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John 17:23 – “…May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Living for others is an odd conception.  I suppose from a Naturalistic perspective it may even be antithetical to the actuality of human nature.  Some have proposed “reciprocal altruism”[1] which really is just reciprocal egoism (sort of an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” type of mentality) but really I think it’s accurate to say that only a Christian can accomplish actual altruistic living.  I suppose that last bit is up for debate, but what is not up for debate is that the Christian life is about others.  My friend Andrew Schools posted a small quote on his blog earlier in the week which really does sum up the Christian purpose and the life of the C(c)hurch:  “The church is only the church when it exists for others.”[2]

The reason I bring this up is not only because it has been captivating my thoughts over the past year and a half but because, more recently, I had the opportunity to meet with a church-going Christian who felt the need to leave a local church in their area for reasons that only concerned them.  On the surface it seemed like a fine reason: “I need to be fed, I need to be challenged” etc, but it was the underlying mentality that I found startling.  It’s the idea that we as Christians, when part of a local body of believers, can act autonomously without thought to the other members of the church.  This is overly prevalent in our current “Christian” society.  It’s what we see nearly every Sunday, people coming in saying “feed me” then leaving out the back door.  It’s also demonstrated in people who want to come and get “plugged in” but only mean that they want people to plug into them so they don’t have to make the effort of doing the plugging. 

Like I said above, it’s not that getting fed or getting “plugged in” is bad.  Not at all.  But it’s the attitude that seems to keep popping up that is sinful.  That attitude most often displays itself by Christians’ unwillingness to accept the messiness of the church and forgoing the continuance of covenant with fellow members for the growth of the body, both in edification, sanctification, and in evangelism (among a host of other things) (Ephesians 4).  It’s about understanding that the local body of believers is a family unit.  And, just like in any family unit, we do not make autonomous choices.  We make choices and decisions based on how they will edify our family.  Because I belong to Jesus and I was bought with a price, I know that I am no longer my own; and as such, I know that being a part of the body of Christ allows me to actually live out that “not-my-ownness.”  In short, we live for others…we live altruistically.  At conVerge we have a saying “every person matters.”  And what we mean to say is, love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39).  This should flow out of the greatest commandment which was “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind” (Matthew 22:37).  So, it seems to me that if we love God and obey that first and greatest commandment then we will be able to rightly obey the second one.  Thusly, we can appropriately love our church body and make decisions that are truly edifying to the others in our church body and not decisions that just “edify” ourselves.  ‘Edify’ is in quotation marks because it seems to be the case that it will not be edifying if decisions are made egoistically/self-centered.  While altruism is in the Christian’s self-interest, it is wholesale different from self-centered.  I guess then, the laboratory for the Christian altruism experiment is the local church.  It rises and falls on it (1 Corinthians 12, 13 and 14).

[1] Satris, Stephen. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Moral Issues. Guilford, CT: Dushkin Pub. Group/Brown & Benchmark Publishers, 1996. (Louis Pojman’s essay contra egoism).

[2] http://thefieldmanual.blogspot.com/