I just finished reading Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a short book on Christian community and fellowship. Basically, to sum the book up in one sentence:oh, oh, we need each other (borrowed from Sanctus Real).

I found this observation to be very interesting. We can’t truly be in community and fellowship unless we’re comfortable being alone. If we’re always needy and clingy when it comes to others, we hinder true communion. But if we come out of a healthy self-awareness, we add to the fellowship rather than drain it.

Also, we can’t truly be alone without being in community. Even when in solitutude, we carry our brothers and sisters with us in our hearts and their prayers carry us. The whole Lone Ranger/Marlboro Man/go-it-alone type Christian is a myth that is exposed in the first storm we face.

I thought this quote from Bonhoeffer perfectly describes the freedom from truly being in open and honest community with others:

“The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.”