There is an axiom in mathematics that a sum cannot be greater than its parts. While I don’t want to argue with it as a principle of mathematics, I know it doesn’t hold in relationships. And relationships can’t be reduced to formulas anyway.
I have been in too many groups – some large, some small – where things happened that were beyond the combined powers of the persons present.
Cowards have become bold. Liars have become truthful. Defeated and dispirited people came alive and found a reason to live.
Something happens in the context of interaction with other human beings that simply cannot happen when people remove themselves from one another. And that is the concern I want you to think about for a moment.
Yes, I know about 9/11 terrorism at the World Trade Center. I know about the dangers from criminals closer to Nashville. And I have locks on my doors. There are reasonable precautions any thinking human being will take to protect herself from harm or to guard his property from theft. But some precautions are unreasonable.
To be so cautious (as the man was in the fast-food place today) that “Hello!” startles and unnerves is unreasonable. To be so frightened (as the woman was at the hospital a couple of weeks ago) that one cannot get on an elevator when it opens to reveal a man already inside is preposterous. To be so predisposed against people of other races (as a man admitted to being on I-65 recently) that he would not accept help from someone of a different color is indefensible.
A study released several years ago claims that people without social and emotional support are more than twice as likely to die following a heart attack as people with caring friends. A study of 194 men and women revealed that six months after having a heart attack, 53 percent with no social and emotional support were dead, 36 percent who had one source of support had died, and only 23 percent with two or more sources of support had died.
Our culture is losing its sense of civility and community. Too many of us are pulling back into shells of isolation. We are losing the capacity to care for one another. God didn’t make us to live that way.
It may not fit a mathematical equation, and it defies explanation in words.
Yet it is a reality. And church is the one group above all others that must live the reality of community and model it to others. Some of the connections come in large-group events like worship. More get formed in smaller groups such as a Bible class or covenant group or house church.
Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:25)