The Whole Is The Sum Of Its Parts

Rev. Dirk van Garderen. Trowel & Sword, September 1995

Preamble: What do ants have to do with the Bible; or the Amazon river; or university; or sport; or the temple; or Christian Schools; or love? In this post Rev. van Garderen takes us on a wide-ranging journey of discovery and ties it all together to form a true picture of how to live for Jesus.

The Whole Is The Sum Of Its Parts

At the beginning of this year my daughter was appointed a teacher at a Christian school. The whole family watched with awe as she frantically set up a whole term’s teaching programme in a matter of few days. She eventually got things arranged and included in her programme a study of ants.

‘Dad what is the distinctly Christian perspective on ants? How do you teach Grade 2 pupils about ants as a Christian? What does the Bible say about ants?”

I confessed to knowing only one reference to ants in the Bible off the top of my head. It was also a text that I could use to get her off my back and do her own research. You know the verse?

“Go to the ant you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!” (Proverbs 6:6)

Whether by design, coincidence or as a punishment, ants have once again featured prominently in family life since then. They seem to pick certain evenings on which they choose to raid anything left on the kitchen bench, the pantry and even the fridge Thousands of them! After such a raid we inevitably call out the heavy artillery – that infamous brown bottle with its liquid ant-poison and pour Its contents into various jam-jar lids. Placed strategically, the ants swarm to it like bees to honey! Next morning out comes the dish-cloth to wipe up and dispose of the victims that were drowned and/or overcome in the poison – hundreds of them.

It is at that point that any student of ants should pause for a closer look and see something that is intriguing and challenging. The hundreds of dead ants strewn all around the lid and floating in their fluid grave do not stop countless hundreds of others from going about their business in collecting more food for the colony. The callous little beasts stomp all over their dead mates with what appears to be complete lack of concern and feeling. Strange really!

Stranger still is that individual ants seem to be so ready to sacrifice their own lives. I came across a reference to an ant colony that was moving from one spot to another. There was a small stream in the way small by human standards but like the Amazon river through ant eyes. At any rate, the way the ants crossed it was absolutely fascinating. The moving column never stopped at the water’s edge. They just kept on moving. The first ants drowned and simply became an ever growing bridge of dead bodies over which the rest of the colony proceeded to march! Thousands of individual casualties – but the colony as a whole, though temporarily reduced in numbers, survived the crossing.

A lesson? A challenge?

I was reminded of a series of lectures I once attended at university. The topic was intriguingly entitled, ‘social psychology’ and drew attention to how human beings act and interact with each other. At one point the lecturer raised a question. He asked us, “Is the whole simply the sum of its parts or is the whole different from its individual parts?”

The whole class stared at the lecturer in amazement. What a dumb question! Surely everyone knows that the whole – namely state, society or family – is simply the sum of its parts. The lecturer rubbed his hands together with glee. ‘Are you quite sure of that?” he asked. “Think about this carefully. The consequences of what you believe about this are, in a word, enormous.”

The challenge is: ‘Go to the ant, you sluggard, consider its ways and be wise.’

Contemporary Individualism

Would you agree with me that contemporary Western society is ‘I’ or ‘me’ centred to the point of obsession? Ours is an age of ‘self-ism where I, me, my feelings, my needs are at centre stage. We idealise the rugged individualist’ and make personal achievement, success, being top-dog, the best, the most excellent, first, most clever, most beautiful, most athletic, etc., the goal of life. The underlying belief or assumption here is simple enough: Maximise the ability and potential of the individual, then put all these maximised individuals together as a group and the society you create will be the best you can hope for.

Home, school, sports clubs, the state and the church all subscribe to this truth. John and Jane must achieve! Maximise their potential. Be the best. Get rewarded for being number one. Build yourself up. Although we do not say it too loudly, the push is forever to compete with, compare yourself with others and, whenever and by whatever way, outsmart and conquer the competition. At the centre of our society is the individual – the self! Just how frustrating, damaging and even damning this can be is evident wherever you turn.

* The vast majority of today’s society complains bitterly of problems with low self-esteem or self-regard. Those who do not say they have the problem mostly think it!

* We are all told and buy into the idea that you have simply got to learn to ‘sell yourself’ when it comes to the job market. Just page your way through the CV’s which are an absolute must for today’s job seekers to see what I mean.

* The most successful and attractive form of religion among middle-class people is so-called New Age-ism with all its spiritual aerobics courses helping hapless individuals get in touch with their inner, divine omnipotent self.

And the casualties of selfism mount in their thousands – teen suicides, drug takers, drop-outs, a growing army of unemployables, depressed peoples, cynics – you name it. Failures!

All of them individuals who have stepped over the line into the land of despair into permanent disrepair.

And the rest of us? Why, we are far too busy with ourselves! Remember? The prevailing philosophy is I before all! Me, my and mine are paramount. If ‘I’ don’t, no one else will. They, like me, are expected to be too busy with their  ‘I’. We have been told that if the individual would look after himself/herself, the whole of society will be fine.

