It wasn’t until I was in highschool that I found out that some people didn’t have best friends growing up. I always had a best friend, or multiple best friends growing up so I assumed everyone had that person who was super close to them all of their life. Someone they got to experience life with and talk to about the deepest things on their heart. Something I took completely for granted all growing up.
In the adult phase of life, the next thing I took for granted was community. At almost every stage of my adult life, I have had some sort of community that has been extremely good and wholesome. Since I turned 18, only about 9 months of it did I not have a solid community (which were by far the hardest 9 months I’ve had in adulthood.
Community is something that most people are searching for, whether they know it or not. Some people pretend that they don’t care. That all they want is to be alone and have solitude. Some people truly are the introverted type that in general prefer to be alone, but even those people crave community. A community of people that they can be themselves around. People that they can love and that love them back. That encourage them and push them forward.
Community is something that was designed since the beginning of creation. When God created man, he said that it was not good for man to be alone. That didn’t mean that all men should be married. It can’t mean that because we have great examples in scripture of people who never were married that were heroes of the faith.
Instead, it meant that we are to have community. We are to have accountability with others. Not to be heretical, I believe that it meant men (and women) are not to live their lives in solitude. Maybe community gives too broad an idea of why that second person was created, but principally, it means that we are not meant to live lives alone.
If we’re not meant to live lives alone, the only logical deduction is that we are to live our lives with others.
Unfortunately, many don’t have others to live their lives with. Or are so desperate for community that they sacrifice their values and standards to be parts of communities that are unhealth for them. I believe this is the root of many gangs. People want a community of people to live life with and gangs allow them to have those people to depend on and live life with.
So often I think, what if Christians were more like gangs? I’m not even joking.
What if there was the level of accountability, support, and backup in Christianity as there was in gangs? Gangs may do 90% of things wrong, but a broken clock is right twice a day. Even the nastiest of criminals did some things right.
In Acts 2, we see Christians after Jesus has just come to earth, dies on their behalf, then risen again into heaven, and the Christians don’t just go about living their everyday life again, they live in community together. Sharing everything with one another. Teaching one another. Worshiping God with one another.
I get excited just thinking about what the community of believers looked like and wonder what on earth it could look like if Christians lived that out today? How much more exciting would following Christ look when you see how much joy and fun His family has? When his children are literally overflowing with the joy that was given to them by Christ?
If you’re a Christian reading this, go read Acts 2 and be inspired by the church. The church in America, in all its flaws, still has hope of being redeemed and sanctified by Christ. How can we be the hands and feet that help to restore the church that God designed?