Forgive the abrasive title and I don’t mean it in a salvation aspect of course. I’m talking about a unity aspect. My whole life there have been cliques and borders even within the church. And now it seems like the bounds of personality are pushing people apart.
Maybe the fact of life is that we will bot get along with all people. Perhaps we can live side by side if we limit contact but true engagement with all people may just be a naive fantasy.
Perhaps just having Christ in our lives us not enough to bring people together. Ideally Christ calls us to love all and adapt to each other, leaving parts of ourselves mutually in order to achieve harmony. And when we can’t always do that we learn to love each other despite our negatives and differences.
But without mutual interests beyond Christ… Maybe simply having Christ isn’t enough. And maybe those personalities just clash… Maybe cultures clash… Maybe the ways we have insecurities clash…
Maybe we weren’t ready for that. Perhaps some just aren’t meant to get along. Perhaps we know just how to press each others buttons or know how to convince ourselves of our own Insecurities. Some of us are too blunt, and some never say a thing. Some of us are ticked off by the slightest and some of us never show enough. Some of us explode while others withdraw. But none of us are truly healthy and mature so that we might see beyond ourselves, have a healthy sense of self and god, and live with others
What happened everyone? Was it too idealistic? Did we not work enough? Did we give up to early? Or are we just not meant to have that?
January 24, 2011 at 7:19 pm |
Why doesn’t college group work anymore? I think it’s best just to say why I personally don’t have interest in Saturday night anymore. It’s not interesting to be there. There’s a Bible study, then a clique of people who spend the night singing Christian songs together (and before that yugioh) while the others sleep or do their own thing. My last few times there were boring as I looked for something to do. I can entertain myself better at home.
The Bible study is uninspired. My thoughts on why this might be: The discussion is dominated by people who are combative and can’t understand, are unwilling to consider, and/or are averse to alternate points of view. People ask unnecessary, simple questions that disrupt the flow of conversation. People seem incapable of or unwilling to engage the discussion at a deeper level or challenge their beliefs.
Maybe in an effort to make the study more devotional it swung too far in the other direction and there isn’t enough academic material to teach something new and stimulate better discussion. It almost feels like going to an intervarsity study: mostly devotional and oriented around the “insights” of the non-qualified and un-seminary-trained.
Sure I’m an outlier, a non-conservative who doesn’t find singing Christian pop songs entertaining. But I think it’s a problem because many visitors won’t be very interested either if they don’t fit that mold. I don’t see the Christins and Melissas and Taylors and Ginos, college group’s fringe members and potential newcomers, having interest in being part of this group unless they fit into the clique.
January 26, 2011 at 8:03 am |
That is interesting to mention Kris. I didn’t know. Maybe its not possible to make something everyone wants to be part of, no matter how much we incorporate, or little.
That them poses a question, “What kind of people do we want this group to be focused toward?” Dynamics changed when newer people began to come and culture changed, Nhien came, the youth came, Nhien and Evan started talking, TT came, etc.
January 26, 2011 at 8:06 am |
Some people want deep. Others want applicable. Few want deeply applicable. Some can’t follow the deeply applicable, let alone the deep, like me.
January 26, 2011 at 10:23 am |
@Phil:
You’re right that you can’t form a community or culture that everyone can be a part of. And to move in that direction, to create a more diverse community, would mean having tradeoffs.
I think it’s fine for everyone to sing together and worship God if they want. Same with the yugioh. It’s what the college group naturally chooses to do because that’s what interests the members. If college group is to be a homogeneous, insular social community (which isn’t necessarily bad) then there’s no problem.
But in my opinion, if college group wants to be more inviting to outsiders, it should work against its current habits and adopt activities/create a culture where non-like-minded people would be more welcomed and can also participate.
That brings up the question of college group’s social goals. Does it want to reach out to others who may be different from them, even if it means sacrificing the benefits of homogeneity? Or does it prefer to be a small, tight-knit fellowship of similar people who want to grow, learn, and have fun together? I think either direction can be a good one and it’s college group’s choice where it wants to go from here.
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You’re right that college group has a new dynamic. The new college group is not objectively better or worse than previous college groups. It has strengths and weaknesses compared to what the group was in the past.
My opinion is that the Bible study, tangents, and discussions were more stimulating in previous college groups. I think although people in the discussions had different viewpoints and different amounts of depth/insight to their thoughts, everyone contributed and learned things. I offered some guesses at what happened but it’s hard to pinpoint why things changed.
I think everyone wants a deeply applicable discussion, because anything that is truly deep has practical meaning for our lives, and anything we’d want to apply to our lives would be deep in truth and transformative power. I don’t think a person’s intellectual leanings are what hinder deep and/or applicable discussion, but the roadblocks in our minds. Roadblocks like beliefs we can’t bring ourselves to question, an inability to see things from another person’s point of view, the need to prove I’m right, etc.