by Jacob Ninan
One of the problems in the early church in Corinth was that people followed different leaders according to their liking (1Cor.3:4). There were differences among these leaders in their speaking style, their emphasis, approach, etc., and people drew near to those whom they preferred. Each of us has various ideas and concepts about life, and it is natural that we develop certain preferences about who we follow. But let us look at ourselves to see what we do with those we don't agree with! Do we hate them, talk badly about them, seek to bring them down, look down on them, etc., or do we have a more mature way?
There were two sisters in the church at Philippi who supported Paul heartily in his work in the church, but apparently, they could not get along too well with each other (Php.4:2). If we are honest enough to admit it, we can see that we too can have differences with our siblings, brothers and sisters in the church, co-workers, friends, and just about anyone. Peter exhorts husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way (1Pet.3:7). But is it only husbands who have that problem? Wives too have to live with their husbands in an understanding way because husbands have their weaknesses too! It will be good if we can all take this to apply to our relationships with everyone else we have to deal with. Then we can see how much we need to grow in understanding!
Just the fact that we have become children of God and therefore brothers and sisters to one another does not mean that we will agree about everything. To put it in another way, just because we find certain differences with others we should not assume that we cannot have anything more to do with them. The young and zealous apostle Paul had problems with Barnabas who was his senior and who had taken a mentor's role towards Paul earlier. This was about a young man called John Mark who was a cousin of Barnabas and who had found the going too tough when they had been on an earlier missionary journey (Acts.15:37,38). Paul was of the opinion that they should not take him along with them who had deserted them and had not gone on with them to the work. Barnabas wanted to give him another chance. Paul looked at it as a matter of principle, saying that they could not rely on people with a bad record, but Barnabas wanted to be more patient and merciful. They were both right in their own way, but unfortunately they could not see both sides of the situation together at the same time. This is typical of many of our inter-personal problems. We think we are right in the particular way we look at things without acknowledging that another person may be also right in his viewpoint.
The sad thing is that these inter-personal problems propagate into churches and organisations and they even cause splits. Don't we – each one of us – need to grow into maturity in learning how to deal with such situations better? As Paul told the Corinthians, we should not be remaining as 'ordinary people' (or 'mere men') and we should be growing to be spiritual people.
But at the same time let us also remember that divisions cannot be avoided altogether, and in some cases it will be wiser to part than to remain together in an artificial sense of unity (1Cor.11:19). For our own safety, we need to move away from heretics, false prophets and teachers and those who cause strife.
The number one thing that we need to grow towards maturity is to grow in humility. One part of humility is to see ourselves in relation to God and to recognise that we are actually very small. We don't know everything, we don't understand everything in the right way, there are so many things others know that we don't know, others may have certain insights that we don't have, etc. If we know that, we will always be willing to learn and also be willing to give the others the benefit of doubt.
Have you thought of the fact that we are all on different paths of learning from God? God has customised our curriculum for us, knowing where we are coming from, what experiences we have gone through, what our circumstances are, what our particular strengths and weaknesses are, where He wants us to be, what He wants us to fulfil, etc. To use a natural example, one of us may have learnt a little more of maths this year while another one has learnt more grammar than us! That is because maths is what we needed specially to learn at this time, and grammar may be what the other person needed. But then, he can easily see our mistakes in grammar more clearly than in the case of maths, and a similar thing can happen about how we see him with respect to maths! Looking at this in this way, can we imagine we are any better than him or the other way? Shouldn't we leave that to God who alone sees the full picture?
Paul may have thought about how Barnabas was favouring his cousin Mark while Paul wanted to be uncompromising. In the meantime, Barnabas may have thought he could see through Paul's lack of mercy and patience and he may have assumed that this came from Paul's Pharisaical background! But as they continued to grow, both of them were able to appreciate each other better. Paul, for example, came to the place where he could call for Mark's help for the ministry (2Tim.4:11). Does this ring any bell for us in our relationship with other brothers and sisters?
Looking back, Paul and Barnabas would have regretted the loss they had brought to God's plans through their wrong decision, because when He called them, He had wanted them as a team supporting each other and not as two different individuals (Acts.13:2). Can this not happen to us too?
If we are able to look at what is going on in our mind and compare ourselves with others, we can easily see that we are all different from one another. None of our personalities is exactly the same, we have all been affected in a good or bad way through the family upbringing and experiences we have gone through, our education and training have been different, etc. Some of us have come through severe experiences of rejection, neglect or abuse too. What God wants each one of us to do in the body of Christ is also different. All these different factors have contributed to what all of us are today, and they colour the way we look at things, how we feel about different things, how we make decisions, etc. We approach life differently; we even read the Bible differently. None of us reacts to situations in the same way as someone else does. Even when we have good intentions, the way we deal with situations may be different. Some tend to suffer in silence without any apparent reaction, some like to let everyone know whatever they feel, and some think they ought to teach everybody else some hard lessons!
As a result of this diversity, we need to keep in mind that it is not easy to understand one another even when it appears to us that we fully understand the others. Also we must not assume that the others would be able to understand clearly what we have in our mind! Let us not be quick to judge the others and let us not get upset quickly when others misunderstand us! We must learn to overlook a lot of things we see in others. A lot of the things others do may even look evil in our eyes while they are doing them with good intentions! We are only able to see what the others do externally, but we then go on to assume certain bad intentions behind what we see, and we may be totally off! We may have had the experience that we do something with a good intention but then some others assume we had some bad intentions. On the other hand, we assume someone has some ulterior motive even when we have really no actual evidence for that. Because of some experience with someone in the past, we jump to the conclusion that this other person must be the same. If we have suffered betrayal at the hands of someone, do we then stop trusting all people? Shall we not consider the fact that things are not always what they appear to be?
Most of the time Jesus kept quiet in front of people who questioned Him in His trial, because He had come to die for us and He was not trying to escape that. But He did not lose His dignity in doing that because He did speak boldly when He had to (Jn.19:11). If we look only at one of these factors, we might come to a wrong conclusion. There is a place for us to keep quiet and another place to speak out (Prov.26:4,5). Here again we can find that where one man thinks he should speak, another man thinks he should not! Such is our diversity.
From our side we must make sure that we do not allow our heart to intend evil for anyone at all, because we must remember that evil is what we deserve but what God has given us is blessing. Jesus tells us to love our enemies, even though we don't like them. This love means to desire the good of the other person at all times. We are never to act like enemies towards anyone else or desire vengeance towards them because that authority belongs only to God (Rom.12:19-21). At the same time we are not to let people treat us like doormats to trample on. Everything we do must come from love in our heart (1Cor.16:14).
Let us not be quick to judge others but to give allowance for them knowing that they are different from us. If we see someone doing us wrong, we can seek God's grace to forgive them and also to be patient with them (Col.3:13). The more we talk things over with others, especially making efforts to listen to what they have to say, the more we can understand their side of the story and that will help us to bear with them much better (Matt.18:15). Of course there will be some occasions when we see that it is better to keep a distance from certain people when they are likely do do us more harm. Let us be eager to learn and be teachable too.