On Spiritual Family: Sharing a Common Personality (Part I)

"Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace." Ephesians 4:3

Not to exaggerate but I had known of a family who never had any moment of peace inside the house. Whenever they gather together, expect that there will always be hot moments of argument, shouting, disrespecting, cursing at one another, blaming, and ultimately, brooding unhealthy resentment and hatred.

Trying to analyze why each family member behaves that way, I came up to know that each child were assigned a nanny, while the parents were so engaged deeply into their own profession, and never pause to pay attention to what was happening with the kids. These nannies had no relationship with each other, not even close friendship. Often times you see them fighting and having bad issues against one another. Worst, they influenced the children by feeding them bias perceptions against their siblings. Because of this, the children never enjoyed the company of one another as they grow up. And so, each child developed a personality entirely deviating from the others.

On the side of the parents, while they were so busy with their own affairs, they never get any chance to be involved in each other's life. They never had any opportunity to conform to the personalities of one another because they are basically ignorant about each other. As husband and wife, their personalities should have been slowly coming to harmony through frequent spending time with each other, and have at least the time to put in their common principles, beliefs, goals and aspirations on which they based their family building upon.

In our Spiritual Family, why is it important to attain Common Personality? What benefit can it give us to have common thoughts, feelings, behavior and lifestyle? How does God govern our relationship? What is His goal for us, as His spiritual family? Lastly, how do we attain common personality?

The Only Model and Pattern

In I Timothy 4:16, Paul advised Timothy to watch his “life and doctrine” closely, and to persevere in them. The same advice is addressed to us, as it is very applicable in our relationship with one another. If we believe in “one right doctrine” that is based on the Bible only, we will get unified by that same belief, speak the same language and live out the same lifestyle. Sometimes, our interpretation of the doctrines varies, as we get messages based on our needs and ways of perceiving things. With the intercession of the Holy Spirit, we will clearly understand what message God is giving us. The same message will therefore be shared to all.

Pride and stubbornness hampers the right doctrine to flow through our veins, thus, powerful enough to cause division within the Spiritual Family. There are times that we think we believe in the right thing and close our ears to other views, our common close-minded excuse, “I don’t want to confuse myself.” Another traditional excuse, “I am only following what my elders taught me.” And still another stubborn excuse, “I grew up with this belief, it is causing me no harm, why should I bother to change.” These excuses were already been encountered by Paul while building the ministry, so it shows his authority to warn Timothy (II Timothy 4:3) about the stubbornness of the people who will listen only to what their “itching ears wants to hear.”

Actually, we don’t have to worry about confusion because God had given us the spirit of wise discernment for as long as we invite the presence of the Holy Spirit to reveal the right message to us. The writer of the book of Hebrews (Hebrews 5:14) said, upon maturing, we acquired knowledge and had been trained to distinguish good from evil.

What if each member of the spiritual family is unwilling to conform to the right doctrine, what kind of church will we build? How can we imagine our group to be a fellowship of arguing Christians, who push views different from the others’, and who live out own lives apart from the rest?

Point to remember: The Bible is the only reference that we, as spiritual family, can be unified upon. Read it, ponder upon it, believe it and apply the principles you learn from it in your life.

You will see that as you apply those principles, you are slowly coming closer and closer into harmony with your spiritual brothers and sisters. And one day you will realize that you cannot live apart from the Spiritual Family, which is our Permanent Family afterall.