Thinking Communally

A few things have changed the course of my life forever and affected the way I think and live. The first is that God is Love. I have always known this; people preach it all the time. Mostly to berate us for not loving enough. But I’ve come to take this statement very seriously and to actually believe that God is all Love (not God is love and…. Or God is love, but…) everything about God stems from this nature of Love. Therefore, God does not engage in nor endorse actions that are not of love.

The second thing I learnt is that God is a community. This blew my mind. I did not know this before I got introduced to Trinitarian Theology. God is Father, Son and Spirit. Before anything was made, before space, before time, there existed a community in the Godhead. That community whose very constitution and nature is love decided to create a world in order to have a community of folks they can share this love with. They enjoyed each other so much that the idea came to them; “let’s make people that can enjoy this too”

This realization led me to only one conclusion. This Universe is built for Love and community. The God who is community can only design a world of community. Sin is the thing that pushes us to be more and more insular and self-centered. This is why the Church is a community, not a group of individuals that meet every week to learn how to better their personal lives. As much as it is important for us to know God personally and to realize that we house the Holy Spirit in our bodies, we cannot discount the need for brothers and sisters who we love and love us, and who can share their experiences and revelation in order to help us grow in our walk with God and for whom we do the same too. Our faith is very personal, no doubt, but it is also very communal. We cannot have one without the other.

It also means that people are more important than institutions and empires. Building a Trinitarian community involves a totally different set of dynamics from building a business or a religious institution. This is a community based on love and equality of all. It is based on people laying down their lives for each other as opposed to a power struggle. God’s vision is for a world filled with people who Love each other like that, from whole communities down to the family structure. We are not enemies of each other, or competitors in a game of money and resources, we are supposed to be partners in building the Kingdom of God

This, to me, is one of the major reasons for the inequalities, wars and degradation of the earth. We are not living according to the design of the universe; Love and Community. Hence, the results we see. When people, families and whole nations choose to ignore this way of life, it only leads to chaos and lopsidedness. This is a call for us all. Let’s follow the Holy Spirit as he leads us to live with this truth in mind. Let these truths influence your interactions and lead us to making the world a better place and a Godly life. To do otherwise is to swim against the tide of the Universe and to experience the pain that comes along with that.