Source: Theology That Sticks
February 8, 2016
There’s an old, old story about several blind men describing an elephant. Because the elephant is quite large, each man forms his opinion by touching only a small part of the beast.
So the man feeling the leg says the elephant is like a tree. The one tugging the tail says it’s like a snake, and so on. Each man comes to a different, incomplete conclusion based on his limited experience.
That story comes to mind as I think about the increasing number of people who claim to be Christians yet demote, denigrate, or distance themselves from the Church. And many of us do.
Me and Jesus
Most Americans have a very low opinion of local Church authority. Fewer than half of us place much confidence in Churches or ministers. We say we go to church when we don’t, and more than half figure worshipping alone is just as good.
The upshot is that many Christians are fine with God but think little of the Church. We elevate private experience of Christ over a shared experience among fellow believers. It reminds me of Tom T. Hall’s song, “Me and Jesus”:
Me and Jesus, we got our own thing going
Me and Jesus, we got it all worked out
Me and Jesus, we got our own thing going
We don’t need anybody to tell us what it’s all about
Tellingly, my first introduction to “Me and Jesus” was on a Jesus People record. I remember liking the song, but I didn’t buy the line. And Christians who do are missing out.
More hands on the elephant
Jesus doesn’t come by Himself. Christ comes with a posse: Mary and the apostles and the martyrs and you and me and all the other saints—past, present, and future. We don’t get Jesus to ourselves, and we shouldn’t want Him by ourselves.
Jesus is best known—really only known—in community. Why? Go back to the elephant. God is infinite. We cannot comprehend Him and can hardly appreciate the little bit revealed to us. We’re like the blind men, each with our part of the pachyderm.
What the blind men need is not a smaller elephant of which they can get a better individual hold. They need more blind men to tell them about their part of the elephant. And that’s one thing the Church accomplishes.
Known only in community
Jesus modeled this for us. He worked not with just one, three, or even twelve disciples. But some in the bunch had more intimate experiences of him. They received particular revelations such as the Transfiguration.
The others needed those revelations too, but they could only access them by relationship, through community. How else would they know unless Peter, James, and John told them? How else would we know unless they told us?
The Church did not and does not limit itself to one view of Jesus’ life and ministry. It recognizes four Gospels and countless more interpretations:
“Each person [reads] in accordance with his capacity, and it is interpreted in accordance with what has been given to him,” says Ephraim the Syrian. “If there were [only] one meaning in the words, the first interpreter would find it, and all other [readers] would have neither the toil of seeking nor the pleasure of finding.”
We grasp what we can and gain the rest from the witness and memory of the larger community. It’s the cumulative insight of the Church that gives us the best picture of Christ, a picture that reflects not only a diversity of contemporary opinion but those of centuries upon centuries.
That’s how God designed it. Our access comes through each other.
A full view
We live and worship God in community because we can’t see enough of Him on our own. Christians who isolate themselves from the body, whatever its defects and deficiencies, are consigning themselves to a peculiarly distorted and limited view of God: their own.
The Christian faith isn’t about Jesus and me. By necessity it’s about Jesus and us.
