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Living in community

“God said, ‘And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us.”- Genesis 1:26a

One of the most basic affirmations of the Christian faith is that human beings are created in the image of God. And this means to live in community with God and with fellow human beings. It is in isolation from our God and our fellow human beings that we become vulnerable to every form of greed.

With God

But what does it mean, first of all, to live in community with God? Firstly, it means to be totally dependent on God. The doctrine of creation is a constant warning against all forms of human arrogance and greed. None of us is or can be a self-sufficient, independent, “self-made” person. Everything we have and everything we are comes from God, including the breath of life itself.

If God were not the kind of God He is, our dependence on Him could be a threat to our “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. If God were concerned only about His own majesty and power, if He were simply indifferent, we might still have to admit our dependence, since He is “bigger than we are”, but we could only do it grudgingly. But God is the God who created the world for our sake and gave us everything we need to achieve life, liberty, and happiness. Our dependence on Him is therefore not a reason for resentment but for thanksgiving. It is not a threat to, but the source of, our freedom as human beings.

And so, the first characteristic of a right relationship with God is the acknowledgment of our total dependence on God with thanksgiving.

But dependence is only one side of a right relationship with God. Faith in God is not just a matter of receiving, and depending on him for everything. By emphasizing too exclusively our total dependence on God, the church has sometimes given the impression that to be a Christian is to be like a weak, passive dog to be fed. We have nourished the attitude that being a Christian means only going to church to ask God for what we need and to thank Him for what He has given us. No wonder the strong, healthy people are bored with such kind of religion.

Certainly, the Creation Story and the Bible in general remind us of our dependence on God, but they also teach us that to be human in the image of God means strength, creative activity, a job to do. Be fruitful! Multiply! Fill the earth! Have dominion! Prayer and worship are essential part of faith in God the Creator, but another equally essential part is to tend to the world he gave us. That means that God does not intend for us to think about Him, religion and church activities all the time. We cannot devote full time to such things if we live obediently in a world in which God Himself has put “all things” under our supervision (Ps.8:6ff.). The purely passive, receiving person who finds his relationship with God only in the church and religious activities is actually a disobedient person who surrenders his own humanity as he refuses the task in the world God gave him to fulfill.

Thankfully receiving and actively obeying, religious and secular activities, worship in the church and work in the world - all these are included in our right relationship with God our Creator.

With fellow human beings

To be human in God’s image means to live in community not only with God, but also with our fellow human beings. Living in community with God and living in community with our fellow human beings should not be separated. They should always go together. It is when we separate the two that religion becomes oppressive and inhuman. Hence, John said in the his letter, “If we say we love God, but hate others we are liars. For we cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love others, whom we have seen. The command that Christ has given us is this: whoever loves God must love others also”( I Jn.4:20-21).

But what does it mean to live in community with our fellow human beings? First of all, to live in community with our fellow human beings is to see and to be seen. The most basic form of human encounter is looking one another in the eye. There are many ways we deny our own and other people’s humanity by not seeing. Sometimes we avoid seeing people, like in the Biblical parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Lk.16:19-31). The Rich Man never noticed the poor man Lazarus in front of his door everyday. Sometimes we do not see concrete people, but only abstract categories like conservatives or liberals, leftist, rightist or centrist, communist or terrorist. The victims of war in Iraq and elsewhere are seen merely as “collateral damage”, not as human beings who are suffering for a war not of their own making.

But just as dehumanizing as not seeing is not letting our selves be seen by others. Instead of being open enough to let other people see us as human beings, we rather act whatever role we assume and image we try to project and hide behind it.

To see and to be seen can be painful, because this would challenge us to be involved. Hence, it is easier and safer to have eyes but not to see, and to retreat behind our mask. But in so doing, we are however sacrificing our own and other people’s genuine humanity.

Moreover, to live in community with our fellow human beings is to speak and to listen. Important as they are, looks can be deceiving. Real human encounter does not take place until speaking and listening are added to seeing and being seen. When we speak to each other it means that we take each other seriously enough to share what we are and what we know and to try to understand one another.

Speaking, however, is useless without listening. Listening is perhaps even more important than speaking as a way of taking another person seriously. Words, of course, may be dishonest, simply empty or nothing but propaganda. But there can be no complete communication without words. Speaking and listening are absolute prerequisite for every genuine human community.

It is not by accident, therefore, that Jesus Christ our Lord who lived out a genuinely human life in the image of God was called “the Word”.

And furthermore, to live in community with our fellow human beings is to help and to be helped. How we act is the final test of whether we see and let ourselves be seen, and speak and listen, in a really human way. We have not really seen or heard each other unless we understand and respond to our encounter as a mutual call for assistance. When we recognize one another’s humanity, we learn that to be human is to depend not only on God but also on one another. As human beings we need each other’s help.

Of course, not all helping is human. Sometimes when we help others we are only playing God. We go to our neighbors in need as superior to inferior. We had seen this happened in the “liberation” of our country from the Spaniards by the Americans; we can see this again happening in the so-called “liberation” of Iraq from “Saddamic Rule” again by the Americans and the British. Sometimes we are kind to other people only to get them in our debt, so we can make them pay off in one way or another for services rendered, or manipulate them into being and doing what we want. Sometimes we are only buying off our guilty conscience when we help others.

Hence, there are two prerequisites for genuine human help. First, we must recognize that the help we can give anyone is very limited. Most of the time we do not really know ourselves what is good for others. The most we could do is to stand by them in their need, giving them the support we can, aware that we too are only human beings who are not saviors of people.

Secondly, our help for others will be genuinely human when we know that we too need the help and support of other people. Perhaps, it is not money that we need, but something to fill our empty, meaningless lives. Perhaps, it is not to be freed from immorality, but from our unforgiving attitude toward those who are considered immoral. Perhaps, it is not to be cured from physical illness, but to be cured from greed and lust for power and prestige.

Every one of us in his own way needs to be helped, to have others stand by and with him in his own need, to learn from others. Only when we are not “too proud” to acknowledge and ask for the help we need, only then will we be able to give others the help they need.

And so, we have emphasized that human life in the image of God is life in community. A person cannot be human by himself, but only in a twofold relationship with God and with fellow human beings.

This means that we must stand firmly against all forms of greed and rugged individualism. The individualistic desire to be independent, self-sufficient and self-centered is inhuman. Perhaps, nothing could ever capture what we mean by being truly human in the image of God than the Greatest Commandments, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind…and your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22:37-39) #

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