Community: the Brokenness We Crave

By some cruel paradox, 8.2 billion individuals crowded onto this planet still ache for community. Despite growing populations and a resurgence in urban migration, it takes more than human proximity to quiet the loneliness each one of us feels in our search for a place to belong. The Survey Center on American Life recently found that one’s quantity of close friends was strongly related to their satisfaction with that number of friends, and so the more close friends people reported, the happier they were [1]. Mere coexistence is not sufficient; we long for deeper bonds of connection and understanding. This yearning is precisely why there is no warmer feeling than walking into a room that gladly shouts your name in welcome, and why we find such stress in boldly attending an event without knowing anyone, eyes furtively glancing about in hopes of resting on a familiar face. Despite a world full of people longing to connect, we struggle to find where we truly belong, places where our craving to be known and received might be satisfied. 

Community meets this innate desire to be in fellowship with one another, to find somewhere that accepts you as yourself [2]. From the Latin root communis, or common, shared commonalities are fundamental to our understanding of community. Membership in such social organizations is dependent on these commonalities rather than personal and unanimous acceptance. This is why communities are more often joined or inherited than constructed through each individual relationship [3]. A residential community, a traditional example, consists of all of the people who live in a particular area, and therefore feel a sense of fellowship. Even more common today are cultural communities, built based on shared experiences, customs, and values, or communities of profession or interest, such as the scientific community or the soccer community. Though you might not have a deep connection with every member, the shared commonality, regardless of geographic nearness, brings a shared sense of belonging and fellowship.

Welcoming people into these social spheres is absolutely critical, as loneliness has been found to be a strong predictor of mental health problems, particularly in university students [4]. Mental health in the college-aged cohort has continued to decrease significantly over time, and the most effective treatments studied are societal support groups [5] [6]. As university students we face these heightened mental health risks, but we also live in a thriving ecosystem of communities. On our campus, the beckoning to settle into circles of belonging is preached a hundred times in a thousand different ways. Vanderbilt has 968 registered student organizations, a proud testament to the diverse communities to be found in this small pocket of Nashville. A 30 second stroll past Rand Wall is all it takes to hear the shouted invitations to pull people in, to bring the female engineers together, to fill all the seats at Friday’s show with fellow theater lovers, and to join cultural associations that embolden your identity and warm your belly with the type of food your mom would make at home. Our university boasts 17 varsity sports teams, over 30 club teams, and more than 40 intramural leagues. Of everyone living on campus, approximately 80% have roommates or suitemates, and everyone is a part of the greater residential community where they live [7]. Seeking to enfold one another into communities is in the fundamental nature of our social souls as much as it is a treatment for our endangered mental state. Scholar Robert Nisbet wonderfully articulated the ubiquitous craving for community as a desire to fill the “great sense of vacuum;” if our craving for community is exposed by the presence of communities created to compensate, then Vanderbilt is both excelling at hospitality and woefully consumed by this existential vacuum [8].

A great perplexity then remains: As much as we need to be known and received in community, we often don’t spend energy engaging in environments where we don’t anticipate we will be personally fulfilled. If this craving is satisfied by community, then one would expect our longing hearts to revel in community every chance they got. Still, silently we enter and silently we leave classes solely intended to check off degree requirements. Scarcely more than a smile is offered to hallmates we regularly see but never get around talking to. Polite “thank you’s” are the only words spoken to the dining hall staff that feed us every day. In all these cases, one humbly assumes other people don’t recognize or care to engage with them, but refrains from asking about their day in what would be a true moment of humility and kindness. Everyday interactions like these don’t lack the commonalities that communities are built on. Instead, they are often neglected because they don’t seem to offer the fulfillment, image, or connections we seek. The commonalities appear too little, too insignificant, and the sense of belonging they would offer in return is deemed too weak.

Other times, the very communities we invest in damage relationships elsewhere [9]. Defining groups based on shared characteristics, good as they may be, draws a line that at times serves to highlight differences with people outside the community. To use a plain example, flat earthers can’t help but see the division between their community of a shared belief and the community of those with differing beliefs. Of course, this division is unavoidable. Moreover, it’s often beneficial. Diversity encourages us to learn more about each other and the world. Yet in order to serve this purpose and benefit from the global community of radically diverse humans, a single community must take care not to encourage exclusion and dissociation outside of the community. Ideologies, habits, cultures, and interests all naturally bring people together, but they host an implicit danger in discouraging engagement in communities that lack those commonalities.

