Safety In Numbers
“There is safety in numbers”. Have you ever heard that phrase before? Probably! It’s a common idiom that has been around for a long time and is intuitive or self-evident:
“You are more secure with a familiar and trusted group than you are in isolation.”
This is a phrase that we tell our daughters when we send them off to college in hopes that they will not walk alone at night. This phrase may conjure up images of a wolf prowling around near a herd of buffalo waiting for a sick animal to straggle behind into isolation. Because we understand from the natural world, human history, and from our own experiences that with isolation comes vulnerability.
Yet, when it comes to matters of faith, this idiom often gets tossed entirely out the window and the inverse is applied. There is this assumption that with faith an individual pursuit is the safest path. Just recently I had a conversation where someone quipped, “what you believe is up to you, it’s none of their business”. Or I’ve heard the phrase “my faith is very personal to me”, where the person means that they pretty much believe whatever they want and do not want any other input on the matter.
This is a very Western and Americanized view on the Christian faith. Personal and religious liberty is a foundational American value which I support. Yet, God’s people were never meant to operate in isolation.
What Scripture Says
Jesus’ prayer for believers in John 17 immediately testifies to this hope,
“I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me, and I am in you.”
“Be one” does not mean “individual” but it means “unified all together”. Safety and security in numbers.
Paul continues to echo this hope as he encourages young Christian churches.
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul tells this young Corinthian church,
25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
And in Romans 12 he reiterates this saying,
4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
How do we stay safe?
In my opinion, the rubber meets the road in avoiding vulnerabilities in our faith by staying connected to a local church community. This is attending Sunday worship services with some degree of regularity, being on a serving team, being in a small group, or engaging in a pathway class. These are all ways in which Connecting with Jesus and His Church guards against the vulnerabilities of isolation.
Those individual moments of being at church or small group may seem inconsequential. And like many things in isolation, these single moments may be inconsequential. But gathering to sing, hearing the Word preached, talking in the lobby, or sharing benign details of your week add up to a sum that is much greater than those isolated moments. They develop a firm foundation of faith that is held up by and accountable to the Christian community in which you are immersed.
Humility and Community in Scripture Reading
Single-source information can often be unreliable. In the news, in research, and in understanding scripture. We all have our own biases that will pull us towards our own preferences and pre-conceived ideas about what a passage of scripture means. Particularly if it is 1) confusing, or 2) divisive.
Professor Joel Green, in one of the most challenging books I read in seminary, put it this way, “The Church protects the Bible, and us, from the unwitting temptation to substitute our word for God’s”.
Scripture is timeless and inerrant. Our understanding is flawed and incomplete. When we read, discuss, and learn scripture connected to a church community we are kept out of the echo chamber of our own mind and the groupthink of our own bias.
The Pull of Vulnerability
The unchecked drift of the Christian life is rarely towards a healthy community. We see this time and again with OT Israel. The natural drift of the human condition is straight into the lonely ditch. Safety in numbers does not happen by accident. But what does happen by accident is isolation which leads to a crisis or abandonment of faith.
Get to church.
Read the Bible with somebody.
Connect with Jesus and His Church.