I recently came across an article while browsing the ELCA clergy FB group I'm part of. The article, if you don't want to read it (even though you should), lays out something I've thought about and that makes good sense to me, but never had words for.
Western cultures organize themselves into categories, or sets, with like characteristics and these sets are called 'bounded sets.' They are defined by their boundaries. For example, a set of human beings known as male are a bounded set of humans that have in common the male anatomy. Outside of that boundary are female human beings, who they themselves make up a different, bounded set.
Another example: apples. Apples are a bounded set. All apples share a common set of features. Oranges would be a different bounded set.
This 'bounded set' is a concept I am very familiar with. But the article above introduced me to the language that I've needed to talk more coherently about another type of 'set.' That is, the 'centered set.'
The 'centered set' is entirely different from a 'bounded set.' What defines a centered set is not its boundaries, but rather what is central to that set's existence. For example, Twin's fans are a centered set. They are not defined by who's in and who's out, but rather by the Twins baseball team that unites the fans in one central cause. I can be a devout Twin's fan or I can be a fair-weather Twin's fan, but either way, the Twins themselves are what keep me together with other fans.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, the article above talks clearly about the centered set being used to organize and conceptualize what it means to be a Christian. We can move more closely or further away from our center. Our center as Christians is Christ himself. Our faith can and does move toward or away from the center, but everything we believe and do will point us to our center: Christ.
In Christendom, being a Christian means subscribing to a set of doctrines or behaviors that creates boundaries of who's in and who's out. In Christendom, we are organized in a bounded set. Perhaps we shouldn't have ever been organized like that as Christians, but we are. What would it look like to be a 'centered set?' How would this change us? How would we need to make that change?
More on this later...I hope.
