should we continue to invest in them? Because “on paper” (by that I don’t just mean the scriptures) churches should be able to do this.
In history, Christian communities have had an uncanny knack for surviving in the face of persecution, wars, and pestilence. In the past and today, resilient Christian communities served like lifeboats to needy people around them, especially in cases or times when society fails. How were these Christian communities sustained under such intense pressure without being rooted in a deep, powerful and mystical resiliency that comes from ‘going all-in’ on Jesus Christ? It’s possible, and so I think we should strive to build a community built upon Rock and not on sand as the storm surges really begin to kick up.
– by Alex Henderson