Thinking as “we” makes all the difference.
Thinking as “we” means that the first thing on our minds would be the wolf-pack of people to whom we belonged and to whom we were committed, prior to any particular plan, activity, or goal. People are not merely a means towards getting things done.
Thinking as “we” means that we aspire to be less like a committee of separate persons and more like a living, breathing, organic unity. The life of the community as a whole becomes our aim. We break out of isolating self-consciousness.
Thinking as “we” opens up moral possibilities that are unrealizable if I am thinking as “I.”
This, incidentally, is why the church is so important in Christianity.
Yes, organized religion is uncool. But, pace the “spiritual, but not religious,” Christianity has always stubbornly insisted that the communal life of the church is central to the faith. Christianity is no solo sport.
And when Christians think and live as “we”—however imperfectly—boy, does it look beautiful.
Campus ministers at Harvard have risen to the challenge of living as “we.” The home of Nick and Kasey Nowalk is virtually never without guests—typically filled with students in need of a place to crash for a few months—whilst Mako and Ming Nagasawa's experimental urban living community has now expanded to include three houses and a community garden.
The Church has its many flaws. But thinking as “we” means we don't give up on the pack, even when they seem to be insufferably stupid, petty, snivelly, weird, prejudiced, homophobic, hypocritical… Well, you get the idea.
Thinking as “we” means that when things go wrong with our dumb-ass Church, we try (with God's help) to fix them. Fixing dumb-ass, broken relationships is, after all, the very essence of redemption.
The Christian vision, both for this life and the next, is a beautiful community, a holy city, Zion. They say it this way in the Russian Orthodox Church: “One can be damned alone, but saved only with others.”
Et gloria in excelsis Deo.
Stephen G. Mackereth '15 is a joint mathematics and philosophy concentrator in Mather House.