Building Friendships, Community, & Family

‘When two people unite, they become a family. When families unite, they become a clan. When clans unite, they become a tribe. When tribes unite, they become a nation. And when nations unite… well, that never really happens, does it?’
Anonymous (a.k.a. I can’t remember where I read it!)

Marriages, families, clans, tribes, nations, societies, communities, friendships, human relationships… all these are building blocks and not so different from each other. This is something I’ve been pondering lately. What is community and what makes a good community? How can we create good community, and how does that relate to all the other levels of human relationships?

The largest grouping of people that we usually deal with or belong to is society, which tends to correspond with nation state – flawed though that division may be. When we interact face-to-face, in person with someone, we are both in the same land and so interact in a certain society, even if we may be from differing countries. Groupings larger than society are too big to deal with in this little blog post anyway, so let’s draw the line there for now. Though maybe in this disembodied realm of the internet, language takes on the role that land once used to have?

Society (country) is made up of communities, and those communities (towns or villages) in turn are made up of families (households). As children we learn in our family how to be part of community and how to contribute to society. However, as we grow up and leave home, we learn in community (our friendship groups) how to create connections and the type of environment we’ll one day want to take into our own families, if or when we marry and have children ourselves. It’s a cycle constantly feeding into itself. Community comes from family, and family comes from community.

It takes a village to raise a child, yet people are people and sometimes community can be difficult. Nothing valuable is ever easy and, for all the heartache and tears it may cause, we must never give up trying to build human connections. We have to live and learn and try again. None of us are meant to exist in isolation – to quote another often-repeated saying: ‘no man is an island’. We have to learn to let down the drawbridge of our souls.

I like the quotation I shared at the top of this blog post because it links different levels of human relationship and shows how they grow out of each other – even though its end is rather cynical. What do those progressive levels mean? People are our personal relationships and individual connections, such as marriage and one-to-one friendships. Family means the nuclear family of parents and children, or a household. Clan is our extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, extended cousins, as well as our close friends. Clans have shared kinship from common ancestors, but aren’t necessarily as close-knit as a nuclear family. Tribe is our local community, neighbourhood, and (if we are Christian) small-c church as in our local church. Unlike clans, tribe members are not all related, but live alongside each other within a shared culture and commonly accepted way of life.

Nation is the big one. It’s arguably the largest structure that society organises itself into, sharing culture, governance, and laws. Big-C Church, as in the universal church across all countries and denominations, stands at the same level as nation in terms of being a society. All Christians who seek after God recognise His culture of loving kindness and His righteous laws, and are therefore united within the kingdom of God. The universal Church links to a society that transcends nation or land. At least, it should do – but people being people tend to mess up and cause division or sometimes even cruelty. The more people you get, the more chance someone will fall short. That doesn’t mean we should give up or totally dismiss idealistic goals; we simply need to be realistic in our expectations and have grace for one another. The truth is we all fall short – and that’s why Jesus forgiving our sins on the cross unites us.

‘The word “natio” means “birth” because a person is born into his nation and that cannot be changed. By virtue of one’s birth one owes allegiance to the ancestral spirits, who one will have to honour throughout life. Before Christianity, conversion was inconceivable. Each nation worshipped its own ancestral gods forever – the Romans, the Celts, the Jews, the Egyptians, the Britons, the Belgae, the Greeks – each nation had its own temples and shrines where its gods were worshipped.’
Jan Knappert

These days we tend to forget just how radical Christianity was in bringing people together. It was the first religion to welcome all people, rather than belonging to a single ethnic and cultural group. Equally, we need to remember that the reason there are so many letters in the New Testament was because those early churches needed help in resolving their differences and seeking Christ together. People were people, even then. God called us not just to follow Him but to be the Church and be with ‘one another’. Perhaps this blog post has been a bit of a ramble, but I hope it gives you some food for thought. The process of writing it has certainly given me some things to think about.

The Three Human Motivations

‘Human behaviour is complicated; human motivation is simple.’ So says Larry C Rosen in his TEDx talk, which I will link below. There’s much truth in the statement, and in his talk Rosen proposes what he thinks the three underlying human motivations are. I think it’s important to learn to understand others better if we want to become better women, or even just better people, so I wanted to share the ideas here.

Yet, I couldn’t help thinking why? Why are these three motives behind every human decision? Each is somewhat simplified and boiled down to include a range of different needs, but the three key motives still stand. I decided to give my own twist on it instead of simply sharing someone else’s ideas, and that involved turning to the Bible. I was curious to see whether I could find these three motives in the creation story of humans. The short answer is yes, I did. These motives may be manifested in healthy or unhealthy ways, yet when they are healthy they tap into what God made us humans to be. When these core motivations manifest in unhealthy ways (as, unfortunately, they all too often do) they indicate a distorted corruption of what we were made to be and we need to be aware of that.

I started this post intending it to be about psychology and understanding people better, yet in the process of planning it seems to have turned in part into a mini Bible study. I guess the Bible just has a lot to say about our human condition. God knows us best. Anyway, let’s get to the point. The three core human motives are: physical, relational, and aspirational.

