On divisiveness: the Spirit brings us together ... but we pull ourselves apart.

"Working to bring people together is a sacred responsibility for all of us. But sometimes some people just seem to have a knack for pulling or pushing other people apart, by:

Starting meaningless or trivial arguments.
Spreading gossip and lies.
Judging and condemning.
Creating cliques.
Holding grudges.
Backstabbing.
Deliberately undermining those in authority.
Pitting one person or group off against another.
Lying and/or manipulating.
Over-committing and under-delivering.
Consistently not being true to one's word.
Pontificating or over-proselytizing.
Setting up rules in order to create social barriers.
Being a racist or sexist or elitist.
Barking out orders and demanding obedience.
Using principles (or even 'righteous' anger) as an excuse to cut off contact.
Personalizing a political dispute.
Raising the stakes in disputes.
Having an 'I win, you lose' attitude.
Acting seemingly unaware or unconcerned about how one's behavior affects others.

The tighter the group is, the worse such divisiveness can get (the Enemy loves when things start to feel really good and right among a small group of "us who get it" vs. "them who don't"). It starts to feel like combat. In many churches, this is what church life is like -- just ask the steady stream of once-active Christians who walk away in disgust. These people have been burned by the world, so they turn to the church as their burn unit, but instead of being healed they get torched with a flamethrower.

Jesus gave us a better way. He taught us to love one another with God's love - to love each other like the Perfect Father. Paul laid out the vision when he wrote about "spiritual gifts:" they are to be used to build each other up and to build all of us up as a whole. Paul also wrote about peacemaking and having a ministry of reconciliation. The Christian faith is full of struggles and terrible conflict, but also full of great healing and strengthening, powerful conflict resolution and life transformation, miraculous redemption , nourishment, hope, and growth. Have you gotten the message? In your church, community, or organization, can you take it on and claim your responsibility to 'be' a healing balm for others, 'be' the reconciling light in conflict, 'be' a stand for all members of the Body coming back together in love and understanding?

"Despise no one, and carp not at anything; for there is no one who does not have their hour, and there is no thing that does not have its place." -- "Ethics Of the Fathers," 4,3

-- Robert Longman, Jr.

A timely piece, as it relates to business, church, family, and any organization in which people are trying to "make things work" together. Here's an invitation to let God work in us, vs. make us work for Him. People are entitled to their feelings, always, as long as they remember that feelings are "feelings" - irrational and not always understandable - and not "truth." As I've shared before, one's feelings tend to emerge naturally out of one's paradigms - one's beliefs about themselves and the world - so if you want to feel differently under any circumstance, you need only choose to believe differently. And as you might recall from last week's entry on family work:

"We are always 100% responsible for our own actions, thoughts, and words, even if they're performed, thought, or said in direct response to circumstances and people for which and for whom we are not responsible."

-- Allan Massie

There is no wiggling out of what I think, say, or do, ever, under any circumstances. I know what's right, in my heart and through my deepest intuition, always, and I can sometimes find that awareness temporarily over-ridden by some intense emotion (usually fear), but if I keep my finger on my own "pause button" I can stop in any moment and reflect, and then fully own the unique nature of my very human and "patterned" melodrama and my own responsibility for what I think, say, or do in the next moment. And the best sign of my spiritual maturity is how consistently and effectively I manage my very intellectual "self-made self" while God works in me (cultivating and refining the amazing "me" who He made), and then works through me (and others He chose to surround me with for my benefit) in the magnificent unfolding of His design.