Too Much Community

If you keep telling someone that is shy and introverted by design (yes, design.) that an independent life is "selfish", that community is where it's at, that you need to be getting to those community groups and open up about your deepest struggles so everyone can pray about them (Did I mention the part about things getting back to the elders?), that you need to be at all these events, parties, Sunday School, be at church all day Sunday, etc. all you're doing is beating them up in a place that is already very painful. It makes it harder and harder to enter in at any level because attention is the last thing a socially ambivalent person wants and when I make an effort and went it felt like everyone was all "Gee, so you decided to actually show up this time."

Well, why wouldn't they feel that way when there is this tone set by the pastor that says people who like to be alone (though I am rarely alone, I do have 10 children.) are selfish and buying into a false idea of American Individuality. I wonder if the desert Fathers knew they were buying into American Individuality. Some people like to have time alone to think....

And there's the thing. Thinking. People can't be trusted to order their own time and decide what level of social involvement is right for them. They need the church to determine that. Cults don't like that, do they? People spending time alone, thinking.

Kind of threatening.

Is Christianity something that can work for all kinds of people? Or just the ones that fit a certain social construct. Is the purpose of a church life there to mold people into a certain social form? When a church becomes a place where there is a spoken or unspoken rule about certain characteristics that people must have, personality wise, finances, education, etc. in order to be a "successful member" is it really a church at all? Or a social club where certain personalities are just reinforcing to each other their superiority over those who "just can't quite keep up."