PRAYING FOR WISDOM
The world we inhabit today has the propensity to draw us away from the relationships most necessary for abundant life, now and forever. But this is nothing new. In fact, Jesus prayed for you and me in the midst of such pressure. Today, read the prayer of Jesus for you. Let his words sink deep into your heart as you reflect on Jesus’ continuing intercession for you even in this moment.
Father, it’s time. Display the bright splendor of your Son, so the Son in turn may show your bright splendor. You put him in charge of everything human, so he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge. And this is the real and eternal life: That they know you, the one and only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent. I glorified you on earth by completing down to the last detail what you assigned me to do. And now, Father, glorify me with your very own splendor, the very splendor I had in your presence before there was a world.
I spelled out your character in detail to the men and women you gave me. They were yours in the first place; then you gave them to me, and they have now done what you said. They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that everything you gave me is firsthand from you, for the message you gave me, I gave them; and they took it, and were convinced that I came from you. They believed that you sent me.
I pray for them. I’m not praying for the God-rejecting world, but for those you gave me, for they are yours by right. Everything mine is yours, and yours mine, and my life is on display in them. For I’m no longer going to be visible in the world; they’ll continue in the world while I return to you. Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life that you conferred as a gift through me, so they can be one heart and mind as we are one heart and mind. As long as I was with them, I guarded them in the pursuit of the life you gave through me; I even posted a night watch. And not one of them got away, except for the rebel bent on destruction (the exception that proved the rule of Scripture).
Now I’m returning to you. I’m saying these things in the world’s hearing so my people can experience my joy completed in them. I gave them your word; the godless world hated them because of it, because they didn’t join the world’s ways, just as I didn’t join the world’s ways. I’m not asking that you take them out of the world, but that you guard them from the Evil One.
They are no more defined by the world than I am defined by the world. Make them holy—consecrated—with the truth; your word is consecrating truth. In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world. I’m consecrating myself for their sakes so they’ll be truth-consecrated in their mission.
I’m praying not only for them but also for those who will believe in me because of them and their witness about me. The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, so they might be one heart and mind with us. Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me. The same glory you gave me, I gave them, so they’ll be as unified and together as we are—I in them and you in me. Then they’ll be mature in this oneness, and give the godless world evidence that you’ve sent me and loved them in the same way you’ve loved me.
Father, I want those you gave me to be with me, right where I am, so they can see my glory, the splendor you gave me, having loved me long before there ever was a world. Righteous Father, the world has never known you, but I have known you, and these disciples know that you sent me on this mission. I have made your very being known to them—who you are and what you do—and continue to make it known, so that your love for me might be in them exactly as I am in them.
GETTING INTO COLOSSIANS
Watch The Bible Project’s video overview of Paul’s letter to the Colossians which you can find here.
Then read Colossians 3:1-17.
REFLECTING ON TRUTH
The most pervasive pressure on our faith today is our tendency towards isolation. We have all heard the phrase “alone in a crowd” used to describe our culture. This observable feature is also statistically documented as trends in loneliness, anxiety, depression, and other psychological malformations have continued to set records year after year in the United States. Professor and researcher, Jean Twenge, has noted that the current generation coming to age in high school classrooms and on college campuses are less likely to date, less likely to leave their home without their parents, and more likely to put off adult responsibilities and activities. Essentially, Twenge argues, while our society is the most “connected” it has ever been—technologically, economically, in urban proximity and ideological influence—we are trending drastically towards the most isolated we have ever been as a culture.
Twenge and others have noted that isolation’s crescendo has been building for decades or more, through the powerful undercurrent of individualism that our culture has unquestionably embraced. While it is true that no man is an island, he (or she) might be a king; exercising supreme lordship over his body and her ambitions. What the king wants, the king gets, or at least strives for—often against other kings.
Perhaps the analogy is too harsh. Most of us do not desire to conflict with others, yet friction is normal if you are actually in relation to something. Objects and personalities rub against one another, creating energy in the form of heat. In the right setting, this inevitable friction is like iron sharpening iron. However, kings (and queens) and all those in positions of power—i.e. control on their own world—tend to isolate themselves from such chafing, and so does your GPS.
When you type in an address, and Google Maps provides you the most efficient route to your desired destination, a little triangle representing you begins to move along the mapped path. Do you notice what is missing on your visual guide? How about the hundreds, and depending on the time of day, thousands of other people alongside you in the flow. Comfortable in the kingdom of your car, engrossed in the isolated efficiency of your route, you hardly notice others unless they impede your path. The attention, or lack-there-of, is reciprocated by the way.
Like our GPS systems, our culture encourages our isolation, which, as only an Uber driver can attest, creates more conflict then it prevents. From personality inventories to dating sites to social media feeds, career management, and highway systems, every way in which we attempt to navigate life is individualized in a manner that isolates.
