No Trespassing!

We tend to dichotomize our lives into the private and the public. Regardless of the time we spent in the public, we guard our private lives fiercely, for it is only in our private time and space can we let down our defenses and be our real selves. However, such privatization also includes our private rights and private possessions as well. We demand our right to make our choices, we claim sole ownership to our possessions. We may be part of a religious community, but in reality, we embrace a personal faith and an individualistic lifestyle.

However, Christianity is never a personal faith, but a communal one, simply because we are the images of a trinitarian God. Within the one Godhead, each person of the Trinity lives in constant fellowship with the other two, doing, thinking and speaking nothing apart from the other two. The three persons dance together in such perfect oneness that they are but one God. Therefore, in order to be the images of God, our lives must be lived within the context of a community, a community that strives to dance towards that perfect oneness.

However, nothing comes without a cost, and the cost of this dance is high. In order for a community to journey towards perichoresis, where each life is so intertwined with the rest; everyone within the community can no longer demand a private life but must strive to live in constant fellowship with the rest. One can no longer demand private rights but to let the community decide what is best for the community. One can no longer hang on to private possessions but to relinquish them for the common good of the community. Such was the ideal that the Early Church once pursued but failed. Are we willing to pick up from where they left and dance together towards that ideal one more time? If not the ideal, what else?