Motive One: Physical

‘And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’
Genesis 2:7

The Bible says that, as humans, we are made of earth and spirit combined. We are physical as well as spiritual beings, and as such we have physical needs. These can be seen in the physiological needs and safety needs at the foundation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We have the physical need for sustenance, health, a pain-free environment, rest, exercise, safety, and security. If we don’t have those, we will be motivated to gain them however we can.

Motive Two: Relational

‘And the LORD God said, It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.’
Genesis 2:18

Humans are social creatures and pack animals. We are not meant to be alone, hence why God created Adam and Eve for each other. When we feel alone or isolated we will eventually be driven to change that, which can be a great thing when pursued in a healthy way – but unfortunately humans aren’t always healthy. This requirement is seen in the belonging and love needs and the esteem needs that form the middle of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We have the relational need for love, empathy, community, friendships, intimacy, respect, and appreciation.

Motive Three: Aspirational

‘And the LORD God took the man, and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.’
Genesis 2:15

It’s significant that one of the first things God did with His newly created humans was to give them a purpose. We were made in the image of God to become His partners in creating an even better world, and as such have an inner urge to explore. This is represented in the self-actualisation needs at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We have the aspirational need for creativity, curiosity, autonomy, meaning, purpose, and the achieving of our potential. This has been the motivation for many of the incredible discoveries and advancements that has led humanity to where we are today, however it has also been corrupted at times and led to the invention of terrible things as well.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

The thing is find interesting about this way of summarising human motivations is that it emphasises how all human actions originate from natural needs. It’s only in the way that those motives manifest that they sometimes get corrupted and become problematic. No matter how good or bad someone is, they are still human. That doesn’t make bad behaviour excusable – choice is a powerful responsibility we all have – but thinking this way helps to promote empathy. Kind or evil behaviour, though drastically different, can come from the same motive and are really just two sides of the same coin. Being aware of this should help us guard against our own choices to make sure we choose what is right, good, true, and kind, because the possibility of corruption is never far away. We have the power to choose what is right over what is easy.

Learn More:

Humans: Man & Woman

Humans. We’re one species and yet two distinct types of people. Every society throughout the world and throughout history has acknowledged this two-in-one nature of humanity. It structures our interactions and relations with each other. On one level it’s simple, yet at the same time it’s an amazing, complex mystery. Nowadays gender may be more fluid, understood by many people as a spectrum rather than a strict binary, yet most humans still identify as either male or female.

Despite this universal recognition, we often struggle to clarify exactly what it means to be a man or a woman beyond basic biology. Is anatomy all there is to it? Or are we different on the inside too, at an emotional or spiritual level? We have been shaped by our cultures and socialisation, but surely there’s more to gender than just learnt differences? As humans we are more alike than we are different, but we are distinct too – and when those differences work together it is something beautiful.

In our present-day society in the West, we often turn to science for answers. Science, we think, can rationally and logically categorise distinctions. It can explain things in a way that makes sense. There’s much value in that, yet science is imperfect. For years it was received wisdom that men’s and women’s brains functioned in separate ways, however recent research has revealed that many of those studies were in fact unknowingly biased. Human brains have a plasticity that means they are very flexible to the influences of upbringing. Society socialises girls and boys differently – whether for good or for ill – and since that begins to shape their brains from a very young age it is hard to say what is society and what is nature. It’s the old and perhaps outdated debate of nature versus nurture. Where can we draw the line?

As a Christian, I try to root my worldview in God’s word. At the very beginning of the Bible in the stories of creation, this is how humans are introduced:

‘And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.’
Genesis 1:26-27

Here the name ‘man’ is used to refer to mankind, to humanity. God ‘created he him’ – humans as a singular species – and ‘male and female created he them’ at the same time. We’re the same and yet distinctive, a creation that is two-in-one. This is shown in the claim that we are made in the ‘image’ of God.

Being the image of God doesn’t refer to physical appearance because God is spirit not physical. What it refers to is the role and purpose of humans on earth. We are made to be God’s representatives and ‘have dominion’ to rule over the earth by taking care of it, continuing God’s work in creation of bringing about goodness. We are endowed with portions of God’s qualities and characteristics, and humans are called to represent God’s love in the world. Understanding that all humans are made in the image of God is of vital importance in Christianity because it means we believe that everyone is immensely valuable and deserves love, dignity, and equality. Men and women are each made in the image of God, yet a distinction is made between them that marks each as distinct and equally valuable.

While creating the world, God designed it beautifully with order. He separated light from dark, heaven from earth, land from sea, day from night, and animals into different habitats. His final crowning creation was humanity, whom He separated into male and female. As men and women, we are a part of God’s beautifully ordered plan. Separate and yet the same. Sharing in God’s image and purpose together as equal partners.

An understanding of our shared humanity must be the basis of any attempts to differentiate what it means to be men/boys or women/girls. What specifically those differences are I’ll consider in another blog post.