Made For Community

"You're the best, Devon! But when we're on the field, nobody hears you! They hear the band." Drumline

I am not an authority on much by way of academics, and I will begin directing you to check out what I say with your sources.  However, I have lived a life that has given me much personal experience and observations, which I believe does have value for consideration.  So, I plan to begin to do my blogs with my reflections and ask you to consider it for yourself or research.

One area of personal exploration over my life is the area of seeking to be independent minded and skilled at my own philosophy reasoning and writing.  I've often felt that my own experience not only gave me a good perspective but a responsibility to teach others, so they do not make the same mistakes that educated me.  At times, this has resulted in feeling ignored or to see others or society making the same mistakes, despite my warnings.  Or, I will make a very solid logical case for something or against something.  Yet, it would be disregarded by others following their passions.  Then, I feel that I failed in making a good enough case or in my warning.

Similarly, I will at times try to do this or that, and I often find myself feeling overwhelmed or exhausted by the attempt.  Then, again, I feel like I failed. This week for example, I was trying to solve a problem at work.  I am very good at solving problems at whatever work I happen to be.  Yet, this one was feeling particularly difficult, and I was becoming more and more depressed at not being able to make it work.  When I brought it up to my boss in a meeting, I was not met with criticism but with understanding and directed to reach out to others that would have more information to make it work.  It wasn't... just... about ...me.

So often, I think we do this.  We see something that needs to be done, so we set out to solve it, ourselves.  After all, we reason, I have a lot of education or skill or more to solve this.  My achievement and pride makes me feel like I should be able to handle it, myself. Yet, very often, it is something DESIGNED to be a team problem with team solutions.

Indeed, it is tempting to believe that we are made to be solitary.  We feel that God designed us with specific and unique skills or personality qualities, and we look at those things and say.... I should use these things, and we seek to use them to do things.  However, one thing that I have noted in my own blogs, for example, is that even if you write the BEST BLOG with irrefutable logic, you are just one person.  You MIGHT reach a small number, but that small number is considering your words as the words of just another person.  Yet, if a larger body speaks the same message, it is more readily received.  I can say to someone that God loves them, even with them being LGBTQ or another race or more.  Some might receive that.  They might even appreciate that you are saying it as a Christian or a member of a group.  Yet, it is just words of another human.   However, when I see a church say that God loves someone, that person is being presented with the words of more than just a person.  It carries more weight.  

I am not saying that you should use a religious body as a platform to push your individual beliefs.  Too many use that to use religion as a method of control, and it has been done for centuries.  However, when a church actually speaks and shows the words and actions of the love of Christ, it has powerful effect.  I think that is why the Bible specifically says that we are to be the body of Christ on Earth... all of us.

But, to return to my main point.  Whether it be as a member of a church or a family or a relationship or a band, we all have wonderful talent within us to do great things.  Yet, the God that made us a wonderful individual also made social bonding that happens between them. We were made to be individuals, and those individuals were made to contribute greatly to groups.  We are stronger, when we all have and receive a part in the groups around us.

I am very much an introvert.  However, I am starting to get out more and communicate more with others.  I am seeking out more ways to bring what I have to the larger groups that fall in my social circles.  I believe that is a part of what I was .. as an individual.. made to be.  So, I would challenge you to consider my thoughts here and to consider what groups you have been given with which to share your gifts, and ask yourself.. am I giving to those groups what I was made to provide, or am I pridefully keeping all that to myself, where no one can hear me beating my drum and make little effect.  You can have a much bigger effect in the world when you join your drum to the chord of what is already being played in the world.