Comments on: Reading justice into the Bible?

By: Patrick George McCullough

Patrick George McCullough — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:57:00 +0000

Good question. I think what I mean is the act of keeping each other accountable and journeying together as a group. I see it especially happening in community groups praying for one another.

I have been a part of "accountability groups" in the past (not at PMC), with a small group of other guys, confessing our sins to one another and embodying forgiveness to one another.

As these sorts of things occur in the intricate web of a local congregational community, I see "communal holiness" in the interactions between these various groups, with accountability and encouragement happening in both committed smaller groups and individuals from the wider congregational community. I hope that makes sense.

Actually, I think this could be a uniting factor between personal holiness and social justice. The community seeks to be "holy" in uniting all its individuals in pursuit of personal holiness and in an outward drive to share the blessings which have been given to us as individuals and communal whole.

Again, I hope this makes sense. I've got my mind spread 20 different ways as finals approach!

By: Camassia

Camassia — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 17:18:00 +0000

Oh, I agree that our church is more balanced that way than many. I just meant the counterbalance theory lends itself to extremism that way, so I don’t like the idea of someone bringing it up to explain our church.

I’m curious as to what you mean by communal holiness. Can you give an example?

By: Patrick George McCullough

Patrick George McCullough — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 02:59:00 +0000

Thanks Camassia!I can resonate with both of your concerns. I am quite ambivalent about the counterbalance of churches. I do think it would be unhealthy for social justice issues to be our sole focus. I think we do have some inkling of a healthy balance.About the personal/political false dichotomy, I think I agree. I would add a thought about communal holiness (as in: the pursuit of holiness by local faith communities) as well as personal. How do you think this idea applies to the situation in our church?

By: Camassia

Camassia — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 05:45:00 +0000

Although I wasn’t privy to this particular argument, I’ve had similar conversations with others at our church. Personally I’m not a big fan of the “counterbalance” theory. For one thing, it seems to be setting up an odd relationship between churches, at once hostile and interdependent. There’s an implicit criticism in saying these other churches need to be counterbalanced, yet instead of having our church be a truer, more balanced church, it’s saying let’s go too far the other way and maybe the truth will emerge in the middle somewhere. Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

Another problem, though, is how are we categorizing “personal” and “political”? In a previous discussion about this I remarked that, although Christians tend to be divided between people who care about sex and people who care about public policy, I think that sex is political, since (for instance) the fact that something like 40% of our generation grew up with divorced parents is bound to affect the body politic, and the way we look at the world and relate to other people. So the whole personal holiness/social justice polarity is a problem, imho.