Some ideas to be counter cultural against Individualism

Maybe Authentic Community could be a way to subvert the Iron Cage of the increasing Technocratic Totalitarian Dystopia aka the Panopticon, which was a 19th century Circular Prison where inmates were watched 24/7. There was no escaping the suffocating surveillance. This could be very naive in the following suggestions. However, as I am sure many of you know, there is widespread distrust of the institutions in Western Culture, in particular since March 2020 as the West morphed into taking David Icke’s Totalitarian Tiptoe into a power walk.

Oligarchy, Totalitarianism and other isms.

And many people who took the ‘Red Pill’ by stepping outside the Western social engineering Matrix experienced a growing distrust of the institutions, like Government, the Health Service, the Police, the Education system, local councils etc etc. It can spin you out bigtime can’t it? Despite the ‘Totalitarian Tiptoe’ of the unseen Oligarchy that many believe controls the West, how many ‘Red Pill thinking people are still living in the very consumerism, individualism and materialism, that the West possibly engineered the masses into?

Do we now live in nations of the West where:

Doctors destroy health ?

Lawyers destroy justice?

Universities destroy knowledge?

Governments destroy Freedom?

The Press destroys information?

Banks destroy the economy?

Gustav Le Bon’s ‘The Psychology of the Masses would be a useful read, available on Amazon.

Anyway, maybe an intentional commitment to the pursuit of Authentic Community could be one of the ways to subvert the subversion of the increasing ‘Panopticon’. Many believe that is where the West is heading. Just listen to Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum talking on the ‘Great Reset’ to get an idea.

Community. Common-Unity.

Although this is primarily for followers of Jesus who are called to be authentic and serve a Cause greater than themselves. Create intentional missional community, practice hospitality, love their enemies. Work righteously, critique and stand against the atrocities and injustice of the Western Empire. Care for God’s creation by being faithful wise stewards of creation, and also expose the insidious Neo Paganism of the ‘Climate agenda’ and Western culture in general in the 21st century. This can be for anyone who feels that individualism, consumerism and materialism have become unsustainable and that ‘Humanism’ is actually very De-humanising.

Creating Authentic Community feels like a matter of life and death to me and of course there is a spectrum to most things. I find it intriguing that the word ‘Question’ has the word Quest in it.

The danger of too much Comfort.

Enough Comfort can dehumanise, you can lose any cutting edge you may have had, lose any sense of urgency about the times in which we live. Too much Comfort is a killer spiritually speaking because it can keep you anaesthetised in a suburban bubble of privileged materialism. Are we effectively but unwittingly like the 'frog boiling to death in the saucepan because it simply acclimatises to the temperature of the water' . Therefore a long history of living a comfortable life means one will not feel the urgency of being intentional about pursuing a different counter cultural lifestyle that is also sacrificial.

Where would you be on this suggested spectrum in regard to making authentic Community a Cause or a Quest ?

Irrelevant and Unnecessary————————————————————————Essential

1. Commitment: Communities cannot exist without a high level of commitment to membership.  Whether or not a community has a formal covenant, there is always a deliberate process of becoming a member of the community. It depends of course on how many people. A small group of close friends can be a community to commit to live differently than that mainstream culture.

2.  Discipleship: Discipleship takes place in membership classes, small groups, and spiritual direction.  These are all ways of communicating how the community understands its mission as God’s people in this world.  Some communities make use of formal spiritual directors or pairing with another community member to focus on spiritual growth and points of struggle.

   Discipleship is of course rooted in what Jesus called us to be as His followers.

3. Journey Inward/Journey Outward: Healing communities are involved in some aspect of the inward and outward spiritual journey.  This means that they are nurturing inward spiritual growth in members through disciplines like prayer, reading and studying Scripture, and the keeping of a journal, and by challenging members to take the outward journey of response to the needs of the larger society. This is about learning to listen well to our own hearts and to others in order to be counter cultural to the fast paced ‘busyness’ that consumes our lives and potentially prevents community.

