Stephen
Terry, Director
Keys
to Family Unity
Commentary
for the May 18, 2019 Sabbath School Lesson
“How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together
in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the
beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe. It is as
if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his
blessing, even life forevermore.” Psalm
133, NIV
Perhaps the most important thing to understand about
family unity is to understand the meaning of the word “unity.” Unity does not
mean uniformity. Little Johnny is not required to be a cookie-cutter image of
his father, not is little Sally to be an exact image of her mother. While both
Nature and Nurture combine to make us what we are and some things about a
person’s character and skill set will derive from examples provided by their
parents, we are nonetheless unique individuals. A father who is into art and
music may have a son who is very much into sports and athletics. A mother who
grew up as a tomboy on a farm may find her daughter preferring lacey dresses
and dancing. This does not represent failure on the part of their parents.
Instead it represents God’s desire for diversity in his creation. With the many
species of creatures and even the diverse ethnicities of human beings, how can
we doubt divine appreciation for a world filled with diversity? Creation itself
argues vociferously against uniformity. Even those things which appear uniform
to the less discerning eye, upon closer examination are discovered to have
remarkable variety. For instance, hornets, those ornery and aggressive insects
that crash our summer picnics and seem to all be identical thugs in yellow and
black have special facial markings that allow them to tell one another apart.[i] Insects living in
colonies, in spite of their outward appearance to us, may actually be an
excellent example of unity that doesn’t eliminate diversity.
Another example can be found in music where uniformity
could actually be harmful. If every note of a composition were to be uniform in
duration and tone, true uniformity might be achieved, but who would want to
listen to it? The steady and monotonous droning would perhaps put everyone to
sleep, or worse, drive their anxiety levels to the point of madness if it went
on endlessly. Instead, a piece of music relies on the diversity of its elements
to achieve harmony, and in that harmony, it can convey darkness or light, joy
or anger, and many other things all made possible by the diverse pool of tones
and rhythms available to the skilled musician. It is that harmony that carries
the unity of a symphony through several movements that build upon and complement
one another. Whether we are speaking of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” or Rossini’s
“William Tell Overture,” the stories are carried forward with a harmonious
unified theme founded upon diversity.
So what does this tell us about life and the key to
unity? Perhaps it is simply that instead of trying to make everyone behave as
we think they should, even if that means subverting their identity, we should
look for ways to harmonize our views with theirs. While there are musical
pieces that are based on notes that do not harmonize with one another, these
are usually not popular or well known. They tend to induce feelings like one
might have from scraping fingernails on a chalk board. (Having had that
experience, it sends shivers down my spine to even write about it.) When we
focus on the differences that others have from us that set our teeth on edge,
we can miss those differences that actually work well with our own singular traits.
Even when we may not wish to recognize that it is important for others to be
different, we live lives that put it before us constantly. We play baseball,
understanding that someone has to be a catcher, someone else a pitcher, and
each of the other positions is vital as well. In spite of outward appearances
with team uniforms and a common team name, teams are built on diversity applied
to a common purpose, not uniformity. The unity comes with integration of diversity,
not from separating out whatever is not absolutely uniform. Those who do not
understand this may not only create losing teams, they can produce broken
families as well.
Some parents know exactly what they want their children
to become. Fathers often want their sons to follow in their footsteps. Mothers
may want the same for their daughters. This is understandable. Since they have
blazed the trail before, it is the easiest path to follow when raising a child,
to take their hand and bring them over the same pathway in order to achieve
what the parents have decided is success. But if the child does not share in
that vision, their personality can become submerged under their parents’ dreams
for the sake of family harmony. The child loses their identity in that of their
parents. Perhaps worse still, if the child is strong-willed, they may rebel and
open warfare between parent and child can erupt. Then no one is happy. Harmony
cannot exist, and communication, limited to barbs and angry rhetoric, becomes
severely dysfunctional. With the former response to authority, the child when
grown can become resigned to a life that does not fulfil their sense of purpose
and identity. Maybe this is behind many mid-life crises when family
relationships come crashing down as the individual goes in search of what they
feel they were never allowed to experience when they were younger. With the
latter response, the child often loses the support network that would grant
them success in life, and they spend their entire life trying to figure out
where it all went wrong and why they never feel accepted for who they are.
Too many dysfunctional family relationships are based on
the demands of uniformity, demands which can be based on uncompromising
obedience to authority. Instead of each person bringing their unique
perspective to the table in order to craft a common path forward that honors
and respects the contributions of each, only the perspective of the parents,
and too often only one parent, dominates. Such domineering individuals are
often talking about the need to submit to authority, but never seem to
demonstrate submissiveness themselves. Children raised in that environment will
become distrustful of the ability of others to engage in open and honest
discussion with them as a natural part of the process of problem solving. Instead,
they will fear that coming to another to enlist their help in dealing with
challenges will bring derision, judgment and condemnation down on their head.
But life does not accommodate such dysfunction. Challenges will arise, either
of our own making or from things outside of our control. Many of those problems
will be beyond our ability to handle alone. Some individuals may feel that,
alone with God, they should be able to tackle any problem if they only have
enough faith. However, the reality is that God has already provided us with something
to ease our path through life and help us grow vibrant characters in the process.
He provided other people, both inside our families and outside them, and to
provide the richest possible opportunities for growth, he filled them with
diversity.
A world struggling with the challenges of evil is apt to
find in diversity, and in all of God’s gifts to us, reasons
to nurture evil and dysfunctionality. In our brokenness, we can erroneously
choose to identify with the brokenness easily seen all around us and present
only brokenness of our own to the world. But if we wrap ourselves in that proud
mantel of brokenness and promote it as the ultimate value, as reality, we may
miss opportunities for personal fulfillment and joy that could have been ours.
There are many voices that may demand obedience and the opportunity to control who
and what we are. Those voices can come from our families, from the church, from
school, from our community, and even from our peers. They all may seek to lay
heavy burdens on us that we were never meant to bear. Some of these may demand unquestioning
obedience as a sign of loyalty, but this is not God’s will for us. He promises
to lighten our burdens,[ii] and he does not demand
unquestioning obedience but rather encourages faith based upon reasoned
dialogue.[iii] Considering the
diversity he created in humanity, God must find those conversations with his creation
very interesting, containing many fascinating perspectives. From those many
different perspectives and experiences, he weaves together a fellowship of
friends capable of demonstrating God’s loving and compassionate character to
the world through their harmonious unity with one another. While he loves to do
this for each of us, he is delighted to be able to do the same for families.
Just like each one of us, our families can open up a conversation with him that
will show us how to honor diversity in our homes and communities with acceptance,
understanding and respect that nurtures the possibility of each person becoming
everything that God has given them the ability to become. That is a precious
treasure that never stops giving.