If the ant colony, in coming to the edge of that stream, had been like a bunch of western individualists, can you guess what would have happened at the water’s edge? Somehow those ants, individually alive as they may be, live out the reality that the whole is not the same as the sum of its individual parts. Ants ‘think’ from the perspective of the whole colony rather than the perspective of themselves. ‘Go to the ant you sluggard, consider its ways and be wise.’

From a Bible Perspective

You know what gets me most of all in today’s climate? The idea that this pre-occupation with ‘I’, this idealising of the individual is fundamentally a Christian doctrine. In ‘Listener’ staff writer, Gordon Campbell, (Listener, 5-11 March, 1994, pg.17) wrote an article on Mrs Jenny Shipley as a future prime minister of NZ – a sort of ‘shock! horror!’ event. His favourite criticism of her, repeated several times, is that she is a true daughter of the Presbyterian manse and that she displays the Presbyterian ethic of individualism.’

Whether Campbell is right or not, individualism is not a concept or teaching that is in harmony with Biblical teaching. True, the Bible certainly highlights the infinite value of the individual.

* How often didn’t the Lord Jesus highlight this by setting a child before his disciples and calling them to become like children?

* You will also know that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

* Did not Paul’s way of describing the church or congregation as a body highlight how our more presentable parts need no special treatment and how God has given greater honour to the parts that lacked it?

* The value of the oppressed, the poor, the widow and the orphan cannot be underestimated or put aside.

But, the Bible goes further. The essence of Christian life is servant-hood. We were saved to serve. Servant-hood in terms of slavery – ‘slaves of God’ and ‘slaves of righteousness’ as Paul describes it in Romans 6. That slavery is not only to Jesus as Lord (the vertical dimension) but also one another (the horizontal direction). This horizontal dimension is at least as important as the vertical.

Take the body picture of I Corinthians 12. Each Corinthian Christian has a personal, living relationship with the Lord. Each Christian is uniquely different by God’s own choosing, design and gifting (so Ephesians 4!). One is an eye; another mouth, a hand, foot, tummy, belly-button or whatever. Eyes not attached to a body are useless. So are hands and feet. BUT, put the individual parts together and you form a whole able to be and do what none of the parts can do individually.

Other pictures include the building/temple described in Ephesians 2. It is only when the individual stones are brought together in fellowship, cemented together by Jesus, that they become a temple!

See now what Romans 12 is all about. In Christ we who are many form one body. Individual life and existence is real only as part of the whole. I can only be a mouth, you can only be an ear, or whatever, we can only express and use the spiritual gifts we have received as a part of the whole! By yourself you cannot be what God in Christ has called you to be! In and as a part of the whole you become and accomplish what you could never be as an individual. When the ‘I’ is submerged in and becomes a servant of the ‘we’, in the true sense of the word, then and then only is there a beginning of true obedience. Listen to Romans 12:4,5 once more:

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.’

In ant society, the colony’s well-being is more important than the individual ant! The ant’s industriousness is not ‘me’ centred but we’ centred. Indeed, go to the ant!’

Challenge to Christian Education

The foregoing observations have everything to do with Christian education; with a Christian school’s distinctives, priorities and goals. In Christian schools it is easy, even satisfying to demand academic excellence, to be ‘better’ than secular, state schools, to get top students with ‘A’s on their reports, to have the neatest, most disciplined, best behaved, best mannered and most industrious students in the whole city.

No, I am not wanting to toss these things or rubbish them. But what I do believe is that there is more to Christian education than that – a whole lot more. Teach them servanthood to Jesus and to each other. But, and now for the key – teach them above and before all else DEPENDENCE, INTERDEPENDENCE and DEPENDABILITY rather than IN-DEPENDENCE.

* Teach and demonstrate to them that they cannot really function unless and until they see, acknowledge and experience their dependence on others.

* You cannot experience servant-hood until you serve.

* You cannot learn humility until you are served.

* You cannot learn the real meaning of love unless you interact, live with and get utterly frustrated by the other parts of the body!

* We cannot demonstrate any virtue to the world, unless we have each other.

When your children and mine catch on to the reality that God’s way is body – community – family centred and not self-centred, then and then only will the real distinctive of living for Jesus be taught – and caught!

Dirk van Garderen

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Feedback From Last Week (A Non-Apology From A Student Of Theology)

Reading Peter Kosters post about the need for theology I was reminded of a recent discussion. This was between a member of our church and a young bloke who had left our church a number of years ago to start a church in another town. He was asked what he did and said he was part time pastoring. When asked where he had studied he said he hadn’t but just preached on what was in the bible. Sadly I suspect that this is all to common. Most years I have the privilege if having some involvement with the NTE conference run by AFES to train up uni students from all over Australia. Over 5 days they get to do one subject of theology. I wish that everyone had the chance to join in this. It certainly stretches the students. Last December they were blessed with Murray leading part of this. Thank you again for sharing T&S.