Modernist myth: The individual

There is a tendancy to respect the individual outside of the context of a community. One can create theology outside of discussing who are we, and what we can do in general; by discussing only who am I, and what I 'think' I can do. This myth is to say that importance is placed more and more on the individual alone. This is seen in choice and modern evangelism.

Choice is hearald as an individualist right in salvation. God forbide, that God is a respecter of individuals. (Yet, this claim can be leveled just as well against Arminians as calvinists.) It does not discuss the context of grace towards the community of believers. Or the necessity of grace for the placement of that person into the community. It is also the community that gives context to an individual. Someone, who i generally disagree with, once said, "No man is an island." Modern Evangelism has fallen into such. It says Christ died for you, without saying Christ died for sinners and you are one in fact in that community. It does not say that Christ died for the church on a community level; he did not die or spill his blood for those outside it. By placing worth in the individual, rather than the context given to that individual, is to sacrifice the gospel. Postmodernism does not like defining individual, much less anything. It is right in this rejection of modernism's individual but it does not establish community.

We can see how modern churches have become groups of individuals rather than communities. It is perhaps a cause to why we see people date churches. I realize that there are individual considerations but they are not independant from the context given to them.

I am not exhaulting the church but rather am exhalting the means that God has instituted. They are not from or for the individual alone. Election was the selection of a nation of individuals that are to be built together. It was not the selection of individuals who would remain such. It is not the choice of individual to gain an individualistic salvation, apart from a community, by themselves.
Such rugged individualism helps exhalt pride, merit, and choice of individuals in salvation rather than grace and faith lived out in a community. Without a community, believers are fish out of water. Life takes place in a community of God. Life does not take place in the solitude of an individual.

Now when the prodigal son was called home. He was coming home from a life of rugged individualism. He was came home to a family. Let it be like such in Christ. Christ seeks to have communion and fellowship with us in this life and the next. Men were made for such.