Getting along -- our life long work

The question was posed several years ago in the wake of escalating racial conflict in a major western city. In part it seemed utterly naive, and in other ways it was a pleading to the human family. "Why can't we just get along?"

I continue to be haunted by the simple but profound pondering. It really is the heart of living -- the expectation of a functioning, productive society, the care of meaningful interpersonal relations. Getting along!

Beneath the question is the belief that harmony, unity and cooperation are core values to be espoused and experienced in the workings of communities, individuals and society.

Why can't we just get along? So simple in its pleading and reasonable, yet so illusive. For so long it has been difficult to achieve in society and interpersonal relations. But not impossible.

Getting along, however, should never mean just "going along!" I suppose one of the reasons the human family can't get along is that some appropriately refuse to merely go along.

Peace, for instance, must never come at the expense of justice! There is a rightness in relationships that determine their quality and value. Fairness, mutual respect, a valuing of the inherent worth of persons' mutual welfare and caring for others are the stuff of getting along!

Who doesn't weep in the face of the Mideast tragedy? Anger and frustration, disgust and irritation are but a few of my roller coaster emotions over these past few months, as violence and destruction have escalated. And in my heart's wondering and hoping has come the simple question -- Why can't we just get along?

These months so many will walk down a church isle, or stand before a public official and pledge love and commitment -- forever; while so many will end such a covenant made. The testing and trying of two lives seeking to be a working, functioning unit -- some would say -- to be one, is not easy. It is indeed work. Yet no relationship is quite like it in its special way, none so fulfilling.

As such relationships are threatened by a host of societal and personal factors, there has been the pleadings of one spouse to another, "Why can't we just get along?"

In far too many congregations, there exists the kind of conflict and turmoil one would associate with contexts not claiming to be built on the Sure Foundation of Christ. Pastor and church leaders, church leaders and congregations "at war," staining the very fiber of that expression of Christ -- the Church, cause many, I am certain, to cry out, "Why can't we just get along?"

The human family has been gifted by God with all that makes for getting along in community relations, personal -- even internationally. No problem is insoluble, no conflict without solution! Indeed, even those some are attempting to solve by war and violence could be solved by peaceful measures -- but requiring all contending parties to do so!

Getting along is, finally, a lifelong task and goal. It is the glue that holds us together in marriage, congregation, state or nation. It is the context in which conflict is resolved and hurts healed.

Interestingly the Scripture calls us to "Live by the Spirit." (Galatians 5:16), then identifies the characteristics of such spirit-filled living: "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control." (Galatians 5:22).

If these qualities are absent, can we really expect to get along?

Last updated on 01/14/2004

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