“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 34
Radical individualism wants to believe that those who are faithfully living together in community are actually sowing seeds of discord in community. But life together does not mean overlooking everything. One of the basic principles of life together in Christian parish is that we do overlook (in love) a multitude of foibles. But we do not overlook the fact that our neighbor is robbing banks on the weekends, or seducing another man’s wife, or cheating others in how he runs his business. Love in such instances requires confrontation.
But when this happens, the confronted one frequently feels aggrieved. He experiences the confrontation as a violation of the peace of the community. “I thought we were supposed to be living together in harmony!” So the measurement of what is to be overlooked, and what confronted, cannot be the sentiments of the one confronted. But neither can it be the sentiments of those dogged conflict-avoiders, who would rather be dead in a ditch than say anything critical of anyone else.
Scripture is our light in all things, and it is the same with this. What do I just let go? What do I make a big deal out of? Unless a community figures this out, it will not be able to preserve or protect anything. Until we learn to distinguish sin which threatens the whole from sin that does not, we will be unable to defend the whole. And nothing is “off the table” in this-we need to realize that this distinction must be made in how children are brought up, how businesses are run, how husbands treat their wives, how education is conducted, and so on. In each of these areas, we are capable of sin through not minding our own business, and we are capable of sin through tolerating things we should not.