Your Lacanian Fantasy is Destroying Bonhoeffer's Community

Or, the need for a re-formation of fantasy

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

---

“I want community. I need community,” she said to me across the table of a local coffee house. While these words are commonly shared, something in the way they were spoken seemed different. The hopeful desperation in her voice cut through the steamy exhale of the espresso machine and the buzzing conversations around us.

As the conversation continued, I heard of her desire for something more out of community than she currently experienced. That “something more” is what I have been working to cultivate for nearly two decades in different contexts. Communities of people, seeking a shared life around Jesus as a social witness to the kingdom in a particular neighborhood. Nothing has shaped me more than meals around tables, conversation in coffee shops, and other ways of being present with others–opening space for the presence of Jesus in our ordinary lives.

“I need community.” Echoed in my head and heart. “Yes,” I thought silently to myself, “I do too.”

“What does that community look like for you?” I asked her. “What do you believe you need in a community?”

“I want people who are safe and who are like me. People who will process my pain and support my dreams,” she said as her eyes filled with tears. “I mean, I have a lot of friends that I can go to as well, but not a community.”

This dialogue is not uncommon for me as a pastor and leader of incarnational communities (what we call Table Communities). I am honored to have the opportunity to bear witness to people sharing vulnerably (and sometimes not so vulnerably) about their hopes and desires for themselves and for the church. Truly, these conversations are valuable and the table across which they occur are holy ground, not to be entered into flippantly. Jesus is at work in these conversations and so much is happening that in the midst of them – much that we may not have awareness of at the moment.

My optimistic and inclusive bent often leads me to respond out loud with the things I now say in my head. “Yes!! I want the same thing. Let’s go!!” And while that welcoming instinct is one I celebrate, experience has taught me that of the importance of investigating that which is not readily apparent. Patience and care makes space to learn there is more going on behind and around the words we say. Our wants and desires are rooted in something and it is worth exploring these desires in order to center our shared life on Jesus and live into his love together.

When the person across the table says they “I want community. I need community,” there is a particular picture of community they have in mind. That picture is shaped by past experiences that were positive, as in: “I once was a part of a community of people that hiked together. We would spend time outside in the mountains enjoying nature together. I loved doing that with others.” Additionally, that picture of community is shaped by negative experiences as well as in, “I’m hesitant to be part of a church community because in my last experience, whenever I shared personal stories of struggle, I was told that I just needed to ‘Trust Jesus and read the word.’ It left me feeling unseen, unheard, and alone.”

Our Ideal Community

We have a picture of what the ideal community for us would be like. Certainly there is nothing wrong with having a preferred idea of community or even hopes for what it would be like to enjoy these relationships. Some of our preferences are even strategies to protect us from harmful relationships so I am not saying everything in our picture of community is bad. However, I am going to argue that this picture may not be all good either. Even more, assuming our vision for community, unexamined, is what we need, may not be even true!

Bonhoeffer, in the quote above, makes the bold (and I would say accurate) claim that often our dream of the ideal community will destroy the actual community in which we participate. Instead of fixating on our dream community, Bonhoeffer suggests that we seek to love those around us and see community take root through this love. While the quote out of context leaves much to be explained, Bonhoeffer says that you may want the the kind of community you imagine so much that you avoid forming the community you actually need. The community we need is one centered on the love of God in Jesus among our real neighbors not ideal community participants.

Bonhoeffer’s Community

Bonhoeffer was a deeply Jesus-centered person and his idea for community was shaped by his understanding of Jesus. For Bonhoeffer, actual community of Jesus required us to actually live into the reality of Jesus’s presence among us. In fact, Bonhoeffer would argue that you do not even know yourself apart from a community. We come to find our “I” in the “We” of community. For Bonhoeffer, community forms around Jesus to shape us into who we are in Christ.

Consider Jesus’s community formation strategy. He called fishermen, zealots, tax collectors, and an assortment of other people who might be the foundation for our picture of the most satisfying community. Who among us would name as our desired community one filled with those we call our enemies? Jesus modeled a counter-community to our ideal communities. And he did this by loving those around him. Those who were actually with him. Jesus’s self-giving, others’s focused love shaped an incredibly vibrant community beyond what we might imagine on our own.

Now, I am sure there were times when those in this Jesus community would have preferred to be elsewhere. Like when Paul rebuked Peter for resisting eating with gentiles. Peter might have preferred a community more centered on his own preferences and agreeing with his theology, that might have felt better. However, a Jesus-centered community, while deeply rooted in love and truth-telling, can be disruptive to our pictures of the ideal community.

