"The Way"

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Today's reflection takes aim at individualism and the song "My Way."  I've actually been thinking about this one.

I had the thought the other day when reading an article about continued inequality of several different kinds -- the scary, systemic, ingrained kind that people don't notice until it's pointed out -- and I realized how the cry of "Hear us!  We exist!" does not so much indict the people crying out for an individual voice and representation in the world for individual races, peoples, etc.

It indicts the people who have forgotten.

Perhaps the problem is not, as I have thought for a long time, that we do not see everyone as people -- that the long process of civilization has been expanding our definition of a "person" (in the sense of "sentient being who has feelings and a perspective just as valid as my own as well as needs and wants that require satisfaction alongside mine").  It started with just "my family" then became "my tribe" and then, if you were lucky, "my town/city/village collective" then "my people" in the sense of culture and nations and races.  "People like me" a term becoming vaguer and harder to spot every day.

I think a lot of that is happening, but perhaps the problem runs deeper.

We've forgotten -- people at the top, born to privilege so wide and thin they don't see it most of the time -- not to think of ourselves as individual people who need to make their voices and needs sing out above the din.  Not because we've forgotten that other individual voices are just as important but because we forgot that we're not supposed to be proud individuals.

We forgot we are members of the Body of Christ.  We are the eyes or the elbow thinking it is more important than the legs or the nose.  We have forgotten that it is only collectively that we are worthy of entering the Kingdom of Heaven.  We have forgotten that it is together that we live and together that we will be judged.

Perhaps it's a necessary step toward that unity to have the forgotten voices speak up and assert their own individual personhood.  Perhaps we'll all be lost in the din if we don't figure out how to turn this boat around and stop this foolishness -- remember not just that other people are people just as valid as us but that none of us are valid in ourselves.  None of us are worthy.  None of us are anything without the others.

We are a Body of Christ.  We have forgotten.  Not just the body parts nearest us, not just the body parts like us.  We are one with ALL of the Body of Christ.