Community, Genuine & Contrived, Dante, Peck’s Four Stages of Community and the Necessity of Our Ongoing Peirasmós (or Why relationships fail, marriages break apart and communities disintegrate)
[Reading time: 9 minutes]
In the conception of Dante, the perfect, life-giving community that will be experienced in paradise, has a demonic counterpart. And just as there are concentric circles in the Paradiso moving ever closer to the core of the infinite joy of Life Together through and in Christ, so the Inferno is composed of such circles; yet these move one not towards life and joy and wholeness but towards the isolation and misery of the enclosed, walled-off self-life, which has willingly been given over to its own desires.
In short, there is true community, whose irreducible complexity of diversity leads to an infinitely unique, unified whole. In stark contrast, there is false community built upon the deception of the heart (Jer 17:9) and the paralysis of distorted desire (I Jn 2:16-17) , the end of which is the affirmation of the self-life, continual division and a life that becomes a living death.
We can add one more thing:
This life of living death is, in fact, quite predictable. We can, in a certain real sense, control it. Our techniques https://careofthewholeperson.org/blog-1/mdd9xnps267kihjlacq3cygsgv8szh that guarantee specific outcomes function very well here. One may even, as Lewis commented https://barnardsvilleumc.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/ebook-lewis-c-s-the-great-divorce.pdf be an unbelieving bishop who rejects the totality of beauty and fulfillment in Heaven, preferring instead to stay in the Hell of the self-life, giving “important” theological lectures all the while.
A Twofold Question
In the prior three posts on peirasmós, the most well-known occurrence of which comes in the penultimate petition of the Lord’s Prayer—“Lead us not into testing”— https://careofthewholeperson.org/the-life-of-words-hebrew-greek-word-studies/uhghcu9hu8iyphauffyp9iwb1b59rf we may have uncovered (or, more accurately, stumbled upon) a profound truth.
And that truth we will approach with a two-fold question:
a) Do we actually need to be tested?
b) And if so, how can we endure the testing? How can the fires of the trial be those which refine us rather than those which destroy (I Cor 3:12-15)?
As our focus here is not primarily on the individual, spiritual life, but rather on the corporate life together with one another, we will examine peirasmos from the viewpoint of relationships and community (communis in Latin, koinonia, in Greek, meaning that which comes out of service [munus] together [com]).
Part a. Do we actually need to be tested?
In responding to part a. we can answer without any doubt at all, according to the testimony of Holy Scripture, testified to over the generations in the writings of the Fathers (both old and new), that the answer is unequivocally yes.
Yet, there is one proviso, lest we enter into testing fool-heartedly. As Christ Himself declares the disciples on the pathway to the Cross, we can only endure the trials, if we “remain” with with Him in His testing (δδιαμεμενηκότες μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἐν τοῖς πειρασμοῖς μου, Lk 22:28).
Much more can be said, but see here for the testimony of the Church to this reality over the generations. Regarding part b. we will utilize the insights of Scott Peck’s Four Stages of Community https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/rrt_psyc504/readings/Different%20Drum%202.pdf
Stage 1: Pseudocommunity
In examining the first question, Do we actually need to be tested?, we should say right up front that a community which is not tested is not genuine. It is, as Scott Peck makes very clear, a “pseudocommunity.” And, interestingly enough, the essential dynamic of pseudocommunities is conflict avoidance. Members are extremely pleasant, happy, kind, wonderful with one another…in so far as they avoid entering into any area of disagreement.
We know this very well.
In a new relationship, we see the best in the other person from the start. And in a new community, the diversity of people, backgrounds, opinions, approaches, etc. invigorates us.
Then…as time goes on in a relationship, we no longer see the best, but the real, and as time goes on further still, we begin to see the worst. Within a community, the passage of time somehow seems to draws us, whether consciously or not, into some sort of conformity. And the conformity begins to be the ruling operative of community life.
Whereas once the beauty of uniqueness was prized, now it is just, for lack of better words, annoying, grating…a continual thorn in the flesh that keeps the group from a fluid unity that community was supposed to be.
And so, wanting to be loving/accepting/caring, etc., we not only hold back from addressing the growing tensions, but we begin to withhold key elements of the truth about ourselves and our and feelings about the other…all in order to avoid conflict and keep the peace. Individual differences are thus minimized, suppressed or totally ignored.
As a result, the group, on the surface, appears to be functioning well, even thriving. But deeper down, the uniqueness of the individual has been severely compromised, and the unifying growth of genuine intimacy hewn down. In short, we have created a fase (pseudo in Greek) community wherein we no longer need the working of real virtue to deal with difficulties, strife…sin. Or to put it even stronger, we no longer require the inner workings of the Spirit because we got this.
And the result…
Stage 2: Chaos
Superficial happiness and communal stability, driven by conflict avoidance, characterizes the first stage. When, however, the individual differences begin coming to the surface, the group almost immediately moves into chaos. The chaos centers around well-intentioned but misguided attempts to work through the differences.
