Quote:
Originally Posted by tasteslikegold
I am interested to know why individuality is generally supposed to be a virtuous trait for any group in Christendom. We certainly do not find any evidence in the history of the early church that individuality - the individual expression of a "ministry" within the context of a local church - was a desired trait. In fact, one could reasonably argue that Paul strove against such things as this that tend to cause division. Certainly the pattern was picked up and followed (no matter how selfishly) in the early centuries of the Roman Church's reign.
Today in the denominations there are various "ministries" and various opinions, most of which are praised by believers as being "wonderfully diverse." Yet I believe that most can agree that there is no regulation or at least very little discernment of those diversities. So why would it be inherently wrong to suppress individuality, especially in consideration of the fact that there is no Biblical pattern for individuality?
Didn't God call all individuals into a corporate Person?
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HI TLG, Welcome to the forum
I think your statement above implies presumptions and conclusions that are not supportable in the light of the Word, history and creation.
Let me start at the end with your statement "Didn't God call all individuals into a corporate Person?"
The short answer is you could put it that way, but being able to do so doesn't imply the conclusions you seem to want to draw--that all our individual traits including our opinions need to be swallowed up in this corporate Person. That's taking the metaphor of the Body and the Head, and the corporate aspect of the Church to a suppressive (Chinese?) extent, which was my point with this thread.
God obviously loves diversity. Just look at creation, which we are told by the word declares the glory of God. Did you know there are over 10,000 types of birds in the world? Do all those birds have to look and act exactly alike to declare God's glory? Or is God's glory more declared by the rich diversity? Did you know that every single one of the billions and billions of snowflakes that have ever existed are unique? What does that tell us about God?
God created individuality and it is clearly a good and useful thing. He didn't just create it for the fun of watching it be crushed into the mass of the "corporate Person." God has used individuals throughout history when he needed to move the masses. Look at the prophets in the OT. Do you think God wanted them to go along with the crowd? There surely is glory to God in our learning to cooperate and submit and serve one another. God also gets glory when we let go of our preference when he wants us to accept a common wisdom. But God does not get glory when we subsume our will as a rule to some corporate mass. All that leads to is lemmings going off a cliff. (Note: See local church movement.)
I see very little in the Bible that suggests the kind of mindset preached in the local churches--that God wants us all to go along with the Baaady as if he would never suggest we do otherwise. Obviously, God wants us to push back against conventional corporate opinion sometimes. As the prophets did, as Jesus did, as Paul did, as Martin Luther did, as most of the great spiritual pioneers of history did. All of them acted as
individuals being led by God "against the tide" of corporate opinion.