In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of ‘we,’ of ‘you’
we found ourselves
reduced to ‘I’
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to
But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I
(Source: In Those Years from Inward/Outward)
Miroslav Volf challenges the idea of modern independence by redefining the Descartian view of "I" to "we." Renaming our primary human identity in terms of a "social self," Volf creates for us a symbolic picture of something beyond the modern description of independent human identity. Modeling after a deeply Trinitarian understanding of what it means to be created in the "imago dei," the idea of "social self" ripples the fabric of how we think about our lives and ultimately how we choose to live.
A quote from Rich Vincent at Theocentric illuminates this concept further.
"Volf rejects individualism as an illusion. There is no such thing as an individual, only a social self. All of us – believer and atheist alike – have a relationship with God. Ultimately, there is no escape from a relationship to God. The myth of an isolated individual completely detached from God who possesses only the possibility of relationship to God (and, for that matter, others) is just that – a myth. We are born in and from relationships; we are created for relationships."
As a wife and mother, I intuitively understand the idea of "social self." Someone how I have become more "me" as "I" nurture and respond to the relationships given in my life. "My" choices, "my" attitudes and behavior are intimately interwoven into the fabric of lives of others. "My" relationship with God impacts them and their responding to God impacts "me." (Even the use of language describing the dynamic "between" becomes "I" centered.)
In a boundary defined world, where who "I" am is first described by who "I" am not in relation to you--an important step in psychological development but not a place to camp out for a whole life--what do we do with Jesus' own description of relationship with the Father as "I in Him and Him in me?" What have we lost in our entrenchment on the beachhead of the great "I"?
As a church, I believe we have lost our understanding of "we," what it means to be the Body of Christ, fitted and formed together. Sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, most of our basic understanding of church (at least in the evangelical world) comes from what "I" can get from "it," what "it" does for "me," reducing our interaction with what is meant to be a living organism to an "I" and "it."
So what are we to do? A place to start is to rethink our categories of how of what the church is in alignment with biblical and theological realities. What would it mean to discover the primary "we" in our experience of church? What if "church" can only be experienced when "I" am willing to bring my whole self into relation with God and others? What would need to change? What language would need to use? What models or forms would embody this for us?
What do you think?
