Introduction

As we get started, I want to give a brief introduction to this series of Men’s Forums we’ll be doing this year—Local Christendom. I want to get to some definitions, but first I want to tie this into last year’s series, How to Rule Well in the Home. This series builds upon that one. A well-ruled home is the basic building block of Christendom, but it’s not the end of the matter. Well-ruled homes will be productive—that is, they bring blessing to those outside the home—and Christendom is built up by well-run, productive households laboring together for the Cause of the Gospel.

If that’s clear, then onto some definitions. What do we mean by “local Christendom”?

First, Christendom—as we’re using it—means the Kingdom of Christ on earth, taking on physical shape and physical dominion in this world that Christ came to save and reign over. Recall the Lord’s Prayer: “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray that prayer, and we labor to see it brought to pass. The Kingdom that Christ rules over will become incarnate over every square inch of this world. It will be seen in the homes we build, the roads and bridges, in art and literature, in music and films. Its banner will hang in our schools and hospitals, auto-shops and restaurants.

Christ came to save, redeem, and wash this world, and He does so by saving, redeeming, and washing mankind—and then, from this renewed mankind, energized by His Spirit, we build up the City of God. It will be imperfect here. The work will be gradual, with setbacks and obstacles, with frequent skirmishes against the City of Man. But as Christ promised, the gates of hell shall not prevail against us.

So that’s Christendom, and when I say local Christendom, I’m talking about that physical incarnation of Christ’s Kingdom around us—that part of Christendom with a 83815 zip code or 838-something, that part of Christendom being built up in the area that we inhabit.

Outline

Tonight our focus will be on Mission & Vision. In two weeks, October 25th, we’ll focus on Education as Christian Paideia. And then in November, our focus will be on building Christendom—involving politics, the arts, ministry, business, and all that stuff.

A Theology of Community, and Why Individualism is Bad

This evening we’re focusing on Mission & Vision. The overall mission that we’ve been tasked with is, again, to pray that the Kingdom of the Lord would come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven—and to labor to see that prayer fulfilled by our Spirit-filled labors. Our mission is to see the world converted to Christ and built up in Him so that all that we do—all that mankind is and does, all that we produce, all that we think and love and create—so that all of it is in accord with the will of God and glorifies Him through Jesus Christ, by His Spirit.

It’s a grand mission. A great commission. And it’s the work of generations and generations. That’s our mission.

In setting vision for how to carry it out, I want to focus on the necessity of community. My talk is entitled, “A Theology of Community and Why Individualism is Bad.”

Why Individualism is Bad

So why is individualism bad? First let me define my terms. Let me define individualism.

Individualism is the mindset that defines mankind by the individual person—or individual household. It is the political, economic, theological independence of the individual from everyone else. With such a focus, individualism stresses individual initiative, action, and interests. In other words, it says, “I am going to do this—I am going to do this, my way—I am going to do this, my way, for my benefit.” Individual initiative, action, and interests.

Individualism falsely views mankind as the collection of individual men and women. In this case, mankind is not greater than the sum of its parts. There is not a great goal or telos for humanity beyond the individual’s own interest and welfare. Rather we interact with one another insofar as you are useful to me—insofar as you can help me achieve my individual goal or aspirations. But that’s bad news. Bad news all over.

It’s bad news all over—first and foremost—because it’s not true. This kind of doctrine is a false doctrine. Mankind is not merely a collection of individual men and women. But mankind is a whole. We are an integrated body of men and women. There is a great goal and telos for humanity. And we can carry out that goal only by working together.

In a moment I want to elaborate on this biblical vision of mankind, but first let me give a litany of reasons why individualism is bad. I have five for you.

First. Individualism is bad because it fosters arrogance. Arrogance is the vice of thinking of yourself more highly than you ought. Humility is the virtue of sober judgment, of thinking of yourself accurately. The particular strain of arrogance that individualism trains us in is this: we are trained to think of ourselves as independent of others. But this is to think of ourselves too highly. We are not independent of one another. We need brothers. We need their gifts, their corrections, their encouragement. We need their rough edges. Think of Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.” We need their accountability—we need them to pull us back when we’re starting to drift, and we need them to push us when we’re thinking of giving up. We need their labor. We need their strengths, and we need their weaknesses so that we might utilize our strengths. We need their wisdom and their pushback.

