relationships and community on Individualism

We have been so soaked in the individualism of modern Western culture that we feel threatened by the idea of our primary identity being that of the family we belong to-especially when the family in qu...

I often found myself preferring the company of people outside my congregation, men and women who did not follow Jesus. Or worse, preferring the company of my sovereign self. But soon I found that my p...

Today friendship has fallen on hard times. Few men have good friends, much less deep friendships. Individualism, autonomy, privatization, and isolation are culturally cachet, but deep, devoted, vulner...

Everybody is somebody, but nobody wants to be themselves.

The problem is not recognizing the importance of the individual. The problem is the glorification of the individual. When the individual self is glorified over the greater good of the community, right...

There is no such thing as an independent Christian.

Our modern theology, which in many ways has ceased to be personal, i.e. centered on the Christian experience of "person," nevertheless - and maybe as a result of this - has become utterly in...

Far too many people, especially within evangelicalism, think that the individual is all that matters, and that the corporate dimension is a distraction or diversion. Of course Christianity is deeply p...

You can’t worship love and individuality in the same breath.

The problem with individualistic Christianity is what we call “reconciliation without memory,” an approach that ignores the wounds of the world and proclaims peace where there is no peace (see Jer 8:1...

The two most influential characteristics of the modern self—radical individualism and expressive authenticity—create a perfect storm for relationships.

There has been a paradigm shift going on in neighborhoods in the United States since the end of WWII. For decades before the 1940s, neighborhoods were places where people were known and were active. W...

Landmarks Lost For those of us who have been in the path of Hurricane Helene—quite surprisingly, I might add, since the hurricane models even a few hours before landfall had it going about 100-200 mi...

More than 50 percent of Americans live in suburbs, and many of them desire to live a Christian life. Yet often the suburbs are ignored (“Your place doesn’t matter, we’re all going to heaven anyway”), ...

Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles.

The challenge each of these faced in their deconstruction—and what we may face—is walking the tightrope between becoming our own person and honoring our past. In The Homeless Mind , sociologist P...

Selfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doeth.

As people seek out the social settings they prefer—as they choose the group that makes them feel the most comfortable—the nation grows more politically segregated—and the benefit that ought to come wi...

If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about, it is about us. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. That means we MUST ...

He who is different from me does not impoverish me - he enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves - in Man... For no man seeks to hear his own echo, or to find his refle...

True freedom is not found by seeking to develop the powers of the self without limits, for the human person is not made for autonomy but for true relatedness in love and obedience; and this also entai...

Moralistic behavior change done for one's self simply manipulates and leverages radical selfishness without challenging it.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pa...

Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of se...

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...

One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.

Do you remember those birds in Finding Nemo? They get me every time. As they fight for what’s on the ground, they are flying around screaming, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” Never has Disney nailed a picture of ...

A man is hindered and distracted in proportion as he draws outward things to himself.

There is nothing in this world so empty as getting what you want.