I'm in the thick of "prepdom" and teaching - the depth & height of it all I suppose. I love the classroom and stretching those teaching muscles that may have atrophied some over the summer. What is community? It is a question we are investigating in my Interpersonal Processes (Communications) class.
I believe I introduced those few readers of "Musings" to a bit of Martin Buber's take on community but here's a quick refresher: Buber (yes - he has rather unfortunate name) sees three types of relationships on our planet - relationships with people we view as objects (I-Its), people we acknowledge and interact with at some level (I-You), and people that we actually connect with and express ourselves, our beings to (I-Thou). On a continuum it is a move from an impersonal relationship to a interpersonal relationship. The difference is as radical as the relationships you have with your gas jockey to your spouse/love interest.
I believe that we have all been created for relationship and for community. We all long to feel acknowledged, to be more than simply an object or corporate pawn. We all desire to love and be loved. Without love - we have no hope and no faith in humanity or in a relevant concept of God.
I'm sure many of you were struck with shock & horror when viewing CNN or whatever news medium you check daily by the atrocities of the terrorists in Chechnya. How could these extremist Muslims actually kill innocent children, teachers, and parents? For that matter - how can anyone kill another human being?
I think the only way that we as humankind can actually kill each other is when we deny another's existence. In other words - we can only kill when we treat others as not human, as objects, as its. We obviously have no problem with killing "enemies" in a video game - no one actually lost their life, these computer generated people have no job to go back to or families to feed or purpose in life. They are simply pawns for our perhaps warped amusement. Fighter pilots who flew missions over Iraq do not see people on the ground below but strategic targets.
Here's another random thought - maybe we are killing people daily unintentionally by our not acknowledging their existence. Maybe by not striving to get to know our waiters, our bus-drivers, our custodial staff - we are causing others to question their self-worth?
I-Thou relationships admittedly are rare and it is obviously impossible for us to have each one of our relationships be that deep. But I think our world would change radically if we would at least attempt to treat people we meet as more than objects, that we recognize the importance of being acknowledged and treating others respectively.
G
1 comment:
Life Together is definitely on my book shelf - although I may need to take it down to refresh myself again with his wisdom. I recently bought a book that has collected a number of Bonhoeffer's sermons on the Psalms. I hoping it will prove to be useful for my Psalms course later in October.
You are very right that all relationships and clearly community has been scarred by sin. I recently put my class through an interesting experiential exercise - I got each student to take out a blank sheet of paper and write down something that they had never told anyone, something that they had kept hidden. They wrote it with pencil unidentified and disguised their writing so that I would not recognize it. I then gathered the papers and shared their responses to the class.
Comments ranged from "I have tried to commit suicide" to "I have committed adultery" to "I don't think people like me" to "I have been dealing with anorexia" to "I struggle with pornography." It was hard to read these struggles but the class remarked that they experienced a relief in actually writing their hidden struggle down.
I shared with the class that this exercise was an opportunity for community and in a sense a representation of the ideal church. A place in which we share each others' burdens without condemnation. Unfortunately - most churches are not safe enough for people to share those things which we hide from others & from God. In fact - I'm not sure many of us would have jobs if we shared what we all struggle with.
Thanks for your thoughts Bruce!
Post a Comment