Last night, as my family watched my nephew’s Little League game, we discussed how the quality of play has deteriorated from when my brother and I played ball. There may be multiple reasons for this, but I’d wager the main problem is that fewer people are willing to commit to the time it takes to practice and improve performance.
A few years ago when I moved to Nevada, I started attending a really large church of over 500 people. However, after only a couple months of attendance, I was asked to help with the youth program. It struck me as odd that in a church that size, they still had a hard time finding people who were willing to commit to some volunteer service for one or two hours a week. Then I realized that the Sunday school class I was attending was the only one offered for adults. We averaged about ten people a week. One factor was a lack of teaching discipleship. It’s a serious problem in many churches today. But certainly lack of commitment was a factor as well.
Some other examples: The bowling alley in my hometown no longer offers bowling leagues because not enough people were interested in the commitment. Memberships in service organizations like the Elks Club are down. During the church league basketball season, my church’s team sometimes only had five or six people show up for a game, which meant the players had no rest because there were no substitutes.
Perhaps the most obvious and most detrimental example of the commitment erosion trend we can point to is the divorce rate in our country. Marriage is no longer seen as a serious commitment, rather just one more thing to try out the way we might try vegetarianism for a couple weeks or biking. If we don’t like it, we’ll quit as nonchalantly as we started. We’ve even added the term “starter marriage” to our vocabulary to describe the phenomenon of people viewing their first marriage as a trial run, fully expecting that it won’t last. Ironically, the effect of divorce on subsequent generations has led to the term “commitmentphobe” to describe people who are skittish about committing to relationships, usually because they fear repeating their parents’ mistake, as if divorce is inevitable. I could go on about the problems this trend has on society, but the topic I want to focus on is a lack of commitment in general.
So how did we get here? Why are we so flaky when it comes to commitment? It’s the ‘rugged individualism’ our society worships. We are a ‘me’ centered people. We are taught that we should pursue whatever makes us happy regardless of how our choices affect others, or even how they affect ourselves. We pass laws that allow motorcyclists to ride without helmets because we’re more interested in “personal freedom” than how people’s stupid choices affect society as a whole. When Hilary Clinton suggested that “it takes a village,” meaning that all members of the community bear some responsibility in raising the next generation, she was ridiculed. Too many Americans care more about their individual “rights” than what is good for the community. Even our military runs ads proclaiming the value of “an army of one.”
This individualism is particularly dangerous to Christians. More and more often, Americans who are socially programmed to be individualist and consumerist decide that since they cannot find a perfect church (these don’t exist) they will be Christian without committing to any church. They might show up on Christmas and Easter or not at all or they might think sitting in a pew for an hour a week is enough. However, Christianity is a communal religion. You cannot practice it on your own. When we separate ourselves from Christian fellowship, several things happen. One, we run the risk of developing skewed theology because we have no one to bounce our ideas off of, no one to offer a healthy counter point to our argument. Two, we are no longer held accountable to anyone so it is easier to drift away. Three, we lose out on the opportunity to help others in their struggles and to be helped out in ours, to experience true community.
The problem with rugged individualism is that it’s a lie. No one is an island. We need each other. You cannot make it through life alone. I think part of the problem is that people mistake community with conformity. You can and should be an individual within community. Getting married or joining a church or club doesn’t mean you get rid of everything that makes you unique. But it does mean making a commitment. Will that require some sacrifices? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.