I am afraid that we are in a similar and just as damaging, rejection of the principle of community that is so much harder to recognize because it is masked by the title of community. The fourth of July is coming up, right? It is the time of year when every man, woman, and child should come together in a community, share a picnic and fireworks display while waving an American flag. That is the traditional use of the word community. It is about all classes of different people coming together and celebrating what we all have in common, what unites us all.
The problem is that today we seem to have a very different sense of what a community is. We talk about the Black community or the Asian community or the lesbian community or the Christian community or the Atheist community or the Muslim community. In all of these cases, it is about what separates us and not what pulls us together. It has reached a new level with the internet and the advent of social media. This is a tool that could bring us together like no other and instead we let it rip us apart.
When we focus on the needs of the Black Community or the Christian community or what ever silly tribe that we want to put ourselves into, the result will be to pull our selves apart. If you live on a farm in Oklahoma is someone more a part of your community who lives in Greenwich Village, because they share your race, religion or sexual orientation, than someone who lives a mile away who doesn't? And if they are, is this a good thing?
I am tired of dividing the human race up into all of these groups with competing agendas. The truth is that we are all people and thus need the same basic things to survive. We need to come together, not let our race, religion, and sexual orientation tear us apart.
Love is the answer. We need more community, but community in the older sense of the word. We need to come together despite our differences, not organize our differences into groups and only identify with those groups. I thought diversity was a strength, but the ironic thing is that among the voices that preach diversity, the loudest are also most likely to divide us into these tribal communities. We need to drop these tribal communities and just show love unto each other period.
So my hope and prayer is that we will stop identifying ourselves as a part of this or that tribal community and each try to be a bigger and better part of the community where we live and try to better everyone's lives, despite differences in race, religion, or creed.