Much of modern life works to cut us off from those around us.
We don't like it when other people don't integrate with our culture/norms/lifestyles... but are we really integrated with everybody else?
We don't like it when we end up "talking" to somebody who is engrossed in other conversations on their phone -
"just responding to a WhatsApp" -
"Just replying to an email" -
"just checking on the.... score/latest/status" -
"just checking...." -
"just replying..."
BUT.... are we just as shut off and non-integrated in other ways?
Maybe - maybe not.
"Much of modern life seems to be about separation:
wearing headphones in public,
driving cars with tinted windows,
looking at your phone rather than people around you.
The wealthy seem especially keen to distance themselves from other Britons,
minimising their taxes,
choosing private schools and private healthcare,
and living in enclaves behind electric gates and entry phones,
high up in towers or down private roads."
Andy Beckett - from the Guardian newspaper this week.
Every nation needs a shared culture - and many worry that modern Britain doesn't really have one.
Probably true - especially when the only "cultural value" that some of us can ever come up with is "tolerance" - meaning, perhaps, not really holding too tightly to any cultural norms... being uncommitted to core values?
However, what would Jesus of Nazareth mean by "integration" or "shared culture"?
I suspect that Jesus was more interested in local churches sharing life together - sharing the same mind, the same speech, the same practical care.... learning to become ever more united around Jesus Himself.
Can we have Jesus' kind of integration and unity, justice and love, OUTSIDE of a local Church?
[Maybe some of us glimpse a taste of it in the unity of football supporters or fellow-workers in a campaign/cause... BUT in those cases it never seems to have much life beyond the cause/team/campaign...]
Maybe, just maybe, local Church is the key to an integrated and diverse society and nation....