Sunday: Social and Yet Solitary
WEEK 16
SUNDAY
SOCIAL AND YET SOLITARY
Ephesians 2:1-5
As has been pointed out, we cannot escape the herd by running away from it physically or by retreating inwardly in spiritual isolation; nor can we stay in it and fight it by being always on the defensive, taking a negative attitude toward everything it stands for or proposes; nor can we succumb to it, for if we do, we become a herd-centered person with all personality and morality flattened out of us. The only Christian attitude we can take is to surrender the herd to God.
Does that mean that we live in God apart from the herd? No, it means that we go more deeply into the herd, but now we go in emancipated. Our inmost souls are cleansed from herd dominance. It has been replaced by God dominance. God is Lord, not the herd. Now emancipated, we can love the herd, because we love something more than the herd. It falls into its right place. This keeps us social and yet keeps us solitary. We have a solitary supreme loyalty, and yet we have a secondary social loyalty to the herd.
This relationship is seen in the commission of Paul, “I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to open their eyes” (Acts 26:17-18a). He was sent to people, therefore social; but he was delivered from people, therefore inwardly solitary. You cannot serve people unless you are delivered from people. For instance, if you are a pastor under the dominance of the herd, afraid of what they will say about you or think of you, you are tied up and unable to contribute to them. Only as you walk out of your solitude, where you have bent the knee to God supremely, are you able to stand straight and unafraid and relaxed before people. Now you can see straight horizontally, because you have first seen straight vertically. Now you can pour out your emancipated love to people, for you have a hidden shrine within where you bend the knee only to the Lord. Only free one can make others free.
The Christians in the Acts were inwardly free—free from the herd—therefore able to change and give to the herd. And how!
O Lord, I thank you that only as I become intensely solitary, can I be intensely social. Cleansed of a thousand conflicting loyalties, I can now give and give freely. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “They say . . . ; what will they say? Just let them say.”