A Community Of One is No Community

This is my last post.

I realized something today, in the warm sunshine and in the springtime air.

I was sitting outside on a bench, eating my lunch, and I saw a bird swoop down and then grab something that looked like a piece of bread on the ground and then take off. The bird soared up the side of a building, then circled in a lazy "S," and then was gone.

The bird is an animal, driven first by the need to eat and then by the need to propagate. Its need for community is possibly far down on its list of priorities, if at all.

Humans, on the other hand, are not meant to be alone. The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone," and God is not wrong. Humans are meant to be in community with one another, because it is by relationships that we develop the ability to give and receive love, and this is not an option but a requirement of relationships. Christian fellowship, too, this requires more than one person. Even God has fellowship with His Son and the Holy Spirit, and in so doing, represents the idea of fellowship and love.

So for me to not be an animal, but a human being, I need to do more than eat, work and sleep. And, humans do this by relating to one another. We search for community where we can find it, and then we develop relationships based on cultural norms to satisfy our dual comforts of privacy and hierarchy.

I have held onto the idea that I could find community in ideas and thoughts, and by expressing them, I could read them later and find meaning and comfort in the words themselves.

This has proved to be only partially true, and I find myself wondering whether I am more like a bird than I am a human.

Community and fellowship are not optional for humans. We were designed for fellowship. We were designed to be in community with one another. The fact that I have no fellowship and I have no community is not the fault of the Maker, but the fault of the one who spends his time thinking and trying to relate to nobody in particular.

I apologize to myself. I started this blog not for others to read, but for myself to ponder what I have written. And now, I think I have pondered enough.

Best wishes,
-David