Ever since Adam and Eve got the boot from paradise (heaven-on-earth), it seems that the world has been going to hell in a handcart. The world has certainly not been all that heavenly for as long as anyone can remember: problems, problems and more problems. And for the moment it’s not from where or whence the problems have arisen. Suffice it to say that problems are usually the result of one or two reasons: selfishness or dumb luck. Either we deliberately do that which will eventually – or immediately – cause us and others or are the result if being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
What does matter are the problems that confront us now and not the reasons for them in the first place. For one of the main problems with problems is that we spent so much time trying to figure out what went wrong or why it went wrong or whom to blame that we never have the time or energy to deal with the problem itself, whatever the problem.
The other problem with problems is that it is not a problem until it is my problem: until it confronts me head on, until I can no longer avoid it, escape it or try to justify it. Until then the problem is someone else’s problem. But once it is my problem, then I have no choice nut to confront it, deal with it, try to solve or understand it, live with it.
And where do we confront these problems most especially? In our family. When a problem becomes a family problem, my family’s problem (however we define problem), then it is now my problem. G. K. Chesterton once observed: “The common defense of the family is that, amid the stress and fickleness of life, it is peaceful, pleasant and at one. But there is another defense of the family, and to me evident: its defense is that the family is not peaceful and not pleasant and not one.” In other words, it is full of problems. In other words, we have to work at it inside the family.
Philip Yancey: “It is safe to say that I have learned more abut grace, forgiveness, diversity – and, yes, original sin – from my family than from all the theology books I have read…so troublesome issues like divorce and homosexuality [problems to some/many] take on a different cast when you confront them not in a state legislature [or a church gathering/convention] but in a family reunion.”
It is also safe to say that when problems are confronted on a very personal basis, when they are family problems – and the church is a family, is it not? – then we can begin to se those “problems” from a personal perspective and begin to deal with them with compassion and understanding, something we are unlikely to do when the problems are someone else’s problems.
We will never make earth heavenly, but we can make it a little less hellish. What we need to do is understand that every problem, is really a family problem, and thus, ours, and deal with it as best we can and not find an excuse why we should not.
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