We are not self-sufficient islands, having in ourselves all that we need. And that won’t ever be the case. So we shouldn’t aspire to it. Individualism fosters arrogance—it teaches us to think of ourselves wrongly. That’s bad.

Second. Individualism also trains us in selfishness. Since humanity is simply the collection of individual men and women, we come together not for a communal purpose and goal, but simply because, as I said earlier, you are useful to me. I am willing to work with you so long as that fits me and my own interests. But once that calculation goes into the red—once you are a liability, in other words—that relationship is severed. That’s selfish thinking. It’s calculating. It’s stingy, just like we read in Proverbs 23:6–8:

Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies,
for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.
“Eat and drink!” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten,
and waste your pleasant words.

Individualism trains us to think in this way since the overarching aspiration it lays upon your life is—plain and simple—your best interest. Your profit. Your benefit. Or, at most, your household’s. But Scripture calls that selfish. So individualism fosters arrogance; it trains us in selfish greed.

Third. It produces quarreling and strife. James writes this, James 4:1–3:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

A society given over to individualism will not remain a society for long. It dissipates, as in our day, into tribalism—and then into sheer anarchy, where everybody seeks after his own interest, his own profit, using others in a calculating and greedy way. There is no loyalty. No mutual bond that binds you to your brother.

If you’ve read Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, you’ll recognize this as his world. It’s an all against all—and why? Because according to the doctrine of individualism—a doctrine Hobbes himself embraced—leads to that. In his view of mankind, as in our day, there is no natural common good to mankind. In other words, there is nothing to hold us together apart from our usefulness to one another in getting at our own individual goals and interests, and so it leads to anarchy. So it leads to fighting and feuding. (Also consider Lewis’ depiction of hell in The Great Divorce.)

Fourth. Individualism hamstrings our efforts. Not only does it lead to quarreling, it hinders mankind from doing what only mankind can do. We not only need one another for our own livelihood, to meet our basic necessities. We need one another in order to accomplish the mission we’ve been entrusted with—again the mission of seeing the world subdued to Jesus Christ. That is not a solo project. That is not the work of a few. It is the work of a united, baptized, coordinated mankind. It is the work of the whole church—and it is a generational work.

But individualism cannot aspire to any of this, and so it weakens our labor. It atomizes our work, atomizes our homes, atomizes our missions. When individualism permeates the church it leads to scattered effort. We do a group huddle on Sunday, but then we’re off on our own during the week. We regroup once again, and then scatter once again. In this case, the body worships together, but it does not work together. But the labor we’re called to is not a scattered effort. That wouldn’t accomplish much. It is not the effort of the professional or super-holy saints. It’s not the effort of individual households, like islands separated from others. It is a joint, communal effort. The body that worships together should also work together.

Related to this, individualism also limits our ambitions—that is, what we hope to accomplish. When you consider your own strengths and abilities, and what you yourself can do, that’s pretty limited. Think of the sort of stuff a single man, or a single household can do. But then think about what a town could do—a town all operating toward the same goal. How about a city? How about a nation? How about all of mankind? But the work we’re called to involves a new mankind, not a bunch of renewed individuals going about their own missions. So individualism doesn’t scale. It hamstrings our efforts; it fences in our ambitions.

Fifth and finally. Individualism leaves us vulnerable. It makes us easy for the taking. If you don’t have a people, you are easy prey. History gives us a great analogy—consider how Caesar conquered Gaul. Caesar conquered Gaul through a series of campaigns in the first century BC. In Gaul there were dozens of Celtic and Germanic peoples (these were loosely known as Gauls); and these Gauls were tribalistic. Individual households and clans and small tribes constantly going their own way—at war with one another—each seeking their own self-interest.

