WE'RE MORE ALIKE THAN WE ARE DIFFERENT

Kelly Kapic in his excellent book, "You're Only Human," tells about asking students to describe themselves in a few words without using anything that relates to community or others. The students stammer and stutter, realizing that it's nearly impossible. We are tethered to community whether we want to admit it or not. 

This flies in the face of current thought. We think we are completely our own. Our identity is self-determined. Culture says, 'If you don't like who you are, look within. Find who you want to be. Reinvent yourself. The power is inside you.' 

Some have found this to be exhausting. The weight of self-discovery is unbearable if I'm the only one worthy to decide my identity. If we are merely atoms randomly held together by scientific laws, who I am to then take this brain given to me by the universe and figure out who I am and why I'm here? 

Kapic speaks to this: 

“Any attempt to live as my own center shows that I need others to understand myself and I need them even more to be a healthy and thriving human creature. This is how God made us. Because we have our being in relation and not apart from it, knowing one’s self rightly can only occur in the context of being known, of being in relationships, of being loved. The self alone, the isolated ego, is a contradiction in terms. Pursuing that contradiction leads not to life-giving knowledge but to suffocating loneliness and unending self-doubt.” 

I think he's right. Do you? 

For example, I used to think that small groups were for those lonely people out there. "Pastors like me, don't need to be in a small group with ordinary people. Maybe a group of pastors or high-level leaders would be better?” How wrong I was! My self-view was so distorted by looking within and seeing myself as a leader who should be around other "leaders” that I was overlooking my sameness.

Instead, what I've found is that being around other people with different interests and vocations than my own has brought me joy. It's pride that makes us think, "I'm not like other people. I'm unique." Yes, there are some unique things about me. But I'm more like everyone else than I'm not. And you are too! We all get tired, sleepy, restless, hungry, and even dare I say, gassy?! You're not that unique. 

Occasionally in our church, we will get a request from someone new that goes something like this: "Do you have any small groups with people my age who are urban professionals? I'm also interested in clean-earth policies and want to be around people who share that view. It would be nice, too, if there were other vegans in the group--since I have strong feelings about eating things that have eyes." 

Okay. So I'm exaggerating. But only a little. 

I want to ask them as well as you, what might you discover about the world and yourself by being in a group of human beings--some who will share your likes but others who will see the world differently? You may find that the human condition is universal---that you are more like those "other people" than you think you are. Here's what I know for certain: if you dive into the risky adventure of knowing other human beings and being known, you will get hurt. You may get angry. But you will also likely discover what it's like to be loved and to escape the chronic loneliness of this divided world.  

"We are not self-made people, we are not separate islands, we are not merely rugged individuals. Instead, we’re inevitably and necessarily bound together with others: it has been so from the beginning and will always be." (Kelly M. Kapic)

Go to a church where other human beings are. Find a group of other human beings who want to know God and each other. Do life. Your identity will reveal itself in the context of community. Not without it.