How a hidden camera can help American Christians improve…Meeting together, Part 3

Imagine you are in a building like a hospital or office high-rise. You’ve just finished an important meeting on one of the upper floors, so you head for the bank of elevators. After pressing the down button, you wait until your elevator is ready, and the doors open. What you see inside surprises you. The elevator is nearly full, and everyone is facing away from you. You peek toward the back wall, and there are no doors on that side. That’s odd, you think. You wonder if something is wrong. Why is everyone facing the opposite wall? That’s not normal. Maybe you’re not supposed to be in this elevator. But you need to be on your way, the elevator is going down, and there is space available, so you walk in. 

Here’s what you don’t know. This is a social experiment with a hidden camera. It’s one example of the Asch Conformity Test, and it is designed to study how groups can influence individuals to conform to the crowd.  The are many such experiments, but the elevator is a classic. In the test, everyone in the group except one person is an actor with instructions to enter the elevator and stand facing away from the door.  Very often it doesn’t take long for the person who is not in on the secret instructions to succumbs to a feeling of peer pressure, and mid-ride, they will turn to face the same direction as the rest of the riders, even if those other riders are facing a blank wall. 

Here’s where it gets interesting. The Asch Conformity Test has been used globally in research, and it has found Americans are least likely to conform.   Our individualist streak is scientifically verifiable. That probably won’t surprise many American Christians. We Americans take pride in our individualism, as we have harnessed individualism’s power to achieve much. But there is a shadow side to individualism, particularly when it comes to meeting together as Christians.

To be the kind of people who meet together like God desires, we American Christians need to be aware of our individualistic tendencies.  This week on the blog we’re talking about how Christians are to meet together, and we American Christians may need to take a hard look at ourselves to see if perhaps we are being too individualistic, too isolated, maybe gathering in the same spaces, but not really meeting together. So what kind of meeting together does the Bible teach us?

First, Christian theology of meeting together is rooted in who God himself is in his being.  God is a community.  God is a Trinity. Father, Son and Spirit.  While we might not understand how God can be three and one at the same time, we can simply observe that God is a Tri-Unity.  Three, together. 

So when we gather together, we push away our individualistic, isolationist tendencies, and we follow the example of our Triune God, that God is a community, a relational God.  We meet together because God meets together.

We also meet together because when we meet together, in a mysterious, but very real, special and amazing way, God is there.

Second, in Matthew 18:10 Jesus said this about our relationships in the church, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

Think about that.  When we meet together, even a group as small as two or three, Jesus says that he is in our midst.  I’m not saying that Jesus is not with us when we are all by ourselves.  Paul writes in 1^st Corinthians chapters 3 and 6 that we are temples of the Holy Spirit.  Our bodies.  Jesus taught the same thing about the Spirit in John 14, 15, and 16.  God the Spirit lives with us and in us. 

When we come together in Jesus’ name, however, his presence is with us in another sense beyond his Spirit.  Don’t ask me to explain it in scientific detail.  But we have his promise that Jesus is with us when we come together in his name. 

Notice the important detail in Jesus’ teaching.  He describes our meeting together “in his name.”  When we come together in his name, we are gathering with a heart motivation to serve the mission of his Kingdom, to truly love and care for the people in our church family.  Meeting in his name is meeting in the way that he would meet with us.  Jesus was selfless love, and so when we meet with our church family, we follow his example of selfless love. 

Paul wrote about this in Philippians 2:4-5, “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus”

I find it astounding to think that when we gather with that selfless heart motivation, Jesus’ presence is with us!     

The Scripture tells us that there are additional compelling reasons for meeting together. In the final two posts this week, we’ll examine those reasons. Check back in tomorrow.

Photo by Derrick Treadwell on Unsplash