Beyond the Categories we Use

"What if we in the church saw each other not as people in different categories from us but as fellow human beings with needs - basic needs like comfort, affirmation, and encouragement - we could help fulfill? What would our lives and churches look like then?"
(Gina Dalfonzo, One by One: Welcoming the Singles in Your Church)

These questions challenged me to think and to dream in the couple of months since I finished this book.

What would it look like if we did this well?

Or, even if we attempted to do this and stumbled along the way?

So often it's easy to draw lines around age or marital status and segregate people into groups based on this. And there is space for this . . . sometimes!

But, I think that, overwhelmingly, we need to crossing those line and forming relationships with people who aren't just like us.

It takes work.

It takes grace.

It takes being willing to have sometimes difficult conversations.

Most importantly, it takes time and being willing to listen. Rather than make assumptions about what people need, want, or feel, we need to stop and listen to what they're saying and then respond the best way we know how. This take investment - it requires time and our energy.

But the rewards are big. Our world grows.

And we often find friends in those places we least expected to.

One of the biggest reasons I've heard for why people only want friends who are just like them if that other people don't understand what it's like if their lives are different. But, as Gina Dalfonzo writes, speaking specifically of friendship between married people and single people:

"You don't have to understand everything your single friends are going through. The truth is, you can't fully understand it, any more than they can understand what you're going through . . . Yet, that doesn't mean you can't be friends." (One by One)

Being able to completely understand everything isn't a requirement for friendship.

A little later in her book, Dalfonzo writes:

"To be thoroughly understood, to talk with someone who's been where you are and really gets it, is a wonderful and valuable thing. But it's not a necessary element of friendship, or even of kindness and respect. . . . We need people in our lives who understand us. . . . But we also need people who are coming from different backgrounds, stages of life, and points of view. We need these people to help us broaden our perspective, look at life from different angles, and get out of our comfortable shell. And they need us too." (One by One)

I'm really glad for the friends I have who get things without me having to explain it - the friends who understand easily. I've written about the need for this recently. We need that.

But, just as much, I appreciate the friends I have whose lives on the surface look very different from mine. I need them too. Often their perspective on things is different and it helps me see what I've missed.

When we draw lines based on surface things to separate, we miss out on this. And when all our friends are the same as us, we also miss out on the beauty of having people who do truly understand. If that's all we know, we don't place the same value on it. We need both friends who understand because their lives are quite similar and friends who don't the same way because their lives are different.