Chinese original: 沒有人可以替你走，但你也不是為獨自而活——個人與群體的聖經張力
Over the past season, after walking through bereavement and some deeply painful experiences, I have come to understand two things more clearly. They seem to pull in opposite directions, but both are true.
First, no matter how close we are to another person, there are parts of life that no one can fully bear in our place.
Second, no matter how independent we are, or how comfortable we may be with solitude, none of us is self-sufficient.
I knew both of these things in principle before. But there is a difference between knowing something conceptually and understanding it after living through it.
We are not people who can eliminate all loneliness simply by having a good marriage, close friends, or a loving church. But neither are we people who can become whole by withdrawing from relationships and living only for ourselves.
Community cannot remove the irreducible loneliness of being a person. But the existence of loneliness does not mean we do not need community.
1. Some things really are known only from the inside
Proverbs says:
“The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.”
— Proverbs 14:10 (ESV)
This does not mean that other people do not care, or that our pain and joy are irrelevant to them. It means that there is an irreducibly first-person dimension to human experience that no one else can completely enter.
If your body hurts, no one can feel that pain for you. If you are lying on an operating table, your family can accompany you to the hospital, but they cannot undergo the surgery in your place. If you face a difficult decision, others can advise you, but the decision is still yours. If you lose someone you love, others can grieve with you, but they cannot undergo your loss in your place. Even at the end of life, however many people stand beside us, no one can die our death for us.
This is not a failure of relationship. It is simply part of what it means to be a distinct person.
Each human being has an individuality that cannot simply be transferred to another person.
2. Even before God, there is a dimension no one can take over for us
“So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.”
— Romans 14:12 (ESV)
The phrase “each of us” matters.
No one can believe for me. No one can repent for me. No one can respond to God for me. No one can carry my conscience and moral responsibility in my place.
The church can teach me, friends can warn me, and family can walk with me, but I remain a person who must respond to God myself.
So Christian teaching about community must never erase the individual.
Community can help me, but it cannot become me for me.
3. If we refuse to accept this loneliness, we may demand the impossible from relationships
If we assume that a truly good marriage, a truly loving church, or a truly deep friendship should eliminate loneliness, we place a burden on relationships that they cannot carry.
We may think: “If he really loved me, he would understand me completely.” “If this church really cared, I would never feel lonely.” “If our relationship were deep enough, there would be no part of me that remained unseen.”
But those expectations are not realistic.
A spouse can love you deeply and still be unable to enter your inner world completely. A friend can know you very well and still not become you. A church can genuinely care for you and still be unable to bear every part of your pain in your place.
If we do not accept this irreducible individuality, we may become discouraged—or even bitter—when marriage, friendship, or church fails to remove every form of loneliness.
Sometimes the problem is not that no one loves us. Sometimes we are asking another creature to do something no creature can do.
Mature companionship therefore does not say, “You have us, so you should not feel lonely.” It says:
“There are things I cannot bear in your place, but I am willing to walk with you.”
4. But loneliness is not the same as isolation
If we focus only on the fact that no one can fully enter another person’s experience, we can easily move to the opposite extreme.
If no one can fully understand me, perhaps it is safer to remain alone. If I depend on no one, no one can disappoint me. If I do not let people come too close, they cannot hurt me.
Some people who are naturally more introverted may even think, “I simply do not need people very much.”
But this misses something basic:
Human beings are not self-sufficient individuals.
We do not first become complete selves and then decide whether to enter relationships. We are born into relationship.
We are born from parents. Infants cannot survive without others feeding, protecting, and caring for them. We did not invent our own language. We learned how to name emotions, understand trust, recognize love, and make sense of fairness and responsibility through interaction with other people.
We do not become ourselves first and only then encounter others.
In significant ways, we become who we are through relationships with other people.
5. Adults are not as self-sufficient as we imagine
As adults, we easily develop the illusion that we are now fully independent. In reality, our dependence has simply become less visible.
You did not pave the roads you use every day. You do not generate all your own electricity, purify your own water, grow all your food, build your own house, manufacture your own phone, develop your own medicine, or make all your own clothes.
Most of us contribute only a small part to the enormous network of social life, while depending every day on countless people we will never meet.
As infants, we depended visibly on a few specific people. As adults, we still depend on communities—only now those communities are larger and often invisible.