As such, individual differences start coming out into the open and the group attempts to obliterate them. It is a stage that is both thoroughly uncreative as unconstructive. It is no longer enjoyable. The members begin to feel burdened. Members repond by attacking not only each other but also their leader. A list of faults, hurts is outlined.
And it is common here divisions to happen. One or more members invariably propose a better option (i.e. If we’re running the community, this kind of thing won‘t happen). They theorize that they can create an organization through various techniques that can return the group to…well…the pseudocommunity (which is actually what is desired).
As long, however, as the goal is true community, organization as an attempted solution to the developing chaos is completely futile and unworkable. So that leads to the next stage…
Stage 3: Emptiness (kenosis)
The only way that the community does not dissolve at this point is by entering into what can only be described as emptiness (In Greek, kenosis). And this acceptance, even embrace of, emptiness is, by far, the hardest, the most trying, the most brutal to pass through—and yet, the most crucial, the sine qua non, of true community.
And it is precisely here where we understand a bit more of Christ’s own pathway (ὁδὸς)—The Oho Who truly emptied Himself (ἐκένωσεν—the verb form of kenosis), taking the form of a slave (δοῦλος [doulos])…(Phil 2:7).
From Kenosis to Life Together
If as Bonhoeffer contended in his PhD Thesis, Communio Sanctorum: The Church is Christ existing as community' (which later became the book, Life Together), the central thesis was that all true community comes only through and in Christ.
In particular, it begins with:
A “turning away from the phraseological to the real” (which comes from his last letter written in prison);
And the real moves us towards true
Christian fellowship, which simply IS; for
It predates us
As such, We have no burden to create community
It has already been established by God from all eternity
In His Being
Manifest in His Son
For us
For our sanctification
That we may be like Him
We are thus called to participate in it for our benefit and for His glory
And we learn how to participate in community
Through and In Jesus Christ
Through His Life, Mercy, Love, Forgiveness
Which enables the possibility of community
Of true knowledge of and life together with my brother
Who is who he is Through Christ
We, the, begin to enter into, real community, which is not an illusion
Though that first requires disillusionment with all that is not the tied to the bonds of Christ
With His Word directing us at every point
Not anything else (not our dispositions, nor desires, nor culture, nor social methods, nor psychological techniques, etc)
And the result is continual gratitude
In this frame, there is the spiritual over against the psychic
The Light of God over darkness
Eternal Truth over against transient desire
And Love in and through Jesus Christ that leads to service (munus) first to Him then through Him to others
Disordered desire for gratification in the form of a superficially constructed, community with all of its immediacy becomes slowly and gradually overthrown
And what remains is a community founded upon the Word applied by the Spirit (Mt 7:24) in such a way that it actively produces humble brotherly service that is mediated through Christ
The charisma and control of a gifted leader and all the extraordinary and ecstatic experiences that accompany such a movement all receded into the background
There is now the holy Catholic Church (derived from the words: kata (κατά) + holos (ὅλος), which is to say, that which is “according to the whole”—the entirety of the Christ’s Body who each now have their place.
It is not a man-centered movement, nor an order, nor a society, directed at human ends.
It is the community that Christ came to bring in and through His life, death and resurrection.
This is, in the most real sense, a true community.
We move from Bonhoeffer through Peck to Dostoevsky.
Stage 4: True Community
Passing through the very real and hard reality of kenosis, the community begins to emerge. And this community chooses to embrace not only the light but also life's darkness. Their unity, their love encompasses differences, hurts, transgressions, sins.
When this begins to happen, the group transforms from of a collection of well-meaning individuals into a real community, who share together (com) a true purpose, which is service not to self and one’s own goals, but to one another (munus).
They become willing not to claim their rights, but rather to die little deaths. Even more, they become willing to die together. Life Together becomes a time of group death, group dying.
Yet through this emptiness, this sacrifice, this dying, comes true community.
“In this final stage a soft quietness descends. It is a kind of peace. The room is bathed in peace."
Members begin to speak of their deepest and most vulnerable parts--and others will simply listen. There will be tears--of sorrow, of joy; not analysis; not recommendations; not solutions; not systems.
And it is precisely here where an extraordinary amount of healing begins to occur.
The remaining three questions addressed
So we can close this piece with an application that may effectively respond to the three questions in the title: Why relationships fail; Why marriages break apart; and Why communities disintegrate?
When our mentality is to see the faults, failures, missteps of the other (à la Mt 7:1-5) , to continually hold on to them, and when pushed, to even weaponize them, all the while refusing to let go—the Greek verb for forgive (aphiemi)—of them, then we will ensure that the Infernal community will continue to operate.
There can be a different path, however, when we, as Father Zosimas declared to Alyosha in the Brothers Karamazov, understand who we truly are before one another.
When we truly and deeply recognize that
Each of us is guilty before the other for everything, and I more than any.
And this profound recognition enables a reality where,
Life literally becomes paradise
As we realize that through self-emptying, through the letting go of forgiveness, that
We are all in paradise
And though we don't want to realize it as it is hard and trying,
If we did care to realize it, paradise would be established in all the world tomorrow.
So may it be!