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Ideologies, habits, cultures, and interests all naturally bring people together, but they host an implicit danger in discouraging engagement in communities that lack those commonalities.

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Ultimately, the hesitation to recognize commonalities in overlooked environments or to bridge gaps across differences stems from a misguided expectation of community. Truthfully, we expect the vacuum inside each of us to be filled by community, so we are apprehensive of which communities may offer us our treatment to solitude. How, we reason, could people we barely share any commonalities with, or with whom we hold great differences, fulfill that hole? An over-emphasized need to ‘find yourself’ in a community places massive weight on the people in that community, the culture they create, and the fulfillment they offer. If belonging is to be found in the people we entrust it to, then it is only natural that communities should be evaluated on their expected return in fulfillment. Gross as this economic reduction of personal relationships is, it is a painfully accurate depiction of how communities are viewed: since they require commitment, their value is judged by their return. However, the Christian perspective offers a radically different view on the value of these relational spheres. 

If communities are places to come alongside one another based on shared experiences and values, then they are not only places to be named as members of, but are large networks that prosper from and produce individual relationships. And relationships, invariably, are flawed. Communities will always be broken, imperfect, absent, difficult to find, and even harder to bring together, because they are built of people who are broken, imperfect, absent, difficult to find, and even harder to bring together. But broken things are not worthless, and hard things are not fought for in vain. Community is good, and thanks to God, Christians rest in the knowledge that though the temporary fulfillment of communities we experience in our lives is imperfect and unlasting, they aren’t our only hope. John, a disciple of Jesus, wrote in the book of Revelation that in the new heaven and the new earth the “dwelling place of God is with man” [10]. In Paul the apostle’s letter to the Ephesians, he describes Christians growing into one body in Christ, a metaphor that offers a beautiful image of the deep belonging Christians experience in God’s community [11]. Fulfillment of the vacuum inside each of us comes from community, but complete fulfillment can only come from living in a restored community with God. There is no reason to depend on communities in this world to meet every need or offer ultimate belonging, because they can’t. Expecting imperfect people to perfectly fulfill each other will inevitably lead to disappointment and dismay.

Living with that knowledge and understanding, the Christian is free to engage in community without pressure. Regardless of how hard we search our campuses and cities, we know we will not find a perfect place of belonging. Every community will always be lacking something. From a Christian perspective, that is not a sign to keep moving, but rather a sign to stay and invest in something imperfect.

Therefore, what standards remain for community? Without the expectation of ultimate belonging, community becomes a beautiful opportunity to love and serve other people. For what is a gathering if each person does not spend the time and effort to go? Or a production without the preparation of every individual role? To a Christian, the people you are in a community with need not offer the greatest value of happiness or fulfillment. This freedom allows a fundamental shift in the mechanism with which we define community. Subscribing to a community does not tie one’s value, success, joy, or identity in with that herd. While not completely satisfactory, community still brings us joy and happiness and a place to serve and support other people in return. As Paul writes in his letter to the church in Corinth, the body, or community, of Christians has been “so composed” by God so that each member of the community may care for one another [12]. 

If then, communities are not solely defined by similarities, but a greater shared desire to be together and serve one another, each community does not come at the expense of excluding a larger one. Christians recognize this paradox in which it is possible to be in something but not of it, meaning one’s worth and identity does not come through social structures or relationships. John writes in his biblical account of Jesus’ life that Jesus called Christians to be in the world but not of it. In Jesus’ prayer to God the Father, he states, “They [Christians] are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” [13] Yet, instead of plucking His followers from the ground and sending them to Heaven from the moment they believe in Jesus’ sacrifice for them at the cross, Jesus explicitly clarifies, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world.” [14] Instead, Christians are sent into the world to spread the good news of Jesus to the ends of the earth [15]. Though Christians understand complete belonging is only found in heaven—a perfect community with God—they are still called to engage in this world through communities, broken as they may be. Christians seeking out community among fellow Christians does not exclude other communities and relationships. Likewise, to revisit a cliche example, flat earthers seeking community among flat earthers should not exclude other communities and relationships. On our campus, political, religious, and scientific beliefs should create communities without excluding relationships outside of these commonalities, because belonging to one particular group does not define their individual worth, or capture their ultimate belonging. A person is so much more than any one community they belong to.

