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 The
husband may be a highly educated scientist, brought up in a
city. The wife may be a country girl (met him when she came to
town to take nurses training) who understands the man even
though she doesn’t understand his job. They appreciate
one-another’s strengths, and supplement one-another in times
of weakness— because they love one-another, and the home they
share.
The
son is a husky eighteen: football star, self-confident. The
older daughter is an uncertain thirteen: so bashful— lady-like
one day and all giggles the next. And there is the two-year-old:
exasperating, into everything, spoiled, spanked, loved. But
together they make a family. The child experiments; mature ones
correct and guide. One frets, another forgives. There are
storms, but in a “pinch” they pull together.
These,
and greater differences are overcome in order to weld families,
teams, businesses, and even nations into useful units of
society. If you are successful in business, government, sports,
or family life it is probably due in great measure to your
ability to adapt to
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and work with the heterogeneous society of
our day. If you are a failure in life, check your ability to get
along with folk.
And
if the church of which you are a member is plagued by chronic
frictions, before you blame it on “insurmountable doctrinal
differences” take a good look at your ability and willingness
to “get along” with people of different social, economic,
and domestic backgrounds.
We
are not suggesting a course of petting, flattering, or
compromising one’s convictions. We are aware that genuine “issues”
may divide brethren, and that our individual obligation to God
must come first. But don’t expect to teach another, in a
single lesson, what you learned over many years.
The
church is country-city, well-educated and no education; people
who have “grown up in the church” and others who but
recently learned Christ in a non-sectarian way. But love for the
Lord, and one-another, in that order, can weld us into a close
family.
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