Self-sufficiency vs. being seen as “needy” and its effects upon community.

If there is one thing that no one wants to be found to be in this day and age it is summed up in one word, “needy”. We live in a culture that values complete self-sufficiency and celebrates heavily individuals who are self-made, “need-no-one to get where they are going” success stories. This shift from cultures past and now ingrained emphasis on individualism in our culture has had a dramatic and devastating impact upon the capacity to form and sustain any sort of “real” community amongst any group of individuals. That is to say that if I rarely exercise any daily practical need of anyone, and my need of them is only a theoretical idea that I am left to implement, due to the fact that I have been taught that I “supposedly” need community, my actual experience of community will appear on the surface to look worthwhile, but the undercurrent will be one of dissatisfaction and feeling left wanting.

Romans 12: 4-5 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

This passage in Romans is not a mere suggestion of dependence and need of one another, but an absolute picture of the completely interwoven reality of our need for one another now that “in Christ” we are as one body. It is this deep sense of “belonging to all the others” that seems to be at the root of the tension, and therefore cultivating this lack of experience of us being truly “one body”, of which Christ is the head (Ephesians 5:23). This is most likely due to the undercurrent and subconscious communication that “belonging” really means that your “under possession” of something or someone, rather than “possessing” something or someone. This strikes at the heart of our world’s deep value system that ascribes ownership as the greatest expression of self-sufficiency (and therefore the highest of all its values) and consequently resulting in not being found ”needy” of anyone or anything.

The question this raises then is, what does Paul mean that we truly “belong” to each other? What does this mean in the context of how I understand the cultural climate resulting in the world’s call to me to be striving constantly to be in “possession” of things? In order that we may receive direction for these questions we must approach them as someone who experientially has tasted what Paul meant when he said that we are now those who “have died and our life is now hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). Paul states as well in Galatians 2:20 that “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

These passages speak to the reality that those who are in Christ are now marked and sealed by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14 you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession-to the praise of His glory), and that the life we now live is not under our control and led by our preference, but is lived in faith that is a byproduct solely of God’s grace. It is only from this place of experiential understanding, due to what has been accomplished on our behalf through Christ by grace, that our allegiance to the cultural value of ownership and possession (control) of our lives can be practically freed and by grace hopefully realigned to the reality that we are apart of a singular body, of which we are apart, that which we do not own, but of which we have been made graciously, a valued part. It debunks the notion and illusion that ownership and possession are what gives me worth and value in this life, and plants firmly the flag of freedom in our hearts to see our value as immovable, solely because by God’s grace, we are apart of His body, we are His children, His heirs.

The illusion is simply this. What gives you value in this world, what proves to those around you that you have succeeded (peoples approval -which is undoubtedly the subconscious measuring tape we all apply), is that through ownership and possession, you have escaped being needy, and therefore have succeeded, because you have achieved what has been valued since the fall of creation, namely control of your life. But ownership and possession are but a false reflection, the illusion of control. It is only went the things that we think we own and possess are threatened, that our lack of control is exposed, and a clear choice is thrust into our path by the Father to either attempt to regain the illusion or step into the gospel reality, the fact that we are not in control, never have been, and never will be.

I saw a bumper sticker once on a carpenter’s truck that said, “borrowing tools is for the weak.” As someone who claims to be a carpenter, I have felt this very pressure exerted at times upon my subconscious. A small voice affirms the bumper sticker, “you are weak if you need to borrow someone else’s tools, you need to have your own stuff, you need to own it, in fact you need to buy two of every tool so you never have to loan out your “personal” tools but have “loaner” tools that “they” can use. Sounds sick huh? But it’s the truth. We are so afraid of being seen as weak, in need, needy, helpless, dependant, that we would even go into massive debt, living in an illusion of self sufficiency, rather than have to face the reality that we can't handle life on our own. Many people live in huge houses, with huge mortgages, with huge car payments, with huge credit-card balances, trying to keep this illusion alive.

It’s odd that we find ourselves surprised when we live like this in our day-to-day lives that we then we wonder why we don’t “feel” more in community with the people who we go to church with, live next to, and work with. Unless there is a recapturing of a healthy dependence upon one another (which is not a modern understanding/experience of neediness) and a biblical understanding of our “belonging” to one another, we will continue to live out vain attempts to foster true community.