# Individualism's Not the Problem--Community's Not the Solution



## PuritanCovenanter (Jul 22, 2008)

Here is an interesting article from MODERN REFORMATION by Jonathan Leeman.

http://www.modernreformation.org/documents/leeman.pdf




> *Individualism is the problem. Community is the solution.
> *
> That's what they are saying. First the philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, psychologists, and theologians were saying it. Now I hear pastors, church leaders, and impressionable young seminarians saying it. Individualism is what bedevils culture and church both; community is what will save them.



How many times have you heard this bunk? Enjoy the article.


----------



## Davidius (Jul 22, 2008)

I think having more community would be very good.


----------



## PuritanCovenanter (Jul 22, 2008)

Read the article. It isn't written against Community.


----------



## Pergamum (Jul 22, 2008)

I read the article. I wasn't impressed. 

I do think greater community is needed. Also, people do gather into churches for fellowship, not to voluntary submit to more authorities in their life. Also, the Tirnity IS, indeed, a great modal on which to look to to see life in community.

The article is simply not very persuasive. What is he for, what is he against and what is his main point since he DOES admit that we do have a problem of individualism and he does admit that once someone repents they will join a community.


Individualism IS a problem in the West. We rarely practice the hospitality we see in the NT because it would require us to act more like a community. The solution IS repentance and a sign of repentance is better body life, i.e. better community. Not THE solution but an evidence of the solution.


----------



## PuritanCovenanter (Jul 22, 2008)

Maybe I appreciated the article more and understand it from a perspective that is in relation to the New Paul Perspective and how it redefines justification as being a member of the body of Christ. The emphasis has been misplaced in the doctrine of what the NPP defines as justification (that justification is about corporate identity than on individual salvation) and the individual has been removed so that the understanding of their view of justification (as being brought back into a corporate fold) has been replaced for an individuals salvation. 

Here are a few sections that I found very relevant. 



> The problem with the modern self is not merely that it's "unrelated." It's rebellious. Not just disengaged, but defiant. Not just independent, but insubordinate. Where Yahweh, the maker of heaven and earth, described himself to Moses as the selfdefining, predicate-less "I am" (ego sum in the Vulgate), the ground of all reality, Descartes' method effectively shoved Yahweh aside, making his existence (and God's!) a predicate of his own thinking mind (cogito ergo sum). He established a philosophical method for asserting that we are like God, knowing good from evil. Descartes' move, like Adam's, did not merely break a relationship; it broke God's law or Word. The implications are not merely personal, but judicial. It's not just a friend who is cast off; it's a Lord and Judge. The philosophical methods we associate with modernity and postmodernity, in a sense, whisper the same line whispered by the snake in the Garden (Gen. 3:5). What the shift from pre-modernity to modernity signified, really, was that this satanic whisper gained a moral and philosophical credibility in the so-called Christian West (even if it had always been believed and practiced). In other words, the Enlightenment did not bring us radical free agency and contractualism. Genesis 3 did. The Enlightenment legitimized it.
> 
> If the distinctive failure of our era is in fact a failure of "due relatedness," then we will have to assign the magnificent weight of God's eternal Lordship and exquisite holiness to that flimsy little adjective "due." We have indeed failed to relate to God. Yet it's how we have failed to relate to him that counts. We have failed to obey him and those who would mediate his authority to us. We have failed to listen to his authoritative Word. We have failed to image his character and glory.
> 
> ...



Here are the topics that he then addresses as a reorienting us with the full truth...

*Reorienting the Doctrine of Sin*

*Reorienting the Doctrine of Christ's Work
*
*Reorienting the Doctrine of the Church
*
*Reorienting the Doctrine of God*

And then he gives the true solution to the problem.


> *The Real Solution: Repentance*
> 
> Western culture today is "individualistic," no doubt about it. But I believe there's a difference between a clinical-sounding sociologist's word like "individualistic" and a pulpit-pounding fundamentalist preacher's word like "disobedient" or "hates authority." But that's what individualism is. It's plain old disobedience to God. We won't get very far if we don't pull off these secular masks and call them by their old-fashioned, Sunday school-sounding names. Loneliness is not the problem. A refusal to live life on anyone else's terms is. Another way to put all this: we're not dealing with a relationship problem, but a worship problem.
> 
> ...





Hope this clears it up.


----------



## InevitablyReformed (Jul 22, 2008)

I thought the conclusion was good. He believes that what we call "individualism" is a symptom of the real problem which is disobedience. I tend to agree. We conservatives attack individualism as if it were the root, but I think he correctly observes that the real root problem is refusal to bow the knee to the Lord Jesus, repent, and submit.


----------