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Every community will always be lacking something. From a Christian perspective, that is not a sign to keep moving, but rather a sign to stay and invest in something imperfect.

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This concept is revolutionary in a culture that tends to steer us away from people we don’t agree with or whom we perceive as bad influences. For good reason, we take care to surround ourselves with people we aspire to be, but for less good reasons we fear the public image we invoke by joining communities of people we don’t want to be associated with. When motivated by selfish intentions, communities are treated as markers of social status and personal achievement. However, Jesus could not have lived further from that reality! The imperfect people that he chose to be His friends and followers were poor fishermen, hated tax collectors, disgraced prostitutes, and ridiculed societal outcasts [16]. A believer in Jesus then should likewise invest and serve in communities of all kinds of people without fear their own value and worth will be tarnished. For a Christian, identity and value comes from a relationship with God. No broken community on earth can change that.

This is not to say that it is good, encouraging, or uplifting to be constantly engulfed in a community of people whose character cuts others down. This is to say that even in the case that a Christian finds themself in such a community, they are able to place their worth and identity in something else! There exists great hope in the fact that we can find our true belonging in the perfect community of God, despite the broken communities we find ourselves in. 

In a world that is closing in on itself and becoming more and more individualistic with each passing day, Christians feel the liberating freedom to invest in communities with abandon, without regard for the fact that they may be associating with the “wrong” people. Such freedom comes from an understanding that the vacuum inside of each of us cannot be filled by communities of fellow empty people. Communities in our campus, city, and world are imperfect images of the perfect community each of us longs for—a community that fully knows and accepts us, and loves us for all of the unifying commonalities we share and the unique differences we celebrate. Such a fate of utopian fulfillment and belonging is the eternal community God has created for all who believe in Him: a restored heaven and earth in His dwelling. While we await that perfect community, we are blessed with the abundance of communities on this planet in as many contexts as imaginable, and while inevitably imperfect, they are such a gift. Communities are beautiful opportunities to love and serve other people, to come together and celebrate the unifying factors that tie each of us to one another, and to learn from the differences both inside and outside of these societal groups. An existential perspective of community allows us to grow closer together through our brokenness with expectations that salvation will not come through these communities, but for them.

References

1. Daniel A. Cox, The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss – The Survey Center on American Life, June 8, 2021, https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-american-friendship-change-challenges-and-loss/.
2. Loril M. Gossett and Phillip K. Tompkins, “Community as a Means of Organizational Control,” in Communication and Community (Routledge, 2000).
3. Carey H. Adams, “Prosocial Bias in Theories of Interpersonal Communication Competence: Must Good Communication Be Nice?,” in Communication and Community (Routledge, 2000)., pg 39.
4. Thomas Richardson et al., “Relationship between Loneliness and Mental Health in Students,” Journal of Public Mental Health 16 (June 2017), https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMH-03-2016-0013.
5. Olivia Betty Ellard et al., “Review: Interventions Addressing Loneliness amongst University Students: A Systematic Review,” Child and Adolescent Mental Health 28, no. 4 (2023): 512–23, https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12614.
6. Sarah Ketchen Lipson et al., “Increased Rates of Mental Health Service Utilization by U.S. College Students: 10-Year Population-Level Trends (2007–2017),” Psychiatric Services (Washington, D.C.) 70, no. 1 (2019): 60–63, https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201800332.
7. Around 1,217 students out of 5,446 living on campus live in hall singles (without roommates or suitemates)
8. Robert Nisbet, The Present Age (Liberty Fund, 1988), https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/nisbet-the-present-age.
9. Adams, “Prosocial Bias in Theories of Interpersonal Communication Competence.”, 39
10. Revelation 21:3
11. Ephesians 4:15–16
12. 1 Corinthians 12:24–26
13. John 17:16
14. John 17:15
15. John 17:18, Acts 13:47, Matthew 28:19
16. Matthew 4:18, Matthew 9:9–10, Matthew 21:32