Being an individual is not the problem, nor a sin. In fact, the ancient Hebrews were some of the first—if not the first—people to value the identity and responsibility of the individual as much as the community. Take a look at the Levitical laws and see how much individual freedom and accountability is there at the very budding of this nation. Fast forward to their self-induced upheaval of the exile, and the promise of the “new covenant”—the continuation of the hope they had in the God of their establishment and the confidence that they would not continue in their futility—is preceded by this anciently offensive declaration,
And it shall come to pass that as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring harm, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, declares the LORD. In those days they shall no longer say:
‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
But everyone shall die for his own sin. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.
(Jeremiah 31:28-30)
The immediate bleakness of the final sentence distracts us from its profundity. Under the watchful cultivating of the LORD, his children will not be haunted by the sins of their fathers, but responsible for their own actions or inactions amid his Kingdom building. The individual is no longer caught in the cycle of societal rebellion or familial failings but is free to respond to our God individually. That does not imply that each person makes up how he or she individually relates to God. God determines the means and manners of relating. But, it does strongly suggest that no matter your culture or history, the seed of faith planted by our Father has every opportunity to bear fruit.
The prophet Joel expands on the image of the individual presented in Jeremiah when he says,
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and the female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.
(2:28-29)
The apostle Peter declares that the day Joel foretold is today as he and his companions proclaimed to Jeresulem the life and work of the recently resurrected Jesus (Acts 2:14-36). Male and female, young and old, poor and rich, insider and outsider, Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free…Christ is all, and in all (Colossians 3:11). You are not a statistic, not “the average,” not a number in the mass of whatever group. You are an individual, just as Christ is an individua, and individually known by Christ. Unlike our cultural understanding of individuality in isolation, the individuality of our scripture and Christ is a uniqueness that finds its fullness only in relation to other individuals. Or, as Paul says it in Romans 12, “so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” Our truest, most free, expression of our Spirit-filled individuality is our mutual “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Ephesians 5:17-21) through whom we know ourselves and are fully known (Matthew 10:39).
From the good beginning when it was not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2)—stop for a moment and think on that; amid everything good before the corruption of sin, the one thing that was not best was the lack of intimate relationship and partnership in good work—our best only comes about when we are in community. The same is true even in the rebellion. Jesus’ final encouragements to his disciples are to love community as he does, to sacrifice for those in community as he has done for the sanctification of one another by the power of the Spirit (John 13-17). Isolation then is the death of our created and re-created intent and potential.
Our tendency towards isolation is why Paul’s exhortation to put on the new self envisions you and I doing those things necessary to relate to one another in the same way Christ Jesus has related to us. Your right response to the grace of God towards you in Jesus is to cultivate a genuine community, bound together by love in perfect harmony and the peace of Christ which rules among us as individuals. There is no new self in isolation.
USE THESE QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU PRAYERFULLY REFLECT INDIVIDUALLY AND DISCUSS AS A DNA GROUP.
Describe how you think our culture understands individuality. How does that correspond and conflict with a biblical understanding of individuality?
Perhaps you have seen or experienced the pendulum swing against cultural individuality in the church, where there is a loss of individuality. In what ways did it manifest and how does this idea correspond and conflict with a biblical understanding of individuality?
Consider the predisposition of our culture to isolate our individuality as you reflect on author, essayist, poet and farmer, Wendell Berry’s statement below.
“… a Luddite [a group of 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a way of protest], in what I take to be the true and appropriate sense. I am not "against technology" so much as I am for community. When the choice is between the health of a community and technological innovation, I choose the health of the community I would unhesitatingly destroy a machine before I would allow the machine to destroy my community.
I believe that the community—in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures—is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms.”
What does it mean to be “for community,” in a biblical sense and implied by Berry?
What are some of the ideas, systems, feelings, technologies, rhythms, etc. that foster this isolationism?
What of these, might need to be “destroyed” for the sake of your Gospel Community, our church family, and your health?
Personality categories are prevalent in our culture, and among our faith family! While the intent of most of these self-understanding tools is to help us better know ourselves and relate to one another, in what ways might these isolate us from others if we are not discerning?
Re-read Colossians 3:15-17 again. What are the ideas, practices, activities, etc. that you can be initiating and participating in that will cultivate a healthy community and healthy individuals within that community?
BE ZEALOUS & REPENT
Repenting is one of the most ordinary and extraordinary practices of our faith heritage. The stories and letters that ground our faith are replete with the appeal to and examples of repentance. In a nutshell, repentance is the turning away from one thing and grabbing hold of something different. It is not merely the ceasing of an action or attitude, but the replacement of what is let go with something completely other than what is released.
Our culture encourages us to think of ourselves—and in turn, live—in isolation from others. Sometimes, our human traditions of religion remove our individuality for the sake of the collective. However, the example of Christ is not the loss of individuality but the sacrificial love of community, and the sanctification that can only occur in such a context.
So, prayerfully ask, answer, and share:
What ideas about individuality and community do you need to let go?
And what ideas of individuality and community in Jesus do you need to grab hold of instead?