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I’m 35 years old right now. I have an older brother and a younger sister. If I found out today that I had another sister – one that I never knew about – I wonder how I might feel about that.
And since we are pretending about this sister I never knew I had, let’s say I already knew her, but didn’t know she was my sister. Let’s say she worked at a competing business across town from me, selling the same products I sell (just for fun, let’s say the product is a reasonably priced organic health product), only with different packaging. That would be really strange. Oh, but let’s go even further. Let’s say that I didn’t exactly like her. In fact, we disagree on just about everything.
Finding out that this woman is my sister would be strange indeed. Knowing me like I do, I might question the claim that she is truly my sister. Did she really come from my parents? Is there a legitimate biological connection between us? Why didn’t she grow up with me? Why is she so weird and always wrong about practically everything? Am I going to have to spend holidays in the same house as her? Do I want anyone to know she is my sister?
Let’s go even further. Since we are in competing businesses selling the same product and I now know that I am competing against my own family, what are the implications of that? Isn’t there some sort of conflict of interest here? Are there certain things we can’t talk about (not that I really want to talk with her) because we in competition with each other?
This situation would be most curious indeed. But let’s muddy the waters further.
I’m reading the newspaper one morning and discover that the parent company of my business is the same parent company of my long lost sister’s business. In short, we are not actually competitors, but working for the same parent company and never knew it. The owner of the parent company created various communication and marketing packages to accommodate the various personalities and differences of people who needed their products.
So, not only is this woman my family, we are working for the same owner. I am losing my reason for not liking her. She is not one of them anymore, she is one of us.
Aha, but what about all those things she’s wrong about? She has bad taste in style, her personality is flawed at best, she irritates me, her marketing strategies are weird, she packages her product badly, she’s a bother at social gatherings, she imposes upon me and makes me feel uncomfortable, at the same time she is needy and I grow tired of her quickly.
Upon further review, what I find she is wrong about are really things I don’t like. Of the things that matter most, family and work, we are not only in agreement, but we are unified. She and I are not only unified, we always have been and never knew it. All of our competition, the very reason for our fierce competition, was really an imagined reality that never existed. We lived in ignorance of our unity because there was enough evidence in what we could see that satisfied our desire for division. But the fact remains, no matter how divided we thought we were, we were unified.
What if we found out that people of other flavors of Christianity were not only working for the same “owner,” but were indeed our sisters and our brothers? What if we found out that there is a deeper unity below the surface division that is so easy to focus on? What if we found that we have been family all along? What if we found out that our unity is not based on doctrinal agreement, but directional motion? What if moving toward the same God was more important than the location from where we moved?
Could you commune with a Methodist, a Baptist, a Community Church boy, a Bible Church girl, an Emergent? Or better stated, does it bother you that you might already be communing with them whether you like it or not?
Friends, we might have a much, much larger family than we have ever imagined. And if we do, then how does that change how we love people, to whom we evangelize, and who gets a seat at the table.
Jesus threatened people with inclusion, not exclusion. Shouldn’t we do the same?
Chris Gonzalez is a marriage and family therapist and freelance writer living in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He is married, with two children and has a masters degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and a bachelors degree in English Education and relentless thirst to learn more. Also, look for his previous articles in our archives.
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