Everyone Must Stand Alone

"Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone.

I hear you call my name..."

and so goes the popular song by Madonna.
Except that she was sadly mistaken when she finished the line with "and it feels like home."

Why is it that the vast majority of people prefer to be addressed as a part of a group rather than as a distinct individual?  Could it be that conscience is one our life's greatest inconveniences, a knife that cuts just a little too deeply?  Sadly being a part of a group seems to impart a goodnight to one's conscience.  We cannot be a party of two or three, a Currieo Company, around our conscience.  No.  In fact, it is just the opposite, the only thing a group secures is the abolition of conscience.

By forming a party, a melting into some group, we avoid not only conscience but also martyrdom.  This is why the fear of others [what Jesus called the fear of man] so dominates this world.  Very few dare to be a genuine self; and most are hiding in some kind of "togetherness."  Instead we rely on traditions and the voices of others.  Too many are content to become a copy, living a life shielded against responsibility before the Truth.

Kierkegaard described true individuality as being measured by this:  "how long or how far one can endure being alone without the understanding of others."  The person who can endure being alone is miles apart from the man-pleaser, the one who manages to get along with everyone -- the one who possesses no sharp edges.  God never uses such people.  The true individual, anyone who is going to be directly used by and involved with God, will not and cannot avoid the human bite.  He will be thoroughly misunderstood [and Jesus promised as much].  God is no friend of the cozy human gathering.

In the purely human world the rule seems to be:  Seek out the opinion and the help of others.  Yet Christ says:  Beware of men!  The majority of people are not only afraid of holding the wrong opinion, they are afraid of holding any opinion alone.  In the physical world water extinguishes fire.  So too in the spiritual world.  The "many," the masses of people extinguish the inner fire of the individual -- beware of men!

According to Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, Christians are told to be both salt and light.  And thus Christianity puts this question to each individual:  Are you willing to be salt?  Are you willing to be light?  Are you willing to be sacrificed, instead of melding into the crowd, which itself seeks to profit from the sacrifice of others?  Here again is the distinction:  to be salt or to melt into the masses; to let others be sacrificed for us on behalf of the Truth or to let ourselves be sacrificed ... and between these two lies an eternal qualitative distinction.

The deep fault of the human race is that there are very few individuals any more.  Wanting to hide in the crowd, to be a small fraction of the group rather than being an individual, is the most corrupt of all escapes.  No doubt, it does make life easier, but it does so by making it thoughtless.  Yet at the end of the day, it comes down to the responsibility of every single individual -- each of us is still an authentic, answerable self.  It is in effect a cop-out for us to make a racket along with a group of others for a so-called conviction.  We, instead, must make up our own minds about our convictions before God and then live them out regardless of the opinions of others.  Eternity will single each person out as individually responsible.

Every person must render an account to God.  No third person dares to intrude upon this accounting.  God in heaven does not speak to us as an assembly; He speaks to us individually.  This is why in particular that it is the most ruinous evasion of all to be hidden away in a herd in an attempt to escape God's personal address.  It was none other than Adam who attempted to do this [when there was only one other person on the face of the earth] who tried to hide himself among the trees when his guilty conscience convicted him of his sin.  Similarly, it may be easier and more convenient, and more cowardly too, to hide ourselves among the crowd in hope that God will not recognize us from the others.  But in eternity each shall individually render an account.  Eternity will examine each person for all that he has chosen and done as an individual before God.

It will be a great and terrible day when judgment comes and all souls come to life again, to stand utterly alone, alone and known by all, and yet candidly, exhaustively known by Him who knows all.  So we might as well get used to it now.  Let us forsake the cover of the crowd and become the salt and light that He has created us to be.