We are created for relationships. God made a “good” world for us, but He declared that it was “not good” for us to be alone (Genesis 2:18). Everything about us cries out for human connection and if we are deprived of it (even if all of our physical needs are met) we shrivel and die.

Moreover, life-giving relationships require more than fleeting flashes of positivity or pleasure. We want to know and be known deeply; we want to be able to trust and to love; and we want these things to be given unconditionally. True relationships, therefore, require commitment. Commitment requires profound resources. Such resources require a “tribe.”

A baby doesn’t just appear out of thin air; it comes into existence in a community that radiates outward in a tribal dance of love, sacrifice and wisdom. The more robust, complex and sustainable the tribe, the more robust, complex and sustainable the individuals who emerge and expend themselves within it. An individual needs a tribe and a tribe needs individuals. One cannot exist without the other. But they must also exist in proper balance, a balance that has been lost in our current cultural moment.

The catchwords of our unhealthy individualism revolve around identity, freedom, rights, authenticity and expression. If these personal realities disrupt or challenge one’s connection with the tribe, then the tribe must be replaced with another suited to taste. Our unhealthy tribalism is obsessed with power-dynamics, oppression and pre-packaged group-identities to which unquestioning fealty must be pledged. Individuals must conform or be cast out.

The truth, goodness and beauty of the individual’s relationship with his tribe, however, is rooted in complexity (and messiness) of real people across time and circumstance, a complexity that cannot be captured by the sloganeering of the social theorists of our day. Our only hope, which is the call of the Christian gospel, is love. Such love purposes us together around the main mast of the ship of existence come what may, no matter where it takes us. Only love can create and sustain a true tribe.

 

Eric Hankins, Ph.D., is pastor at First Fairhope Church, 300 S. Section St., Fairhope, AL. For more information, call 251-928-8685 or visit FirstFairhope.org.