"We Need Each Other to Remain Honest"

I don’t think we appreciate enough the role of the community for living faithful and moral lives. If you believe that human beings are sinful, then you know the importance of having people who keep you accountable for your behavior. If you have tried to live an ethical life outside of a community, you know the pressure that those closest to you feel. And if you have gone through difficulty in your life, you know the support that you feel from having a community who keeps in contact with you, prays for you, and encourages you to be persistent in your ethics.

Certainly, we have seen the importance of the community in keeping people accountable during this tumultuous transition we have experienced especially during the last month, but really since the November election in the United States. No matter which side you line up on, and not too many people are in the middle, it has been strengthening to have support of community. Perhaps ironically that has led to increased polarization because people in community have had reinforcement to believe that their positions are the right positions. Still, particularly when there has been questionable behavior and actions on the part of the new administration since January 20, it has helped the party out of power to know they have a community of persons continuing to be a conscience for the party in power.

I have seen this same phenomenon happening in religious communities. Like-minded persons of faith have been able to hold on to their positions because of the reinforcement of others. Again, as in government, the value is neutral, since sometimes the community has helped persons resist change that has moral good, while at other times the faith community has supported doing what is right in the face of opposition. During this black history month, one can see how the movement for civil rights in the fifties and sixties is a great example of this. Christian pastors and laypeople sometimes individually worked at the forefront of the struggle, standing up for their beliefs against the powerful forces that claimed to also be right. But because they had religious communities supporting them they could endure until the larger society accepted (sometimes reluctantly) what they represented.

Faith communities have a lot to stand up for right now in the United States. First, we need to stand up for honesty in government. While all administrations have dishonest folk, the last three and a half weeks have led to a general questioning of whether Lord Acton’s famous quotation is true: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Second, we want to stand up for individual rights within society. When children may fear even having their mother taken away at a moment’s notice without proper measures being taken, certainly the rights of individual human beings are at stake. Third, we want to support those who are resisting rollbacks in protective measures for individuals and groups in society. These safeguards were laboriously and carefully put in place and they should not be overturned in a moment’s notice for the sake of antagonism in politics and government.

We need to channel the wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in our use of the community in keeping us honest. Before his resistance to the Nazi government in Germany he experienced the importance of community life within the seminary community at Finkenwalde. Several years later when he was arrested for taking part in a plot to kill Hitler, he used the community’s strength and support in his life before to keep him going. While alone in prison he could channel what he wrote in 1938 in the book that came out of his community life, Life Together: “God has willed that we should seek and find God’s living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings. Therefore, Christians need other Christians who speak God’s Word to them. They need them again and again when they become uncertain and disheartened because, living by their own resources, they cannot help themselves without cheating themselves out of the truth. They need other Christians as bearers and proclaimers of the divine word of salvation. They need them solely for the sake of Jesus Christ. (Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 5, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996, page 32).

Although our situation is not at this time as treacherous as pre-World War II Nazi Germany we certainly can and should draw strength from our communities of faith. We certainly need each other to be honest. As citizens of the United States both now and at all times we need ethical persons who will hold other people, and even our government, accountable for the truth.