"No."
"Sure you don't need an extra shovel?"
"Nope."
This was the conversation I just had with a neighbor after watching them struggle for 10 minutes to get their car out of a snow drift a few feet from my house. I extended the hand of friendship and was denied, more than that, I was responded to but not even glanced at, dismissed as a nuisance while the struggle continued.
A little dejected, I walked back to my house thinking, "what a reflection of how I interact with people sometimes. My preference is to do it by myself and just get it done, even if it means I struggle more in the process."
It's entirely possible that my attempt to be neighborly was justifiably unnecessary or that I had arrived on the scene too late, but my brief interaction gave light to a larger realization. For many, isolation is preferable and community is avoided at all costs.
I see it everyday at my work in a suburban culture, people who have consumed so many material things and surface relationships that they are buried under societal pressure. They seem to always be fighting against the tide of their own mortality and weakness. I see people in urban neighborhoods where I live who have been so damaged and discouraged that they bury themselves under pain, stress, and have given up fighting completely.
I see it in myself and the way I have a hard time letting people into the depths of the real Corey. I see it in the way I tend to be introspective, thinking only of myself, or in my arrogance, dismissing those around me as obstacles to my contentment and gain.
No matter how you slice it, or what factors you ascribe to it (culture, neighborhood, money, looks, success, woundedness, pain, arrogance) the pursuit of self and the disregard of others as good gifts in our lives is staggering.
We were created, man and woman alike, to be good gifts to each other. Our desire is for real relationship, to know and be known. The reality is that the people around us, both those of the same and opposite sex, have many strengths and experiences they bring to the table that we can learn from and be better for having accepted. It's highly important that we be seeking our primary identity in Christ, allowing Him to make us whole, and that we understand the good gift we are while simultaneously accepting the otherness of people around us.
Consider Galatians 5:13-16:
"You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh."
We desire so much, our flesh craves and cries out, taking us under it's control. It's the sinful nature we fight, not each other. Ephesians tells us our battle is not against flesh and blood but the spiritual powers that rule this world. We desire and do not receive, seeking other fallen humans to fill us to capacity, all the while lacking the capacity to fill anyone up ourselves.
It can feel like humanity is sentenced to always desire itself, yet never having the ability to make itself whole. It's what causes frustration and brokenness in relationships, the way we look to the other to meet all our needs. It's why neighborhoods don't thrive, and community institutions fall apart.
Perhaps my neighbor did not need my help, but what I perceived even in the way he denied it says it all. Not even a glance at me! When I act that way toward someone I am speaking and acting from all my relational pain, and while I can't say for certain, I suspect my neighbor was as well.
I spend so much time trying to bring people together in community, that the thought they might not even want it hadn't occurred to me. I spend so much time laboring, that the reality of my longing for respect and affirmation as a man didn't cross my mind.
Here is how we combat the need to isolate, both in ourselves and others.
First:
"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers." - Galatians 6:9-10.
And we gain the ability to do that by death to self:
"Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." - Matthew 16:24
And when we are faithful to do that:
"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus." - Romans 6:5-11
I want to be alive in Jesus. I want to be made whole. I want to be a good neighbor, friend, boyfriend, son, etc and I want to have healthy relationship with those in my life. The way I overcome 25 years living in a fallen world, filled with all sorts of hurt, is by pressing on and not becoming weary. Instead I take up my cross, deny myself, and count myself dead to my sin nature but alive in Christ.
Then in my freedom from being made whole in Christ, I use it not to further indulge myself, but to serve those around me humbly in love. Letting community take it's rightful place in my life and giving up my feeble attempts to journey through life isolated from Jesus and other humans.
Because let's face it, we all need an extra shovel.
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