Living with Each Other: Lessons from Romans 12

In a world brimming with hostility, it seems unsurmountable to remain civil.

That is a problem with emotional hand grenades lobbed at people. A pigeon-hole (which is only fit for pigeons) demonizes and diminishes when applied. The slots are many, including negative, unpatriotic, or ignorant (which is a calmer way of saying what some say!). Facebook posts become poison darts. I have read Next Door comments that wilt even the strongest.

I have read Paul’s letter to the Romans dozens of times. The chapter I tend to sit in is the twelfth chapter. In it, Paul uses the ionic column words that hold up civilizations, nations, churches, communities, and families. Harmony. Blessing. Honor. Peace. Those values scrub the muck from the human pigpen.

I cannot change how others act, but I can change how I think about others when they act.

How do we live with each other? From my reading of Romans 12, here are but a few.

Care rather than categorize. We categorize people based on our interactions. The label sticks like permanent glue and stays on them forever. Listing things we dislike is easier than appreciating what others might be. When we use words like “negative,” “condescending,” or “cynical,” we shut them in a prison of our own making. Discover where they hurt, and you can unlock the jail cell.

Judge someone based on their best day rather than their worst day. It’s simple to find people’s faults and flaws. Find them on the worst day of their lives, and they can snarl and snap. Haven’t you done that on your worst day? What if you looked for their sterling characteristics when they did their best? What if you could see faith over failure or devotion rather than depression? Would that not change the filter through which you view them? I have to repent of many first impressions inspired by one lousy encounter.

Manage yourself because you are the “other person.” Mothers warn that every time you point the finger at someone, four more point back at you. We see people through the lens of who we are and what is happening in our lives. What is coloring your world at the present moment to cause this image of another? Check yourself first.

How does that happen?

Lincoln’s first inaugural address was delivered five weeks before South Carolina cannons shot America into a Civil War that killed 620,000 American lives.

His final words were telling:

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Perhaps we can act by the better angels of our nature.