Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:10-18).
Our Natural Need to Belong
In conversations with lonely people in therapy, sometimes the mood rises and the voice lilts with the happy announcement, “I think I found my people.” They may share a passion for a video game, a political candidate, a type of music, or a way of praying. On the other hand, those who are not so lonely, who identify just fine with family, church, colleagues, or other like-minded people, feel uneasy when a stranger enters the room. Either way, it is the same game, a game everyone plays: the Belonging Game.
The game starts with our natural need to belong. Scripture establishes this need in critical ways. The Bible emphasizes covenant relationships with God and each other. God creates Adam and Eve for intimate life together. Even life itself depends on connection to community, with alienation a kind of death.
The sciences agree. Neuroscience maps out the social brain with features like mirror neurons that observe and mimic the emotions and behaviors of others. The brain serves as a communication center with uncanny language capabilities and emotional signaling for help, bonding, and danger. Psychologically, the security of social bonds plays a critical part in our development and even our physical health and mortality. Sociologically, belonging determines our moral perspective and even our take on reality itself. Without our drive to belong, we would not likely gather to worship together this morning.
Little wonder the intensity of hunger for belonging rivals hunger for food. Little wonder insecurity for connection, like insecurity for food, motivates us to organize much of our activity around getting it. We reproduce and tend family relationships, establish interdependent economic partnerships, set up political and legal arrangements to maintain orderly relationships, and of course, gather for worship and fellowship. Yet, even as we worry about getting the food we want amid abundance, we worry about getting the companionship we need even within the community. We may feel lonely in a crowd. We may question who we are despite having a family name.
Turning Belonging Into a Game
When we fall into the narrative of loneliness and anonymity, it is not all in our heads. Our highly competitive economy promotes a view of ourselves as commodities to market and promote. In our notoriously individualistic culture, we guard our freedom to live as we choose rather than tethering ourselves too tightly to others. Belonging becomes a chance affair, easy-come-easy-go. Or it becomes an achievement that requires clever strategy to make a good impression on the right people and leverage every bit of social power we gain. A few win big, but most of us suffer losses in this Belonging Game. Little wonder the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic in 2023.
Yet, the Belonging Game is as old as human history. Because the human mind inevitably imagines having more or less of anything we want, we want more assurance that we belong. We want to belong to more people and to the best people. We want to be good enough for them to want to belong with us. So we play the Belonging Game of discriminating between insiders and outsiders. We do whatever we can to make sure we gain and maintain standing as insiders to the right people.
If our need to belong is part of what makes us human, indeed what makes us loving, the Belonging Game makes us sinners. All of us. Social psychologists document our tendencies to name and blame outsiders to clarify who the insiders are. We find some playful ways to sublimate this tribalism when we distinguish Dawgs and Yellow Jackets or Geeks and Jocks. But when it comes down to skin color, creed, national identity, economic status, and political party, it can get deadly. Most of humanity’s inhumanity comes down to the Belonging Game.
Paul Confronts the Belonging Game in Corinth
Worse, it infiltrates church. It always has. At the very beginning, church planter among the Gentiles, Paul, received a disturbing report of the Belonging Game infesting the Corinthian church he so carefully cultivated. They broke down into factions based on who converted and baptized them, Apollos, Paul, even Christ.
Unflattered that some made Paul himself their mascot, Paul reminded them that Christ, not he, died for their sins.
He knew that the charisma and eloquence of Apollos made him a winner of every debate and popularity contest. So he reminded them that Christ glorified God not by winning debates but by losing his life. Moreover, a humble witness calls attention to Christ better than one whose celebrity takes center stage.
Suspecting that the party of Cephas, or Peter, likely appealed to miraculous powers, Paul appealed to power made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9).
As for the party that claimed Christ, Paul smelled a self-righteous claim to a superior allegiance. He reminded them that Christ is in the business of uniting and reconciling, not drawing lines.
Later in 1 Corinthians, Paul will confront other forms of the Belonging Game in the church. He will call out wealthy members for eating sumptuously at the Lord’s table while the less fortunate eat meager fare (1 Corinthians 11:17-34). Also, the famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, concludes a confrontation of those who claim spiritually elite status because of their gift of tongues. All these exercises in factionalism amount to ploys in the Belonging Game. They miss the point of true belonging: love for one another grounded in God’s love for all.
Christ Refuses to Play the Belonging Game
Christ opened eyes to God’s loving reign through healing and teaching, worked wonders, and drew crowds. He did all this while refusing to play the Belonging Game.
Gently, defiantly, sometimes belligerently, he scandalized the powers-that-be and eventually the crowds themselves with his refusal. He almost got stoned to death when he reminded the people in his hometown of stories of God’s grace for hated foreign enemies (Luke 4:16-30). When he healed lepers, the blind, and the lame, he welcomed back to the community people deemed too contaminated. When asked, “Who is my neighbor?” he told a story about the unselfish kindness of a scorned outsider, a Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). He called the faith of an occupying Roman officer the greatest he encountered in Israel (Matthew 8:5-13). In a culture in which no Rabbi would talk with a woman, he befriended women, taught them, and learned from them.
Despite the miraculous healings and feedings and forgiveness of sins, his refusal to play the Belonging Game got him killed. And it saved our souls.
The Belonging Game in Our Context
I believe we would kill Jesus again for refusing to play the Belonging Game. To convince myself, I do not need to look around and blame others. Yes, I see privileged Americans relishing the hunting down and driving out of brown refugees without due process. I hear wealthy folks softly justify income inequality by a trickle down theory that looks noble but really only serves them. In shriller tones, I hear escalating demonization of one another based on political party.
But more convincing is my inner gaze. Within I see how the Belonging Game controls me. I find anxiety for more than I need at the expense of those who have little, resentment of those who have more without apparent merit, and suspicion of those who just might try to take what I have. Just in case God’s love for me is not enough, I worry that I am not good enough for love in the social marketplace, that I may not have achieved enough or proven my worth. Lonely doubts arise over whether I really belong or have any more friends when I need them than Jesus did when he needed his.
Listen, I am in the business of compassion and respect for such struggles. Too much pride to admit them is only another tactic in the Belonging Game. But ultimately Paul points out that the Belonging Game is a farce because we already belong. Our hope emerges when we let the game die on the cross with Christ who refused to play. Joy unfolds in life through which he leads us as we drop our addiction to the Belonging Game and accept the love of God that always has been and always will be ours.
Meanwhile, hell is the stubborn refusal to do so, the insistence on winning the game before letting it go. God knows none of us will ever win. Heaven involves letting go of the compulsion to insulate ourselves and accepting God’s invitation to a banquet at one table. We do not have to die to get to that heaven. Jesus did the dying. We need only follow the risen Lord today. He is there among the losers of the Belonging Game.
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Public domain photo by Andras Joo on Unsplash.
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