Zeroing In

Let me begin by saying that I think there is much to be said for our generation’s protest against individualism. Individualism isolates the single person from his human environment; it has blind eyes for the countless bonds that tie every person to his fellows and his world. Individualism is poison to the life of the Church because it destroys the tissues of our Lord’s own Body.

But there is another word that needs saying. In reaction to individualism, it is all too easy to lose eye and heart for the individual. We can so concentrate our thinking on the structures of society, on our life in community, that the individual person with his hurts and needs gets short shrift.

If we listen to the Gospel, we get little support for individualism, but we get vibrant concern for the individual. Who does not see flashing before his mind Jesus’ personal encounters with individuals: Nicodemus, Levi, the rich young man, Zaccheus, the woman washing his feet with precious ointment, the Samaritan woman, the adulteress, Thomas, Peter, and all the others. What we find in the Gospels is a deep and intense attention to the individual person, and this has nothing to do with individualism.

Jesus was, indeed, moved to weep over the crowds, whom he saw as sheep without shepherds. But he sought out the single lost sheep among them in order to bring him back to the sheep-fold. There is festivity among the angels over every single rescued soul. Individualism, no. Concern for individuals, yes.

Our talk of social structures, of the political sins of man, and of other communal emphases of today’s socially concerned theology needs an injection of passion for individuals. I am not saying that the structures are not very important. I am saying that we can become inhumane toward real men if we pass by the individual in the illusion that only the political and social structures really matter for mankind.

Let us not create false dilemmas; we are almost drowned in these lately. Let us not set the individual over against the community. No either/or here! We will win victories over the cold, structural world only if we keep our compassion for the individual person. It is possible to be so zealous for the needs of the world that we overlook the needs of real men. If we protest against individualism, let us do it along with a passionate appeal to and for the individual. Let us make God’s mercy known in those crannies of the world’s structures where real people are hurting and crying loudly for love.

The man who has wide eyes for global categories can easily miss the personal. When this happens, the prayer of petition is in trouble. We may keep on praying for things in general but are likely to forget how to pray for men in the concrete. The angels of God can teach us something here.

To accept the Gospel’s passion for the individual is not antisocial. The passion is aimed at leading the individual out of his aloneness into the fellowship of Christ. Zaccheus was (by his own doing) a man by himself. So was Peter when he wept for his denials. So was Thomas when he, after the resurrection, went off by himself outside Jerusalem. So was the adulteress. But they were all sought and found as individuals. This is something to remember in our time of massification.

It seems to me that the general protest against individualism was needed. But I also suspect it can be a flight from responsibility for persons as individuals. The Bible has a sharp warning against egoism and pride, and every form and shape of individualism. But the same Bible tells us that true religion is to care for the orphan and the widow in their needs (Jas. 1:27). James was not an individualistic moralist. Neither was Paul. Paul, no less than any man, had the eye of an eagle for the global relevance of the Lordship of Christ. But he also calls us to “contribute to the needs of God’s people, and practice hospitality.… With the joyful be joyful, and mourn with the mourners” (Rom. 12:13, 15).

Without this perspective, we will diminish the meaning of life, empty it of personal compassion, and evacuate it of love. We do not have to sink as deep as Titus 3:3, with its talk of malice and envy, and of hating one another. But even a world without passionate personal hatred can be a cold world indeed.

Paul writes that God’s mercy and love for man (philanthropy) have shone as a great light in our world. Who cannot see the dimensions of meaning for individual and personal relationships in this light? If we do not see them, we may write big books about the global and social implications of the Gospel, and may feel ourselves to be “world citizens,” but we will not really have heard the Gospel.

Understand me well. I am not reintroducing a forced choice between concern for individuals. I do not want anything to do with an either/or situation here. We do not need to choose against concern for the world, the social structures, the political sins of man in order to choose for concern about the individual, and we must not let ourselves be talked into doing so. The Bible summons us to think with passion about the “ends of the earth.” But what I want to stress is that we must never be sidetracked from concern for the individual.

There was a man who needed somebody to set him in the healing waters of Bethesda (John 5:7). But he was just one man, and people passed him by. Then Jesus came, and he saw the man. He did not lose sight of the individual in his tears for the crowds. He wept for the city, but he wept for the individual too. He made it possible for the isolated man to join the company of love.

Ours is a time when it is popular and, no doubt, necessary to think, theologically and ethically, about community and social structures. But let us not, now or ever, fail to hear the Gospel of God’s compassion for the individual. Individualism, no. God’s love—and ours—for the individual, yes!

G. C. BERKOUWER

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