Stands a person.
I was listening to a talk today by Frederica Mathewes-Green entitled “Standing Together” that was on Ancient Faith Radio. It really made me think.
As an undergraduate, I endured some classes where 30 years ago, a professor may have opened a class with the words “Look to your left, look to your right… When you finish this class, only one of you will remain. Decide now who it’s going to be.” Today, the idea strikes me as absolutely without conscience because it presents a very distorted view of our role in community.
For one thing, it establishes an adversarial relationship among presumed equals. Instead of trying to grow with my fellow students, it becomes my job to identify ways where they cannot hack it. On another point, it limits my focus to myself. I must be the one to survive independent of what happens to others. Whatever it takes to do, I will do it. And as my final point, it changes the reasons we strive for excellence. We strive for excellence so that we survive, not as a means of helping another.
Within the Church we find a different prescription. We do everything we can to encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ. As such, we look to each other for examples. To those God has entrusted with a particular gift, we must be an example within that gifting. We cannot look to anything other than God when we decide what is acceptable. When we fall short of the glory of God (and we will), we plead that God will convict us and lead us to repentance. We cry out in the middle of the night asking God to remove our iniquities so that we may be whole. We never declare that we are done with our struggle against the passions. To do this successfully, we must be with a community committed to the same struggle. As an individual person, I must be fully committed to my struggle using the Mysteries of the Church to empower me on that path.
