Life Together: The Cost of Community

Today's Reading

Read Acts 2:42-47: "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers... And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need."

Then read Hebrews 10:24-25: "And let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near."

Reflection

In 1938, a year after The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer published Life Together — a short, intense book based on his experience running the illegal Finkenwalde seminary. If The Cost of Discipleship is about following Christ individually, Life Together is about what that following looks like when lived in community.

Bonhoeffer's first and most devastating insight is this: "He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter." Everyone comes to community with a vision of what it should be — warm, supportive, intellectually stimulating, spiritually deep. And when the actual community fails to match the dream — when people are petty, boring, hurtful, or simply different from what you expected — the temptation is to withdraw, criticize, or leave.

Bonhoeffer calls this idolatry. You are worshipping your idea of community rather than loving the actual people God has given you. And this idolatry is destructive precisely because it sounds so spiritual. "My church just isn't deep enough." "I need a community that challenges me." These may be legitimate observations — or they may be symptoms of the very disease Bonhoeffer diagnoses.

The community described in Acts 2 was not a collection of like-minded people who enjoyed each other's company. It was a community that sold possessions, shared everything, broke bread together daily, and devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. It was costly. It was inconvenient. It required the daily death of self-interest. And it was, Luke tells us, accompanied by "awe" — because the presence of God was palpable in their midst.

Hebrews 10 adds urgency: "not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some." Even in the first century, some believers were drifting away from the gathered community. The author of Hebrews sees this not as a lifestyle preference but as a spiritual danger. Christian faith is inherently communal. You cannot follow Jesus alone any more than a coal can burn outside the fire.

Going Deeper

Bonhoeffer adds a second warning: community is not a place to hide from yourself. "The person who comes into a fellowship because he is running away from himself is misusing it." True community requires that you bring your real self — not your polished, presentable self — and allow others to know you as you are. This is terrifying. It is also the only path to genuine fellowship.

The cost of community is the death of your idealized version of it and the willingness to love real, flawed, difficult people — because that is exactly what Christ does with you.