Of the many tensions revealed in Scripture, one of the most important is between the individual and the community.
Neither should obliterate the other.
In some cultures, the community is all important and individuals find their identity out of their position and function in the community. A good person builds and maintains the community and a bad person breaks down the community. This concern for the community is definitely biblical and many of the sins and heresies challenged in Scripture are challenged precisely because of how they destroy community, for it is contradictory to claim to love Jesus and have no concern for other Christians who form part of the one body of Christ (Mat 25:44-46; Acts 9:5; Eph 4:2-6; 1 Cor 8:11-13; 1 Jn 3:11-16, 4:20-21). This makes perfect sense as God is the Father of all creation, who has but one family (Eph 3:14-15, 4:6; 1 Cor 8:6).
However, the extreme focus on community, where the unique identity and importance of the individual is obliterated due to communal concerns and where individuals may not challenge the community, even when it is faulty or criminal, is not supported by Scripture. There are many instances of individuals being anointed by God to challenge the collective when it has become errant, polluted and dysfunctional (Jer 25:2-4; Eze 3:4-9; Zec 7:11-12; Act 7:51-52).
The Biblical balance of the individual within community.
As always the Bible represents the perfects balance and fullness of truth. It presents a challenge to the crass individualism of so much of our western (and now increasingly global) individualistic culture as well as the suffocating communitarianism that exists uneasily side by side with this individualism.
Geographical and historical shifts.
Shifts between individual and communal concerns are not only identifiable geographically (for example talking about Western individualism versus African Ubuntu / communalism), but also historically, when we consider modernism versus postmodernism.
In modernism the individual scientist and philosopher was believed to guarantee truth. Post the failure of modernism, postmodernism tries to find some measure of truth in communal consensus. But all these attempts at guaranteeing truth and life fail because they are ultimately based on the greatest heresy, which goes back to the start of all our problems in Genesis 3. In the Biblical account of the fall (Gen 3:1-6), humankind chose to attempt to have life and knowledge independently of God. It is this independence from God, this humanism (whether individually or communally manifested, whether openly atheistic or disguised within religion) that is the real problem.
God the source and proterctor of both individual and communal concerns.
In all theological and pastoral aspects, then, it becomes vital to consider this tension and not be blinded by either extreme. The way forward is through being restored to God, the creator of all and the source of our life; the One who affirms all that is good and judges all that is bad in human life, both individual and communal. (Hos 6:1-2; Lam 3:40).
Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! (Heb 12:9)
