In the house I lived in during college, my roommates and I had a running debate surrounding this question:

“do we NEED people?”

For the first year I was adamant that the answer was “No”. God is all that we need. If there were no humans on this earth, I would be just fine and dandy.

Thru many conversations and surely thru divine means, my answer has changed on the matter. We do need people. Not because God is not enough, but simply because he has ordained that we be in fellowship with others.

I am reading a book now that speaks to just that. Bonhoffer’s Life Together speaks volumes into the heart of true fellowship.

Dang . . . I don’t have the book with me now and thus I can’t quote you the portion that I really want to; however, I will leave you with these tiny portions that I found on the web - take some time with them if you can - they are weighty. they may even need to be read in context to really grasp. Incredible truths about the community that we are called to be in with other believers. It is much deeper and richer than most of us seek after or even, sadly, care to experience.

"Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ" (21).

“Without Christ there is discord between God and man and between man and man . . . Christ opened up the way to God and to our brother.” (p. 23).

“God Himself taught us to meet one another as God has met us in Christ.” p. 25.

"Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what He has done for us" (28).

"Within spiritual community there is never, nor in any way, any “immediate” relationship of one to another, whereas human community expresses a profound, elemental, human desire for community, for immediate contact with other human souls. . . . Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake."

"Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them. . . . This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again. . . . Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ’s. This is the meaning of the proposition that we can meet others only through the mediation of Christ."

“By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.” p. 27.

“He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” p. 27.

“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.” p. 30.

“He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone.” p. 110.

“When I go to my brother to confess, I am going to God.” p. 112.