The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: Searching for Jesus’ Path of Power in a Church that Has Abandoned It

by Jamin Goggin

We are inevitably intertwined with others. Healthy community will help us to walk in the way of Jesus, but rejecting it, or even trading it for something more superficial, puts us in a dangerous position. We turn to isolation because we are afraid of sharing our lives with others, or because our selfishness has become so calcified that we do not have space for others. In isolation we can become blind to our sins and our strategies to defeat our weakness rather than embrace it. In isolation we often think the worst of others, or, possibly, we see others as being everything we wish we were. We mistakenly dehumanize others in our isolation, by believing them to be either lesser or greater than they are. We can usually recognize the former, but the latter we rarely see. Vanier’s words are poignant in this regard: “When you admire people, you put them on pedestals. When you love people, you want to be together.”