We do not move from dependence to independence. We move from obvious dependence to complex interdependence.
6. Even “God, my Bible, and me” is not as individual as it sounds
The fantasy of self-sufficiency can even take on a spiritual form.
Someone may say, “I do not need church community. I have God and I have the Bible. That is enough.”
Of course, a person can genuinely draw near to God in solitude. Some Christians, because of circumstances beyond their control, may have long periods without normal church life.
But if “God, my Bible, and me” is presented as the ideal form of Christian life, it overlooks something simple:
Even the Bible in your hands came to you through other people.
You did not write Scripture yourself. You did not preserve its manuscripts across centuries. You did not transmit the Hebrew and Greek texts, print them, translate them into your language, and place them in your hands. And in most cases, you first heard about Jesus because someone told you.
“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”
— Romans 10:14 (ESV)
Faith has a transmitted dimension from the beginning.
And God does not form Christians as isolated religious individuals who need only “God and me.” He forms a church. He places believers in a body. He gives people to one another to teach, warn, serve, encourage, and build one another up.
So it is difficult to hold a Bible that has been preserved, transmitted, and translated through generations of believers and then say, “My faith does not need anyone else.”
At some level, that statement forgets how much we have already received from others.
7. We need others not only to survive, but also to know ourselves
“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”
— Proverbs 27:17 (ESV)
The value of another person is not merely that they keep me from feeling lonely. Another person can also sharpen me.
Precisely because they are not me, they may see from an angle I do not have. They may notice what I cannot see in myself. Sometimes their perspective may even make me uncomfortable.
“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.”
— Proverbs 12:15 (ESV)
We need other people not only because we have emotional needs, but because:
I cannot fully see myself.
A person who hears only his own voice can easily mistake his blind spots for truth.
One value of community, therefore, is not simply that it gives me belonging. It gives me people who can see me, challenge me, and sometimes correct me.
8. One body does not mean every member is the same
Paul’s body metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12 holds individuality and community together remarkably well.
“For the body does not consist of one member but of many.”
— 1 Corinthians 12:14 (ESV)
A body does not become one by having only one kind of member.
“If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?”
— 1 Corinthians 12:17 (ESV)
Unity is not sameness.
The church does not become one by making everyone alike. In fact, the body can be a body precisely because its members are different.
The hand does not need to become an eye. The ear does not need to become a foot. Entering community does not mean surrendering one’s personality, gifts, conscience, judgment, or distinctiveness.
9. But distinct members cannot say, “I do not need you”
“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’”
— 1 Corinthians 12:21 (ESV)
This guards against the opposite error.
Individual distinctiveness does not mean individual self-sufficiency.
I may be an eye, but that does not mean I do not need the hand. I may be a hand, but that does not mean I do not need the feet.
“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”
— 1 Corinthians 12:27 (ESV)
“You” together are a body. Yet “individually” you remain members.
The community is real. The individual does not disappear.
10. The body grows when each part is working
“From whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
— Ephesians 4:16 (ESV)
Paul does not say, “Because we are one body, the individual parts do not matter.” He says almost the opposite: the body grows when each part is working properly.
Individual distinctiveness is not a threat to healthy community. Healthy community actually depends on distinct members functioning as the members they are.
But we also need to notice the direction of the verse. Each part does not function merely so that “I can become the best version of myself.” The result is that the whole body grows and builds itself up in love.
Community must not swallow the individual. But the individual must not keep his or her uniqueness only for the self.
11. “Bear one another’s burdens” and “each will have to bear his own load”
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
— Galatians 6:2 (ESV)
“For each will have to bear his own load.”
— Galatians 6:5 (ESV)
We should not force the two Greek terms for “burden/load” into two rigid categories, as though one always means a shareable burden and the other always means a non-shareable responsibility.
But we can at least observe that in the same paragraph, mutual burden-bearing and individual responsibility do not cancel one another.
I am called to help carry your burdens. Yet you remain responsible for your own life. Others can help me, but they cannot live for me. I remain personally responsible, but that does not make isolation a Christian virtue.
12. Needing community does not mean waiting for everyone else to take the initiative
Once we admit that we need community, another problem can appear.
We may begin to think: “Why does no one ever reach out to me?” “Why am I always the one arranging things?” “If they really cared, why has no one asked how I am doing?”