Seeing this, what did Caesar do? He took advantage of all their divisions and conquered them tribe by tribe. He’d feign friendship with one tribe, give them what they wanted—use them against another tribe—then turn on the first group. They were divided—and Caesar conquered them. That’s a good picture of what individualism does to a society. It divides. In so doing, it leaves us as easy prey to a greater villain—a villain against whom we would easily defend ourselves, if we weren’t all given to our own self-interest.

That was the strategy used by Caesar, and that is the strategy being used against us today, both in the Church and in society at large. We’re being conquered and we don’t even know it yet. And why? Because we’re all given to our own little ambitions and interests, at odds with others, with no loyalty, no common good to unite us.

A Theology of Community

Now to the second part. That was largely by way of warning. What I’d like to do now is consider how Scripture understands mankind.

I said individualism is the mindset that defines mankind by the individual person—or individual household. It stresses individual initiative, action, and interests. It pictures mankind as a collection of individuals—not a whole. It is like a pile of stones, each distinct and separate from the other. But Scripture views mankind as something more like a house—or really, as a body. That’s one of the most significant metaphors the Holy Spirit uses. Mankind is a whole; we are a unit. We are in Adam, or in Christ. We are members of Him and of one another.

Paul writes this in Colossians 2:19, that: “From the Head [Christ] all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with an increase that is from God.” You as an individual do not exist apart from Christ. There is no you apart from being a member of the Lord Jesus Christ. You’d be like a cut-off toe. That toe doesn’t have a use. It’s not alive. It’s just a cut-off toe.

This means that mankind is not merely the collection of individual persons, each with his or her own so-called rights. Mankind is a united organism or person summed up in Christ—or, for the unbaptized, summed up in Adam. That is a much different view of mankind than what individualism teaches.

This metaphor of the body really has to baptize our imagination. It needs to shape how we relate to Christ. For instance, it’s how we understand His atonement of our sins. Jesus was not merely an individual offering up a sacrifice for a bunch of individuals. No, He died—and we died in Him. But He also was raised from the dead—and we were raised with Him. His atoning death was our death; that’s why we don’t have to bear our sins, because in Him we already have.

It also has to shape how we think of one another. Throughout the apostolic letters, we are exhorted to treat one another—not according to our own individual rights, or out of respect for each one’s autonomy—we are exhorted to treat one another as our own members. For instance, Paul says in Ephesians 4:25 that we all have to “put away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor.” Why? Is it because lying is bad? It is. Is it because lying doesn’t respect our neighbor’s right to the truth? That’s not what Paul says. He says, “Put away lying, speak the truth to one another—for we are members of one another.” In other words, it’d be like lying to yourself, thus hurting yourself. That’s stupid. That’s suicidal.

So this metaphor needs to baptize how we relate to Christ, how we think of one another, and it needs to shape how we think of our mission. We have not been commissioned to a solo mission. We have been commissioned as the people of God to corporately pray for the Kingdom of God to come, and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven; and we are commissioned to labor in the Spirit, to labor as a body, to see that prayer fulfilled.

Christ has called us to build Christendom and to take dominion over every square inch of creation that His rule might be incarnated everywhere. The devil knows the only way we can accomplish this lofty goal is by laboring together in the work: as one body, united to our Head and united to one another.

I’ll conclude by contrasting this Christian mindset to the sort of mindset produced by individualism. Contrary to individualism, this theology of community fosters in us humility, not arrogance, for we know that we depend on one another, and we have our part to contribute. It turns us away from selfish ambition and toward a communal aspiration—toward the common good that our Lord directs us, one and all, to. It guards against strife and quarreling—for we are one, we are bound together by faith, by mission, by the Lord we serve, the Spirit that fills us, by the work we’ve been given. Also, our labors are not hamstrung, nor our ambitions constrained, for our strength only grows as we prevail, for we gain more and more members, all pulling toward the same holy ambition. And finally, as this united whole, pressing toward the same goal, we are far from being vulnerable; we are the true Leviathan. Or much more, we are Christ incarnate. The Church is His body, as Paul writes in Ephesians 1:23, “the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”

So the charge is this: Be done with individualism. Have your imagination baptized and get to work.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.