Both Margaret Thacker and Annette Funicello have passed away. One is known for her iron-like leadership of Great Britain for eleven years. The other is known for her wholesome Mickey Mouse Club/Disney beach movies of the 60’s. Could any two people be more different? Yet each left their very distinctive mark on our world and culture. It takes many different kinds of people to make a world. We are an amazing hodgepodge of variables and together we make a pretty good whole. Not that the world is perfect. It is a long way from that. But if we could learn to appreciate the differences of others instead of hating them, what a wonderful world this would be. We used to turn on the news from Northern Ireland and hear about Catholics and Protestants killing each other. That has now been replaced with Sunnis and Shiites killing each other.
Why is it that we want others to be like us to the extent that we will kill them if they are not? Could it be a basic insecurity that is only compensated for by having others join us, thus telling us we are right? What seems to be basic is we are the product of time and place. I go to church where my mother went to church and so on for most people.
How grand it would be if we could learn to value the beautiful things about others. If we could see the richness of others’ differences and perhaps learn to incorporate them into our own experiences, how much better we would be. Paul certainly understood this when he wrote to in I Corinthians 12:25, “. . . there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.”
Written by Roger Bothwell on April 9, 2013
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