When I read Chapter 3, I started thinking about Dietrich Bonhoffer’s concept of “cheap grace.” From my perspective, cheap grace is essentially exactly how it sounds; it is grace that is cheap. It is cheap in the way that it does not cost people anything. I see it as not going beyond. People are not truly taking the call of God into their own lives. One way to describe this is people who only go to church and do little else in their lives as Christians. Cheap grace is living as a Christian without attempting to follow Jesus.
Costly grace, on the other hand, is about sacrificing oneself in some way in living out the Gospel’s call. Costly grace means that we should not just accept this grace as an “easy” thing; we should make it costly to ourselves in some way in what we do, how we live. I see costly grace as taking what Scripture teaches and applying it to our lives. We put what Scripture has taught us into action.
I started thinking about “cheap grace” in terms of “cheap community.” There’s a danger of a parallel reality happening, I think. That is, loving the concept and “warm fuzzies” of being a vowed religious in an intentional community but not living the Gospel’s call in terms of our charisms and the Founding Document. It’s easy for me to join and stay if it doesn’t really impact my life in a way that leads me to go beyond the easy paths and the spiritual and personal comfort zones of community life.
(This post is also a reminder that anyone can post thoughts on any chapter, even if not assigned to blog on that chapter.)
My reading of this chapter coincided with the reading of an article about a new book called THE GREAT DECHURCHING. The book addresses why Americans are leaving churches—formal communities—in droves. The article, summarizing the book, suggests that the reasons may not simply be disagreement with certain teachings, or even scandals, as much as these things have impacted people.
As the article puts it:
“The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success.
Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children.
Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.”
Interestingly, many leave the church not as a deliberate rejection, but as the final result of a long process of being less involved, of “missing” because of busyness and demands until finally there is no connection. And over time the thought of re-connecting seems exhausting, one more item to check off a weekly list of chores/requirements/tasks.
The article then asks:
“What can churches do in such a context? In theory, the Christian Church could be an antidote to all that. What is more needed in our time than a community marked by sincere love, sharing what they have from each according to their ability and to each according to their need, eating together regularly, generously serving neighbors, and living lives of quiet virtue and prayer?
A healthy church can be a safety net in the harsh American economy by offering its members material assistance in times of need: meals after a baby is born, money for rent after a layoff.
Perhaps more important, it reminds people that their identity is not in their job or how much money they make; they are children of God, loved and protected and infinitely valuable.
But a vibrant, life-giving church requires more, not less, time and energy from its members. It asks people to prioritize one another over our career, to prioritize prayer and time reading scripture over accomplishment.
This may seem like a tough sell in an era of dechurching. If people are already leaving—especially if they are leaving because they feel too busy and burned out to attend church regularly—why would they want to be part of a church that asks so much of them?
Although understandable, that isn’t quite the right question. The problem in front of us is not that we have a healthy, sustainable society that doesn’t have room for church.
The problem is that many Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people.
The tragedy of American churches is that they have been so caught up in this same world that we now find they have nothing to offer these suffering people that can’t be more easily found somewhere else.”
Wow!! This so resonated with me and coincided nicely with this chapter that reminds us that REAL Community demands a being present, attending to the real concrete MATERIAL needs of the members so that all live without anxiety and know they are safe and loved and can grow together in love. (If the community is just “spiritual” it won’t last or won’t be of any authentic substance, says Blumhardt.)
So, how to bring all this together?
I think we live in a time when many are caught up in the “workism” our country presents as the deepest reality and the purpose of life. But somewhere along the line, (please God!), people realize the emptiness and exhaustion that come from such a way of life (which is really no life). When seeking something deeper, they seek something relational, something that helps them tend to their entire selves: heart, mind, body, soul.
That is where Community comes in. Any community, worthy to be called “community” tends to the heart,mind, body, soul needs of all its members in very concrete ways. And in such an environment all the members can flourish and the Community itself flourishes as a more authentic way of living, as a Kingdom-of-God-way of life.
“For the sake of the Kingdom” is our motto, our vision, our mission statement. So the more authentically we live in such a way that—even though dispersed throughout the country and living in other countries—we are aware of and tend to each others’ mind-heart-body-soul needs, the more we model an alternative way of life in a workism world, the more we grow into that life ourselves and the more we do our humble part to advance the evolution of the full flourishing of the Kingdom of God.
Reading this chapter I began to ponder the Great Commision.
What does it mean today and to me personally?
Cheap grace is living as a Christian without following Jesus.
The Great Commandment seems the answer. Accept Love, Learn Love, Live Love, Share Love.
You ask a great question! The Great Commandment is definitive guidance in both our internal and external life as a community — and you state it so beautifully.
If we are called into “community,” it is surely not simply a community of Charitists. Our vows and our Order’s charisms call us into a larger world, where being personal with each other and vulnerable and being willing to bear one another’s burdens is a matter of being a true monastic wherever we live.
Robes, rosaries and prayer books don’t make me a monk. Someone at GA said that if EOC disappeared tomorrow, they would still be a “religious.” Hallelujah! Being a monk means believing in the impossible; it means living into our aspirations; it means no longer living just for ourselves. The journey of us as monastics is to find the grace to allow the Holy Spirit to overflow from within, to show us the path we should walk, and discover what gifts have been given to us to use for the Household of God. Within this life-style we can find all sorts of “communities;” and as Charitists we get to share what this is like with each other, what it is like to “ stand in solidarity with every family and neighborhood, every land and nation, with every culture and race throughout the world. We yearn to restore the flow of grace to a broken humanity and a violated creation.”
Yes! Exactly! The Founding Document speaks of both an internal and external call.
The internal is to the care and support of our Companions “Human beings since ancient times have thrived more easily when part of a caring community. Humans blossom in an environment that is affirming, structured, and supportive. Such an environment is as vital to a Companion’s spiritual life as water and light are to a Companion’s physical life.
We take on the task of building just such a community to unite us across the miles, whether we live in community Houses or alone; with family, friends or significant others.”
And it also addresses the external, as you so beautifully described. We need both and one feeds and blesses the other.