Day 13: True Community
“Austin, we know you, and we love you.” These were the words spoken to me after I told my story of porn addiction for the first time. It was at that moment that I came understand community. Modern people have come to believe that the opposite of isolation is simply being with lots of people, and calling that community. This is not true. Isolation is not merely the lack of a social life; it is the absence of deeply vulnerable and authentic relationships.
Before the beginning of time, God was Trinity. And throughout Christian history, theologians have described the Trinity as Father (the lover), Son (the beloved), and Spirit (the mutual indwelling love between them that is so real that it is, in itself, a person). Before God ever created, he was community. Then, this Triune God created man and woman in his image. Similarly, it is through the man and woman’s love for one another that a third being is meant to come: a child. There is a pattern. But something went wrong. Man and woman eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They become ashamed of their nakedness and hid from their creator and from one another. This is not merely the story of two humans from the distant past: it is the story of us all.
But God is bringing together a new family. One that is no longer in Adam, but rather in Christ (Eph. 1:5). And this new family of God is meant to reflect the likeness of their creator. They are to be a community of love, where they live in deeply vulnerable and authentic relationships with one another. This is the Church. Until you are completely known, with all your shame, and are told, “I know you, and I love you,” you will not understand community. You will not understand what it means to be human.
Read Genesis 1:26-27; Ephesians 1:3-5; Romans 8:15-17.
Questions to Consider
Who do you consider your community? What group of people do you have deeply vulnerable and authentic relationships with? What areas of shame remain hidden from them? What effects of this isolation do you see present in your life?
Prayer
Jesus, help us to experience your healing love that washes away sin and shame. Through this, help us to enter into a community marked by radically vulnerable and authentic relationships, no longer isolating and hiding ourselves from you and from one another. Help us to hear the words “You are known, and you are loved,” and to speak that truth into the lives of every human we meet.
By Austin Rojan, NU alumni and Youth Director at Woodinville Alliance Church