Those feelings are not necessarily wrong. If a church has no meaningful care for one another, if people meet at services but remain strangers the rest of the week, that is worth examining.
But there is another side:
“I need community” does not mean “everyone else is responsible for taking the initiative to meet my needs.”
Other people also have their own lives, pressures, pain, limitations, and blind spots. They may even be wondering, “Why does no one ever reach out to me?”
If everyone waits for someone else to initiate, we can end up with a group of people who all want to be cared for but no one beginning to care.
“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.”
— Hebrews 10:24 (ESV)
“One another” is mutual.
I can hope someone invites me to a meal, and I can invite someone else. I can hope someone checks on me, and I can check on another person. I can hope someone remembers my struggles, and I can learn to remember theirs.
Healthy community is not made up of people waiting to be cared for. It is made up of people who are gradually learning to care for one another.
When I find myself asking, “Why is no one taking the initiative?” perhaps I can also ask:
“Am I waiting for other people to become my community, or am I also becoming part of someone else’s community?”
This is not a way of blaming lonely people for their loneliness. Sometimes you do take the initiative and others still do not respond. Sometimes a relationship really is chronically one-sided. Those realities should not be denied.
But neither should we turn community into a service that other people provide and I consume.
Community is a place where I receive love and also learn to love.
13. Extroverts and introverts each have something to accept
Using the common language of extroversion and introversion:
No matter how extroverted you are, you still have to accept that there is an irreducible loneliness in being human.
No number of people around you can completely enter your inner world. Some decisions remain yours to make. Some pain remains yours to experience. Some paths cannot be walked by anyone else in your place.
But:
No matter how introverted you are, you still need community.
You may dislike crowds. You may need only a few close friends. You may genuinely enjoy solitude. But you are still not self-sufficient.
You were born through others, raised by others, and live in a world built by others. Your thinking and character have been shaped through other people. Your faith came to you through the witness of others. You need people who can see parts of you that you cannot see yourself. And you need people whom you can learn to love, forgive, serve, endure, and support.
Introversion is not isolation. Solitude is not self-sufficiency.
14. Modern society and the church may each forget one side
Modern culture often imagines a person first as an individual who belongs to himself or herself: my life, my choices, my values, my boundaries, my right to decide what my life will be.
There are important truths here. Individuals should not be swallowed by family, society, or religious communities.
But taken too far, this picture forgets something equally basic:
I did not become who I am by myself.
Churches, on the other hand, often emphasize community, commitment, “one another,” and unity. These themes have strong biblical foundations.
But taken too far, church community can forget:
Community cannot replace individual conscience, responsibility, distinctiveness, and appropriate boundaries.
“One body” does not mean everyone becomes the same. “Bear one another’s burdens” does not mean living another person’s life for them.
Modern individualism may need to relearn:
You are not self-sufficient.
Church collectivism may need to relearn:
The individual is not merely an appendage of the group.
15. The individual and the community are not alternatives
I now find it helpful to hold together three truths.
The first is about individuality:
No one can completely become me.
The second is about community:
I cannot become myself entirely by myself.
And the third is about mutual responsibility:
Other people do not exist merely to meet my needs. I am also called to become a brother or sister to others.
If we forget the first truth, we may expect marriage, friendship, or church to eliminate every form of loneliness—and become disappointed or bitter when they cannot.
If we forget the second, we may mistake isolation for safety and “I do not need anyone” for maturity.
If we forget the third, we may turn community into something we consume: Who will check on me? Who will accompany me? Why has no one taken the initiative?
The New Testament does not give us a picture of people disappearing into a collective, nor a collection of self-sufficient individuals who do not need one another, nor a group of passive consumers waiting to be cared for.
It gives us a body.
Different members. Distinct places. No member able to say, “I do not need you.” And each part contributing so that the whole body is built up in love.
Perhaps maturity is not the elimination of loneliness, the escape from community, or waiting for community to take care of me.
It is learning to accept:
I am a person no one else can replace.
At the same time:
I am not a self-sufficient person.
And therefore:
Because I need others, I can also learn to become someone who is present for others.
There are paths no one else can walk for me.
But I was not made to walk through life alone.
Further reading: The age of AI makes this tension between individuality and community more visible. See Now That We Have AI, Do I Still Need Brothers and Sisters in the Church?.