God wired us for community so that we could grow in love for one another and for Him. But what happens when are surrounded by selfishness?
=============
The Principle of Social proof: “The principle of social proof states that one important means that people use to decide what to believe or how to act in a situation is to look at what other people are believing or doing there.” (quote from pg. 138, Influence: Science and Practice (5th ed.) by Robert B. Cialdini (2009; Pearson Education Inc.).
Community and the Law of Love
One of the fundamental consequences of a world made according to the Law of Love is that we were made to live in community. We grow into one another as we ourselves move toward perfection. We cannot be saved and sanctified apart from our brothers and sisters because love demands an object and grows through reflection. Reminders of this abound in our theology. For example:
God Himself is the great Three-in-One, a community of love and perfection. Everything else is a reflection of this union of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (One God).
The Church is the loving union of believers into One Body, the Body of Christ. This is realized in its fullness around and through the Eucharist. Because of this, each local parish is both a complete manifestation and a substituent member of this union. [1 Corinthians 12:12-27; Ephesians 5; Romans 12:5; ]
Marriage unites the flesh of the husband and wife into one. Metaphorically, this is a way of saying that the marriage creates a new “organization”, and that both of its members subordinate themselves to it. Ontologically, it actually fuses two lives into one inseparable organism. [St. Matthew 19:5]
Social Mechanisms of Community
God knows us, loves us, and wants us to enjoy “life in abundance” [St. John 10:10]. He has not simply told us to “be good to one another”; he has given us tangible mechanisms that will allow us to grow in love and community. Here are a few that come to mind:
Within the Church: Communal worship, prayers for one another, the development of supplemental ministries, regular opportunities for fellowship and communication, and especially participation in the Mystery/Sacrament of Communion are specifically designed to increase our mutual love and interconnection. Parishes become stronger to the extent the members work, worship, and simply spend time together.
Within Marriage: In addition to the Sacramental joining itself, couples are brought into the Church as “one flesh” by participating in her many activities as a married couple. They are not simply treated as individuals who happen to be married, but rather as a couple who once happened to be individuals. Then there is sex. Scripture describes sex as a mechanism that ontologically unites its participants. For married couples, this is both an expression of their loving communion with one another and a means to improve it. Orthodoxy does not recognize procreation as the only purpose of sex: sex is the literal joining of two into one and the resulting pleasure is a manifestation and celebration of this loving union.
Within Worship (Music): The possibility of harmony is built into the very structure of our voices and sound itself (e.g. overtones). While each voice contains the building-blocks of chords, its potential is most fully realized when voices sing together. In worship, the medium of melodic/harmonic beauty is also the message; it contains as much true theology as the poetic words the music carries. The Orthodox do not have anything against orchestras, accordions, banjos, drum sets, or even bagpipes, but the “first-fruit” that we offer musically is pure a-cappella (for polkas you have to go to the parish hall). A-cappella liturgical hymns present this theology of community/harmony more clearly than instrumental music or even voices with accompaniment.
Within Evangelism: we are called to love everyone. We learn to do this better by spending time with folks; communicating with them; hearing their stories; sympathetically sharing their joys and concerns; taking care of them; eating/drinking with them; and by offering them up to God in prayer. This kind of diaconia is at the heart of Christian evangelism.
Psychological Mechanisms of Community I: Social Proof
But He even did more than give us tools to help us grow in community: He actually “hard-wired” our brains for it. Today let me use the example of “Social Proof“ to make this point. The basic finding is that we intuit the right thing to do based on watching watching what others do. This is often sub-conscious. That which is “normal” in those around us becomes normative for us. In his book Influence: Science and Practice, Robert Cialdini describes some pretty innovative experiments that confirm the strength of this instinct (e.g. warning signs and messages actually increase crime if they say/imply that others are violating the law). The power of social proof is also recognized in child development: children automatically and holistically learn by example and through interactions with others.
In the context of the Church (i.e. a community of love with one another in Christ), this all works to our salvation: we reinforce good behavior and thinking to the extent that it becomes natural/hegemonic. We were made for perfection and all the parts of creation were created for our growth and sanctification. But how do these things work in a fallen world? A world in which selfishness, not love or community, are natural/hegemonic? A world we have refashioned in our own prideful image? Being perfectable means that we are also malleable in other directions. In a fallen world, the very same mechanisms and wiring that were designed to lead us closer union with God and with one another can do the very opposite. This is especially true when it comes to the “social proof”: instead of saints reinforcing one another’s sanctification, we become sinners reinforcing one another’s sinfulness*.
This is even true for life within our parishes. Our temples really are sanctified space; realizations of heaven on earth; but what happens when sin becomes normative there? St. Paul’s epistles (especially those to the Corinthians) demonstrate that this is not a new problem. Even the Eucharist; the most significant expression and mechanism of communal love (i.e. communion) can become a tool of our damnation [1 Corinthians 11: 17-30].
Of course Christ came to save the fallen, so He has given the Church ways to counter this hegemony of pride. All of her ascetic disciplines, prayers, worship, and Mysteries have this single purpose: to replace the hegemony of pride with one of love. In addition to the ways described above (e.g. “within our ….”), the Church takes advantage of “Social Proof” by providing us with tangible reminders of the great “great cloud of witnesses” [Hebrews 12:1] that surround us. We consciously and subconsciously follow the example of the saints whose icons we venerate and whose lives we study and celebrate. The saints whose visages adorn our walls and whose lives adorn our calendars serve as good examples for us, counteracting the witness of the fallen world.**
The Church is designed to be counter-cultural; everything we do is done so that we can break free of the bonds of sin and become more of who we were created to be, both individually and in community. The Orthodox do not subscribe to the theology of “total depravity”. We know that the image of God remains within us and that we retain the potential to grow in His likeness. The sin of Adam is not passed on to us through the genetic defect of “original sin”, but through immersion in a world ruled by evil that groans in sin. The things we do in church and AS CHURCH (i.e. through Christ) activate psychological and sociological machinery designed to move us toward our best potential. The irony is that some of the very things that work against us in a sinful world work for our perfection in the Church.
[Next week, I hope to continue this discussion by looking at another part of our “psychology of fallenness”; reciprocation].
* Even sex, the act that is designed to celebrate and strengthen the joy of marital union, instead becomes a hedonistic rite that casually yokes a whole community together in a mockery of both marriage and the Church [1 Corinthians 6:16].
** In addition, we select as leaders only those whose examples are worthy of emulation. Alas, this mechanism is more prone to failure.
