Christ in the Shadow: The Light That Shines in the Darkness

The Tyranny of Consensus
by Marjorie Seguin

There is a sentimental consensus about community in our culture right now. This consensus is rooted in the model of goodness based on the Jesus most widely described today.  It is a consensus founded on ideals which are most strongly promoted in the church, but which pervade the culture as a whole.  While this consensus might appear benign, the result in the community is a quiet and oppressive tyranny.

This kind of community offers to its members a number of things:  a feeling of togetherness, a comfortable familiarity born of associating with a group of people, a feeling of unity through having a shared goal.  There is a sense of having one's personal peculiarities blotted out, from participating in a larger unit, where each part is less than the sum of the whole.  There is a comfort in this kind of invisibleness, such as you gain when wearing a uniform:  an invisibleness which unites you with the group, takes you outside of yourself, and clearly identifies your role and your place in society.

In this sentimental consensus, a community works to uphold these values: peace as a goal, through the holding back of conflict; tolerance as an ideal, adapting social institutions so that we can all be more alike; comforting as a job for the spiritual leaders in our society, who are meant to buffer us against pain; unity as an ideal, through the pressing down of doubt and questions; and kindness as a way of interacting, including smiling and doing thoughtful deeds, while not expressing direct thoughts which might shock or hurt someone. In keeping with this consensus, certain things are assumed to be detrimental to community life:  disagreement or anger, the speaking of differences, and questioning the role, goal, or function of the group.  A consequence of holding to these ideals without question is the active blocking of truth.

The most important truth that is actively being blocked in this consensus is related to an incompleteness in the culture’s views of Christ’s nature and how he appears in community.  This view is incomplete because it leaves out the shadow aspects of Christ’s nature, thus also leaving the community’s shadow. Anger and questioning the role, goal and function of the group are examples of aspects of the shadow which are left outside of the community.

In a revitalized Christian community, the shadow aspects of Christ and of the group would be incorporated in community life. In this new community the shadow aspects which were formerly deemed detrimental to community life are seen as holding the seeds of new and life-giving ways of creating community, rooted in a more complete and dynamic understanding of Christ’s nature.

Where in the old definition of community, questioning the role, goal or function of a group was considered corrosive to the communal body, in this new kind of community, the job of holding up to question the commonly held assumptions of the group is a burden that is shared by each individual within the group.  In seeking to uncover Christ’s full nature, the Christian community is thus reconnected with Christ’s life-giving truth, the well of living water, the eternally renewing Word. •

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