Back in the sixties, the old Kingston Trio sang a little tune they called The Merry Minuet at concerts to spoof the peace-and-love generation. Part of it went:
The French hate the Germans. The Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs. South Africans hate the Dutch, and I don’t like anybody very much!
For some reason my psychologist could probably explain, those lyrics have stuck in my mind all these years. It certainly doesn’t vibrate with Christian compassion but, let’s face it, there are some people we just don’t like. Maybe they are the ex-wife’s lawyer or the bully at school or the surly neighbour or the office boss-flatterer, not to use a more primitive term. There are probably challenges like them in most people’s lives. I certainly hope so, for if not I’m out here all alone.
Before I tiptoed into a church, it was one thing to whisk all those people I didn’t like into my personal delete file with a sniff of superiority. As I got to know wider circles of my church family, I met many people I liked almost instantly. We just seemed to be on the same wavelength and friendship flowered easily. But, as in most extended families, there are always a few who just seemed to tease my nerves like fingers scratching a blackboard. They aren’t rivals or competitors or even particularly unfriendly. I’m sure that I don’t have to profile them for you.
As a wannabe Christian, what am I to do with these people? Off the top, I can’t think of a biblical story that’s much help. If God wasn’t smiting the wicked, prophets were preaching damnation. But these people aren’t wicked, they’re fellow Christians. Turning the other cheek won’t help when nobody’s threatened to strike the first cheek.
Paul, to the ever-troublesome Corinthians, may have had me in mind: “You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?” (1 Corinthians 3:3)
Yeah, but… I’m not jealous. I’m not quarelling. I am, after all, a mere man, but I’m starting to sound like my five-year-old grandson!
I imagine Paul rolling his eyes, taking a deep breath and slapping me upside the head with a papyrus copy of his famous allegory of the church as the many parts of a body.
“There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord. There are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one.” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6)
As impossible as it may seem, there could be some in our church family who don’t especially like me. Maybe I grate on some other nerves. Maybe the eye doesn’t get along, either, with the, uh, part that warms the pew but, as Paul points out, both need each other.
I must reluctantly admit to myself that the people I don’t like really do bring gifts and talents I lack and that they work diligently for His church. They share the cup of His love and God surely treasures their souls as much as He does mine. It seems that it is not a question of whether or not I like them but of whether or not God loves them. I sense that God clearly does not share my reservations.
“With humility comes wisdom,” said the Proverbs writer (11:2). “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love,” Paul advised the Ephesians (4:2).
Now that sounds like a plan. Me? Humble, gentle and patient? That’s going to surprise a lot of people.