When Bonhoeffer says that our love for our dream community destroys the community we have around, he is also gesturing toward our focus on self as the determiner of what community ought to be instead of surrendering to the way of Jesus together. Consider a community of eight adults who all have a distinct vision and preference for what the community should look like: the rhythms of gathering, serving, celebrating, etc. Each person could articulate a strong case for their vision, yet where is their vision coming from? What is the source of their desire for their dream community?

Lacanian Fantasy?

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan offers a helpful way to consider the source for our dream community. Lacanian theory might refer to this dream community as a fantasy. While I am no expert in Lacanian theory, a fantasy for Lacan is something deeper than just a vision or a dream. It is a fundamental driving force behind our desires. Our desires are shaped by our fantasies. A fantasy is more than a mere daydream or imaginative thought, but rather a fundamental aspect of subjectivity and desire. Our fantasies are ways in which we see and act in the world, what we pursue and desire, and how we hope to feel or experience life because of these fantasies. Even more though, these fantasies are often formed by cultural influences around us and modeling we receive from others. Our fantasies derive from unconscious desires and ideologies. All this shapes our fantasies for what an intimate partner, ideal job, or even what a Christian community will look like and how we will be in it. We pursue these fantasies, often without considering if our fantasy is even real.

Consider the importance of understanding our fantasies. Lacan suggests the desires we have, the way we see the world and enter into it are largely shaped without out conscious awareness. We are molded and formed into desiring people, things, and experiences and thinking, “That’s just the way it is.” But Lacan might suggest that these desires are rooted in fantasies that shaped our desires. More than ideologies which provide symbolic meaning what we believe, a fantasy shapes our desires for want we want and how we want to feel or experience life. For example, we may have a fantasy for the ideal romantic partner. We find ourselves attracted to a certain “type” of person. A lot of that fantasy is based in what we want to feel like with that fantasy person: comforted, important, loved, etc. Our fantasy is not just for an object, but for how we will feel with that object. But that fantasy, even if obtained, never satisfies. It cannot, because it is not the real thing. It is merely something we fantasize about in order to have desires; to feel want. A fantasy is not real and therefore cannot really be satisfied.

Christian Community Fantasy

When it comes to a fantasy or dream of Christian community, without taking the time to consider why we desire the fantasy we have, we destroy the community we need (and could have) if we laid down our fantasy. It is our Lacanian fantasy of community that often destroys our real participation in Bonhoeffer’s community of love.

Many, many, many people, myself included, full-heartedly pursue a fantasy of community only to find it is bringing them more distress, conflict, and emptiness. We struggle and advocate for getting our fantasy met by others. In this way, our fantasy becomes the center of our community rather than Jesus’s desire for the community. But Jesus’s desire for our community is love (John 13:34-35) and that love is expressed in reality. Jesus desires for our Christian community to be rooted in love for our God, our siblings in Christ, and for our neighbors. A love like Jesus cannot be fully pursued while focusing on pursuing our fantasy. And thus, the pursuit of our Lacanian fantasy destroys the real community Jesus offers us. Time and time again.

But there is good news for us and our fantasy of community. We can find Jesus in our present reality. Jesus is in the reality of our unrealized dreams of community. Jesus exists in the margins of our failure and our frustrations. And Jesus also is present in our joys and experiences of deep friendship in community. In all of this, Jesus is inviting us to lay down our fantasy and join him in reality. Jesus will not settle for having us be the determiners of what the cruciform way looks like for us. To say it another way, Jesus loves you and me too much to settle for our fantasy of community when he offers a deeper way of love in a Jesus-centered community.

Consent to the Reality of Jesus

Bonhoeffer’s seemingly strong word is an invitation into the cruciform community of Jesus. Hear it as the loving rebuke it is for our self-focused ideal community. In order to follow the one who holds everything and everyone together, we will need to confess our fantasy for what the way we think it ought to look and join Jesus in learning to love where we actually are. In this, we find Jesus at the center. In this we find the kingdom that is already here. We find a reality that is more significant than our fantasy. A reality worth giving all for, even our disordered desires. We center Jesus by loving those around us and seeing a new community form in love rather than ideal.

What if we became increasingly aware of the fantasies steering our desires? What if, instead of doubling down on unexamined desires, we submitted them to Jesus in community? Might we experience a new re-formation of our desires? Slowly shifting our community-destroying fantasies into the community-shaping reality of King Jesus’s loving rule and reign in our lives and the world.

In Matthew 16:24-26, Jesus told his disciples, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”

Might this laying down of our life mean turning from our life of fantasy based living and turning to the way of Jesus. May we find much joy in denying our inherited and enforced fantasies in order to take up the way of Jesus.

The way of life to the fullest and joys forevermore, even if it means losing your fantasy.