27 Likewise with humans, our value and worth is found in who we are as God’s image bearers and as redeemed sinners. But since we are social creatures, we find that we are assigned roles in our relationships to others in government, the home, and the church. Each of these institutions has an authority structure in which the majority of members are to submit to the authority of those ultimately accountable for the functioning of government, the church, and the home. But the Bible does not present an elitist view of authority in which the president, the pastor, or the head of household is better than or superior to those under their care and supervision. Examples of the church and the home provide opportunities to apply biblical perspectives to everyday relationships in those settings. The approach of the sociologist to religion is instructive as is the characterization of society as multicultural. The relationship between the individual and the group can be illustrated in the church. The head of the church is Christ but the human leadership in the church is the pastor. In the body of Christ it is not the individual member nor is it the body in its corporate existence that is more important. Both are equally important. But in the UnitedStates we have placed such an emphasis upon the ultimacy of the individual in our culture and our religion that a common understanding of Christianity is “me alone in my prayer closet with my Bible and my God.” This self-centeredness is expressed in American Christian music with the isolated individual speaking to God in the first person singular without any sense of community or social attachment to others. Examples of such music are In the Garden, Christ for Me, I Must Tell Jesus, andHe Knows My Name. This correlates with a common Christian lifestyle in the United States where we have many freelance Christians who have no attachment to “the organized church.” But the New Testament concept of the Christian life is our approach to God based upon the fact that we have been incorporated into a unity and we cannot operate independent of that body of Christ to which we belong. It is because we have been incorporated into the body of the redeemed that we pray, “Our Father.” We are not instructed to pray individuallyas an isolated person. The primary stress in the New Testament is not upon the individual and God but upon the individual in his corporate relationship and God.
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