4. Small Groups: Working, praying, and sharing in small groups is another characteristic of a healing community.  These groups provide a context to be known intimately.  There is clearly a special power in sharing our journey with other believers who can mediate God’s forgiveness and acceptance in response to people’s life stories.

   Here’s a way to Engage your story: https://cdn.theallendercenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Download-Engaging-Your-Story-How-To-Guide.pdf

   or simply put into Google ‘Dan Allender ‘telling your story’ to find this.

   In the West life seems to be marked by ‘busyness’ which can easily be a subtle way to where we find validation and it can even form our identity. Work and family consume people’s lives…yet our neighbours could be suffering a crisis without us even knowing anything about it.

   
   

5. Telling Our Story:  This is so crucial. In the A healing community is a place where one is free to tell his or her life story to people who are committed to accepting it in the spirit of Christ.  It is a place where one learns to speak and to listen to another, especially to the isolating feelings of pain and anger that prevent fellowship.  

6. Acceptance: Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.”  Healing communities learn to value each member’s unique personality as well as to make a place for those whom society finds unacceptable.  They are challenged to accept theological differences within the community.  Experience in life together has taught that it is often those who seem most limited by illness or handicap or those with discordant views who have the most to give the community.

7. Corporate Life: The emphasis on the common good that is expressed in community life is an important corrective to the self-centered living that dominates many industrialized nations.  God gives the analogy of the human body to describe the ‘Body of Christ’ or the Bride of Christ on earth. So in the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians, it says that when one member suffers, all the other members suffer just like a human body part that is in agony, the rest of the body can feel it, as does the soul because pain is Psychosomatic, meaning Body and Soul. Living as Individual consumers can lead to narcissism if we’re not careful. How we balance the Individual with Community becomes essential as something to work toward.

8. Worship: It is in corporate worship that music and Scripture take on new meaning and bind the community together in a common purpose.  Worship is a living reminder that God is at the centre of all healing.  The celebration of the bread and wine is a central event where members are empowered to forgive each other and renew their vision of ministry and service to others.

9. Alternative Leadership: There are many different forms of leadership present in healing communities depending on the communion they represent.  Leaders often emerge or are chosen on the basis of spiritual gifts rather than by official channels.  Even those communions that accept a hierarchy between priests and laity, and women and men, usually have an expanded leadership team that draws on the gifts of many rather than a few.  In many communities there is a commitment to lay leadership.

10. Surviving Conflict: Healing communities must learn to survive conflict by finding ways to reconcile the inevitable rifts that arise over personality, theological difference, and mission priorities, and to find in the chaos the seeds of new life.

11. Trust: Healing communities depend on trust, trust that our ultimate security in life rests in God and trust in the integrity of another person’s experience.  There has never been a time when the world had greater need of those people and those communities who know how to treat another person’s life as holy ground —

    
    

    But what if our ability to trust was violated in the first 5-7 years of our lives? This is one of the key issues that a healing community can work toward together, by learning to truly and deeply listen to each others stories. When we do not listen well to another persons story, we will inevitably mis-interpret the person, because all we have to go on is their behaviour.

    
    

    If we are honest, we all misinterpret other people, because we have not truly listened to their story and therefore we misunderstand them as well. I can only truly understand you and interpret your story with some accuracy if I have listened well to your story. As we listen and increase understanding, we can trust more.

In a culture that creates an insane pace of life so that we become like an anthill that has just been kicked!

12. Time:   One cannot be in hurry, for all the characteristics of community life depend on a new definition of how to be the church and require a radical reorientation of one’s values.  It takes time to build trusting relationships and it takes time to make a difference in this world.

How long does it take in any conversation to hear the word ‘Busy’ emerge? It’s virtually inevitable that the word ‘busy’ will come into most conversations….especially in the ‘civilised’ West! Busy being busy.

See this clip from 'The Shawshank Redemption' 'Get busy living or Get busy dying

Left click then click the link

https://youtu.be/46GwJbrMghQ

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