St. Paul’s letter to Corinthians, chapter 1:10

St. Paul exhorts the early Christians to stop quarreling. He wants them to agree in essentials, to be “completely united with only one thought and purpose” and not to let differences be the cause of dissension. The goal of the Christian is to follow Christ, and that must be the one thought and purpose that unites everyone who claims to follow Christ. What a lesson this is for the liberals and the conservatives; the right wingers and the left wingers in our society today!

God wants us to be brothers and sisters united by a common purpose, but not clones of one another. Physically, God did not make us look alike. One of the greatest miracles in life is how we are all the same: one nose, two ears, two eyes, etc., and yet, we are all different. We must be God’s creation for it takes God to make such infinite variety.

We differ, also, in the degree of our relationship with God even though we are all children of God. As in a family, all the children belong to the same parents and are brothers and sisters among themselves, yet their relationship to one another and to their parents is different; so it is in the family of God. We are all children of God, yet we are different.

We must not try to hide our individuality but feel free to express it, always in consideration of our calling and that of others who are different from ourselves. We should never try to make others like ourselves or make ourselves like others. This is one of the great problems today. Most people are not themselves; they are other people in their form of dress, ideas and lifestyle. If you should be conformed to anybody or anything it should be to God’s will, not the will of others.

The ideal is to have a healthy respect for yourself and for others. As human beings, we are not self-sufficient. We must live to serve God and each other, and we must accept others as capable of meeting our needs. The prudent person is one who knows how to help others and how to be helped in turn.

One of the great dangers today is rampant or disinterested individuality: treating others as mere objects, like “things” we can exploit. The way to combat this is to see Christ in each other, and never to treat others as objects or means to an end. For the Christian, the end is contained in the means; that is, all the steps or means you take must be undeniably Christian for you cannot attain a good end by foul means.

It takes everyone working together to bring about harmony among diversity in the body of Christ. People complement one another just like one piece of a puzzle complements the whole. We can be joined in our love of God, yet retain our individuality and respect for one another as children of God.

Fr. Hugh Duffy