The Problem With People: A Personal Perspective
Getting on with people isn’t that easy.
Although I was brought up in a church environment, I found it very hard to get to know people. This was made harder realising people put on masks to avoid being authentic and vulnerable. My parents moved from one end of town to another when I was seven and I left my comfortable crew of people I knew to what felt like a strange land with strange people. It was easy for me to become an introvert.
There were a couple of bad experiences with people that ‘taught’ me that it was best for others not to get to know you. It was also easy to build a cynical picture of people being rather self-serving and with a tendency to be spiteful and able to hurt you with whatever information they have about you.
It’s not that all people were bad, and everything about people were bad. It was just that there was enough negative about others, to be wary of truly trying to engage others. This happened in church circles, just as much as it happened outside of them. That was worsened by the tendency to have cliques and as I didn’t quite fit the requirements I knew I wasn’t allowed to be a member of the in-crowd. Life became a test of making your way through convenient relationships and avoiding conflict where possible.
The Problem With People: A Sin Problem
The fear of hurt and betrayal, is not unique to me. People are aware of the way hurt people can tend to hurt people, and even the people who seem to have it altogether on closer inspection have their own foibles that allow them to stay clear of others.
That sin condition again inevitably pollutes any ability to have truly deep, trusting and harmonious relationships. Whether it’s fear or pride, there are a concoction of toxins that make pure and true relations with our fellow man. It can only take the smallest slight and it can set off a chain reaction to mistrust, barbed comments and eventually all out hostility. Once deeply entrenched there’s no need to even explore why there’s the hatred, it’s just easy to be guarded and closed than open up to others.
The Prince of Peace Has The Solution
Thank God for Jesus Christ, who steps into the middle of the war zone and not just allows creation to experience peace vertically, but crucially horizontally. He shows that with His way of being merciful and forgiving, embracing anyone from any walk of life to be a part of His Family. Even His guide to prayer is a communal cry rather than an individual one and a crucial part of that prayer guide is making right relationships through forgiveness.
Not only does He talk of this when He’s helping, He prays for one who is going to deny Him in the hope that once the brother realises his error, he can actually strengthen others. Jesus embodies peace with our fellow man by not having a problem to engage with anyone who may be considered outside of the main cliques.
The Community Of Christ Reflects Christ!
It’s all good for Him to show this way of reconciling relationships and living the life of love that sees us all brothers and sisters with the one Father. When He ascends He sends His spirit that not only empowers His follows to declare His message, but also allows them to experience community in profoundly amazing ways. This ability to create a community only too aware of their failings and faults, yet joined in peace by the Prince of Peace is to be the witness to the world that they are indeed followers of Christ.
It is this witness – not preaching, raising lots of money, glamorous building projects and mimicking worldly marketing techniques that will pierce through any criticism and doubt and tell strangers that these people are truly like their Master.
This community of the Spirit is marked out as a family. We didn’t choose them, but they were chosen of our Father and indeed born of Him, meaning we share something deeper and richer than normal family ties, we indeed are blood-related, that Blood belonging to the Son crucified to make us right with God.
Welcome To The Family
Of the different metaphors used to define the church the most powerful at the emotional and relational level remains the family. A family characterised by those divine traits of mercy, grace, forgiveness, joy and a desire to mutually edify so that each can realise all they are called to be in Christ.
By the extraordinary power of the Spirit gender, age, ethnicity, ability, language, cultural, economic and social barriers are placed in subjection to the Supreme Love of God and brothers and sisters from the beauty of the Creator’s diversity now engage with each other in the most amazing harmonious fashion. Where once there was enmity and hostility, now there is compassion and heart-felt desire for the fullness of Christ to be seen in each.
Reading that it may come across as though I speak of some ideal realisation of the community of faith. It might come across as a utopia that can never be experienced this side of Jesus returning. Yet there are testimonies of those in the Body of Christ who, in all their human frailties, still reach together and taste of the unity with which Christ makes us one. It doesn’t have to be in an ecstatic type of experience. It can be just having the presence of a brother or sister there with you in the good time or the bad.
It is the presence of people who will believe with you for something that may seem impossible to the rational mind, but because faith taps into what God can do that agreement can work wonders. It is the brother praying with you for wisdom to deal with a tricky situation. It is the sister saying she will not leave you alone as you undergo a testing trial of your character. It is the meal your brethren makes for your children while you’ve had to work long hours.
God’s Family, God’s Way
God doesn’t just create a spirit of tolerance, this is not about calling a ceasefire. God works within His children the spirit of co-operation. He works within His children the spirit of longsuffering that looks beyond annoying habits and treats brothers and sisters as the specially called, appointed and anointed children of God that they are.
He works within His children the spirit of humility and love that casts out pride and fear, so that there is no titles or hierarchy of holiness, but there is an appreciation for each other that allows mutual service. There is a recognition that God for His glory is delighted to give all His children gifts to equip and enable the Family to function and express Christ to each other and the watching world.
Peace In The Family: A Personal Perspective
I could relate to you the hurts I’ve experienced from brothers and sisters in the church. I could catalog some nasty things I’ve witnessed and experienced that would lead anyone to question if someone really is a Christian and if it’s church that we’re all about. Yet with equal clarity I can relate to you amazing acts of kindness and times in life where I can only say it was supernatural intervention from God through brothers and sisters in Christ that has rescued me from death.
I can testify that church as we have it isn’t perfect, but therein lies the joy of the work of the Spirit. As I am a work in progress, so God in His wisdom chooses these broken vessels to realise they are those who He calls beloved and call them together and fills them with Him, so that together they can show the world the peace that passes understanding.
It’s the reality of Christ, it’s the reality of this peace that makes the desire to enjoy belonging to His Family all the more relentless in spite of those human episodes of failing. It’s the reality of a peace that the world doesn’t understand, but would desperately want to have that makes being a child of God with loving brothers and sisters all the more a powerful witness.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
dmcd
Life With CD 