WHAT’S THE SECRET TO GENUINE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP? by Adriel Sanchez for Core Christianity
I recently had a conversation with a friend who spent twenty years in prison for a violent crime. Christ rescued him from his sin and transformed his life shortly before he was convicted and sentenced. He spent the duration of his time serving the Lord while locked up. He said something that struck me about the community life of Christians behind bars: “We all knew we were bad people. That’s why we were in prison, so there was a transparency we were able to have with one another.” This transparency is something he said he’s had difficulty finding in the church off the yard. When you’re incarcerated, it’s hard to pretend that you’re better than you are. It’s common knowledge that you’ve done horrible things, so confessing your sins to one another comes a little more naturally. This openness helped him build relationships with other believers that were more than surface level, and which contributed to his sanctification. “Real Christian growth can only come with genuine transparency,” he said.
He was on to something profound, and our discussion reminded me of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s wise words in his classic book on Christian community, Life Together. In so many churches today, Bonhoeffer says, there’s little genuine fellowship because we only know one another as “devout people.” We all put on a front to protect ourselves from criticism (or worse). People only know a caricature that we’ve curated. The contrived and pious individual we show others conceals the real “me”—the one who struggles immensely to obey God, and even fails to do so at times. We become a church not of “bad people,” but of characters who look good externally.
But in this kind of community, no one really knows each other. And when perchance an individual does open up and become vulnerable, they’re met not with the thunderous proclamation of gospel forgiveness, but crickets. Churches for “good people” who have their lives together don’t know how to address sin, so it has to stay hidden.
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The Problem With “Pious Fellowship”
Bonhoeffer wrote, “The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy.”
