Am I My Brother’s Keeper?

Such was the question Cain posed to God after God approached him asking where Abel was. Of course God already knew the answer, proven by His rebuke of Cain immediately following, so it seems God was looking to make known something else. But what?

Actually, we do not have to dig far to find the answer. I touched on this before, back in February 2009, in a discussion on the community aspects of Salvation. The point made then was that salvation is not just an individual affair, but by its nature saves us into a community. The main passage noting this is from Genesis 2:18 when God comments “It is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him a helper fit for him.” Just as I stated before, while the emphasis is on the institution of marriage, it also introduces man’s need to live in community with other humans. So when we come to Cain’s rhetorical comment, understanding the gravity of his sin becomes even greater, and while we may have never committed murder, we find that we too can be guilty of another sin which Cain committed.

God created us to look out for one another, to be each other’s “helper.” Throughout Scripture we find various “one-another” commands, all geared toward helping each other get through life. The idea is loving support, being there for each other in both good and bad times. Praising each other for good things done and rebuking when we allow evil to creep in. In effect, to be each other’s keeper. We are created to live in community with each other, and the breakdown of this communal living is what is so grotesquely on display in Cain’s statement. May we not fall into that same trap.

Community Salvation

Being part of a culture that promotes both community and individuality, I am torn at which is the better way. Consider this quote by R. Banks;

The Gospel is not a purely personal matter. It has a social dimension. It is a community affair. To embrace the gospel, then, is to enter into community. One cannot have the one without the other.

Because of this, I am forced to ask a question; is individualism truly a part of the intended nature of man, or is a focus on the individual a result of the Fall? When considering what is good, as exemplified in the Fruit of the Spirit and the beatitudes, the focus seems to be on the other, on the community and not on self. But when studying the works of the flesh in Galatians 5, and other mentions of types of sins, the focus can always boil down to a personal, self-interest. My culture tells me that the promotion of self, the looking out for the interests of the self as priority are deeply ingrained and the result is a desire to rectify any self-interested promotion. One might argue; isn’t the promotion of the betterment of self ultimately a benefactor in the interests of the community? By making myself better, am I not improving the community to which I belong as well? In the Christian context, if I make myself a better Christian personally, then I will automatically influence those in my Christian community and thus cause that community to benefit. This reasoning seems flawed, for the interests are still self-focused and therefore in some way a work toward boosting the personal ego – a move away from biblical humility.

One example I have encountered is in the learning to become and evangelistic person. Numerous hours of class time are spent studying methods and sometimes through role-playing, those methods are practiced out. But those I have met who are truly successful evangelists did not learn through class training, but “on-the-job” mentoring. They can point to someone who took them out with them witnessing, and through that example and the pressure to then try it themselves while being coached caused the person to learn and grow. The class room method is more focused on personal development through self-will, while the mentor method is focused on development within community. The methods used through communal development are more laborious, but they also tend to be more successful.

The result of examples such as these leads to the conclusion that self is in fact not the better way. God created man to operate in community. Consider this, before the Fall, is everything God creates called “good?” No, for God points out in Genesis 2:18 “It is not good for man to be alone.” Now granted this serves as the introduction to God showing man his need for marital companionship in particular, but it demonstrates a more fundamental need than even that; and that is community. Then, at the moment of the Fall, the couple became self-aware, and their focus was no longer on the relationship of the community, but on the inadequacy of the self. God, in seeing before the Fall, man’s need for a help-meet, was not merely sexual or for the sake of companionship, but communal as well. Communal interest was experienced between God, man, and woman, but when that communal relationship was destroyed, self became the primary focus.

Therefore, the primary interest of the church should not be the improvement of the self; the quest to find personal satisfaction in life based on self-developed opportunities and actions, but focused on a renewal of individuals focused on the other; i.e., the community. I am finding myself agreeing with Tom Holland in Contours of Pauline Theology when he writes;

Thus, in Christ's death, there is not only a dealing with the guilt of sin and its consequences, but also the severing of the relationship with sin, in which unregenerate mankind is involved. It is an experience that encompasses the individual, but it is much more than solitary salvation. It is the deliverance of the community by the covenantal annulling effect of death...Having been delivered from membership of 'the body of Sin', the church has been brought into union with a new head and made to be members of a new body, 'the body of Christ'. (p. 110)

Salvation’s focus is communal as well as individual. It is individual in that it deals with the sin problem in each man, and that each man must come into relationship with Christ to experience deliverance. But it is also communal in that Salvation is a bringing a person into a communal relationship with the Trinity and the body of Christ – the Church.