The Church Mouse

Surviving or Living Life?

Hebrews 10:24-25 Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and hold each other accountable in Christ…

Have you ever met an isolationist Christian? Someone who believes they are “better” Christians at home than they are in a church community. People who have been hurt or see the church as hypocritical, saying one thing but doing the opposite. I can certainly identify with them. In fact, for many years I was one.

The popular singing duo, Simon and Garfunkel, had a song early in their career that makes a big deal of individuality and an exaggerated fear of relationships. In this song the singer talks about being a fortress unto himself, disdaining love and laughter, and having no need for friendship. Hiding away in his room with his books and poetry to protect him, he isolates himself from all human relationships because he has identified those relationships as the cause of all his emotional pain. He is a rock and an island—alone to himself in the world. I once identified a lot with this song. But Isolation is a dry husk of life compared to live Christian relationships.

The church is made up of people and people can be hypocritical, cruel and thoughtless. However, they can also be encouraging, supportive, caring and provide a means for God to touch our lives and the lives of others. Relationships give us the opportunity to experience the love of God first hand. They also come with a cost, as all things of true value do.

It is understandable that in protecting ourselves we might identify with a song that hinges on the words: “If I never loved I never would have cried.” I think we can all understand these feelings having been hurt by relationships and finding, even for a short time, a certain consolation in being alone. But I think we also would agree that isolation is never a long term answer to this kind of pain. Isolation avoids the pain but also avoids the joy. To love anyone is to be vulnerable and open to being hurt but it is also the essence of God and the difference between merely surviving day to day and being fully ALIVE. Love and pain go together, and the only true answer to this dilemma is to willingly acknowledge and welcome them both.

Love costs. Think of what Christ paid when he embraced us. Think of the pain the Son of Man endured in loving a lost and wayward humanity. Love is never without pain. When you sign on to a human relationship you sign on to being hurt. Count on it. We all hurt one another, but it is also within our power to repent of the deeds and to forgive. We have it within us to create great joy in relationships as well as great pain.

C.S. Lewis once wrote about a place where one can be free from the “perturbations” of love. (Perturbation, by the way, is the state of being troubled, anxious or concerned.) That place is one’s coffin. I can’t argue with that. So Simon and Garfunkel and C.S. Lewis agree: There is a place you can be safe from the painful aspects of being in relationship with others, but who wants it?

What would make Christ go through what He went through for us? Love and all the rewards it brings in warmth, companionship, fellowship and joy. Nothing brings more meaning to life than love. True love is what God is, and what we were made to know with Him and with each other. Because of what Christ accomplished on the cross, the pain of love will one day be gone. And even now, in Christian relationships within His church, we can experience His victory.

So what will it be? The high cost and vulnerability of love, or the lifeless loneliness of isolation? A rock feels no pain, and an island never cries. But a son, daughter, brother or sister in Christ can directly experience a Godly relationship in worship, mission, ministry, compassionate concern, and support from the family of God. We are a family, with all the faults that entails. We may not be perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but we are working TOGETHER towards the goal of sanctification.

Love one another,

The Church Mouse