We the Body

For a Christian the answer to the question "How are you doing?" is more complicated than a simple "good," "bad," or "alright." It may even be a harmful question to ask. How any individual Christian is doing greatly depends on how the Christians around him or her are doing. The call to rejoice with the rejoicing and to weep with the weeping requires a sympathetic looking-away from your self. At any point in time, the most accurate response might be "ecstatic and despondent, completely satisfied and deeply hurting." The potential harm in asking this question is its tendency to promote an individualistic rather than a communal way of seeing our existence as a body united in Jesus.