Who's telling who?

All the theological conversations I've had of late have proven one thing to me:  I really don't have my mind made up on a wide variety of issues.  Maybe, it would be more accurate to say that I refuse (for the time being) to make up my mind.  Several friends have challenged me of late, generally regarding the Trinity, and I have come to see that really all I know are my objections to certain theologies.  I haven't taken a stand for a way of thinking, so much as taken a stand against what I will not believe.

In our contemporary context we often hear talk of how individualistic our society is, and how this is something that needs to be remedied.  We need to return to community and regain the social aspect of our humanity.  This is something I generally will give my unconditional agreement to.  Lately though, I've been wondering if we haven't partially misdiagnosed the situation . . . at least as far as America goes.   On the one hand I agree that the Western context has atomized social groupings for the sake of political control.  Where other countries in the world use their spare time to form power groups to influence the culture at large, Americans rush home after a long days work in order to not miss their favorite TV shows.  We spend our spare time desperately trying to listen to "what's important" rather than desperately trying to persuade others around us what really is important.

But this is where in my mind the other hand comes into play.  In this setting, I think it's actually the opposite of what we often hear:  there is a severe lack of individuality in our culture.  I've heard it said before that modernity was marked by the autonomous thinking individual, and now our postmodern setting is supposedly marked by people trying to return to communal living.  I agree that there is a level of truth to this, but it is a minor truth that in my opinion distracts us from the greater discord.  I think "post-modern culture" plays to the sense of loss that so many feel in not being part of a community, and offers cheap community at the cost of personal autonomy.

Modernity convinced us we didn't need anybody.

Postmodernity points out that we don't have anybody, and so don't need ourselves.  Conform while you still can!

A friend of mine has talked to me (and others) about the need for community a lot over the past few weeks.  He's big on narrative theology.  His point is that the community comes together to tell our story to ourselves, and that the community has a say in every person's story.  We tell each other who we (each) are.  In a sense I agree completely, and in another I completely don't agree.  

The problem is that there is no simple trade off here.  Whether we sacrifice our individuality for the sake of community, or forsake our community for the sake of autonomy, both will result in the loss of our humanity.  There is no true preference for one over the other.  Individuality is legitimate only in the context of community and a community is formative only insofar as it encourages us as individuals.  

It's a dialectic.  We exist in the tension between the two concepts, and to fail at either is to lose both.

This is my problem with the narrative community.  I understand that I know myself only by seeing myself in the Other.  I get the argument there.  But, I find that this is the thin ice where we often unknowingly step into conformity, which in my mind is the sacrifice of individuality for the sake of false community.  I know this based on the fact that I grew up church of Christ, where every congregation is autonomous and autonomy among members is a cardinal virtue . . . and yet on the whole it has a tendency to be one of the most grossly conformist denominations in existence.  We preach autonomy and fail to see the nauseating irony that everyone looks and acts the same.

I find this to be disturbingly true for Western culture at large.  I think what is needed is not one remedy or the other, but to stretch ourselves between the two.  I perceive that most of the people I grew up with need to pursue true individuality and autonomy in their own thought and spirituality . . . I say that because I see that as the only way that community could be possible.  

If I'm going to contribute to the communal recollection of the story of Jesus which is the center of our faith, I can only do so as an individual who has sought God in total honesty on an intra-personal level.  Otherwise the narrative we create will be redundant and lifeless.

In other words, it is true that I only know myself based on who my community tells me I am.  My autonomy cannot define me.  I need others for that.  Yet, the story that the community is centered on matters only so far as I the individual am liberated to tell it as I experienced it.  The story the community tells itself becomes true in me as I am freed to tell it afresh.  The relevance, the truth, of the community's story hinges on the voice of the individual.  Just as the individual's self-understanding, which liberates him into autonomy for the community is dependent on the words and actions of the people that surround him.