Care in the Community

Some while ago now I was going to put down my thoughts on friendship, and the differences between what can be found among the brethren and what there is in the wider world. I never did. That's because it was extremely difficult to work out how to convey my muddled thoughts, and because I found I couldn't generalise in a very useful way.

What started the introspection on that point was a discussion about calling on friends when you're in trouble. If your car breaks down in the middle of the night, if you're in the brethren you call somebody you know, and they'll find somebody nearby who can help. Other people will call a breakdown service. We established that much. Not because non-brethren can't rely on friends, but because that's not what friends are for, whereas the breakdown people really are for precisely that.

Does that make friends outside the brethren community somehow a lower quality of friend?

What just struck me today is that that is the wrong question, and a misleading one. The key word in the question is "community", not "friend".

Suppose you worked for a big international company, and part of your employment contract was that they guaranteed your car. If you break down, you call them, and they sort something out. In that case, it probably wouldn't occur to you to register with an alternative service, because what would be the point? And, having that arrangement, you wouldn't feel too bad about calling on it at an awkward time. That's the nearest I can come to the feeling there is among the brethren. Friendship has nothing to do with it, except possibly in the selection of the person who you first call.

There is a mutual understanding that all members of the brethren will be looked after in every way possible. That means that in any crisis, large or small, the first call will be to someone within the community. Financial or legal problems? You don't call a lawyer, you call a brother. That kind of thing. OK, if your house is burning down, you will call the Fire Service ... but somebody from the brethren will get the next call. The support network steps in at every point, and brethren genuinely don't think in the same way about dealing with such things.

Viewed from the outside, that can seem a little spooky. Brethren, as a group, are so self-reliant that it looks like they have something to hide. Why wouldn't they call on the usual channels if they haven't? But the reasons are much more subtle than that, as I've said. Everything inside the group is provided and taken care of, while everything outside it is disparaged and discouraged. That produces a big imbalance of trust levels.

I have noticed it applying even to me. I still interact with brethren quite a lot, and many times in the last few months I have seen things done and decisions taken which I could have helped with, and in the past would have been considered the most capable person to do so. Now, although I'm still the same person, with the same abilities, I am not on the list of people to call.

In that way, the brethren are quite touchingly literal in their religious attitudes. It is an unquestioned belief that a person with God's approval will always provide better advice and better results in action than a person who relies only on natural skill, earthly qualifications and real facts.

That being so, who would you expect them to call on? The rest of us have to settle for mere professionals, and the brethren feel sorry for us.