What I learnt from all the unreasonable people I met in church…including myself.

Part 3 – The Community of Saints: a guide for the unwary.

There’s nothing that reveals how different and fragile we Christians are like a group of us trying to get along together. It’s in the nature of churches that they push us into community and confront us with our personalities, opinions, and habits.

This is not an accidental by-product of God’s desire for us to worship Him. He always intended that we come together, work together, play together, and love each other. So the first thing for the unwary Christian to note is that our faith has a strong bias woven into it towards community and engagement. Jesus said that the greatest commandments are that we love God and our neighbour as ourselves. This definition of ‘neighbour’ certainly includes the brothers and sisters in our church community.

So here we all are together, and oh, how rich and challenging an experience those relationships turn out to be!

The majority of our relationships in church teach us gentle lessons in tolerance, forbearance, and give us the pleasure of the company of all kinds of interesting people. A few relationships might break through to an intimacy that is deeply rewarding. One of the quiet benefits of church community is the close relationships that we build, based on mutual respect and love. They grow over the years, and enrich our lives in ways we don’t think much about, because they are simply always there. These relationships flourish between men, between women, and between men and women, and are simply good honest relationships between people who respect each other and care for each other.

A second feature for the Christian to note, therefore, is that we may find that we have a number of unspectacular, steady friendships. They are not newsworthy, they probably won’t appear in some social media space with ‘look at me!’ and ‘look at us’ around them (thank God) and we should treasure them, they are a real blessing.

Then there are the relationships we have with those who remind us of Paul’s appeal to God to remove the ‘thorn in the flesh’. This is the dear brother or sister whose personality rubs us the wrong way, whose theology makes us wince, and whose politics makes us grimace. If we ask God to remove them (as Paul did his thorn) we are likely to get the same response. God’s grace was sufficient for Paul, and it’s probably going to be sufficient for us too.

Oh, what opportunity we have to mature as Christian’s in the presence of these Saints! But the interesting thing is, joking aside, we do have an opportunity to mature as Christian’s in the presence of these Saints, and they have an opportunity to mature through their relationship with us. I have had this experience myself with someone, and although it was hard work, we found a way to love and respect each other. We did it through persistence, mutual respect, and a stubborn refusal to give in to resentment, cynicism, and isolation. We built a warm, respectful relationship that was a deep and abiding blessing. There’s nothing special about us you can follow the same path, and although there are no guarantees, this gives you the best chance of having the relationship with your neighbour that God wants you to have.

So our guide finishes with the acknowledgement that we must be prepared to love and respect those around us, including and especially those we find difficult. If we are serious about the faith we are called to do this anyway, and this can be hard work. But I can tell you that the rewards are a rich and incomparable blessing.

 Andrew Chamberlain is a writer and creative writing tutor. He is the presenter of The Creative Writer’s Toolbelt , a podcast offering practical, accessible advice to creative writers, and author of The Creative Writer’s Toolbelt Handbook containing the best advice and insight from 100 episodes of the podcast.