“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:28).
When we were teens, my best friend and I loved to listen to Bill Cosby’s stand-up routines and records. Cosby had not yet become a television celebrity. His bits about his brother, the pine wood derby, and the chicken heart that ate New York City were very funny, but I believe the best vignette he told was about Noah interacting with God. After each of God’s instructions, Noah would say in a bewildered and unbelieving way, “right.” My friend and I soon adopted that “right” in our everyday conversations.
I still use that “right” when I hear something that is hard to believe; the Scripture about living in peace with everyone is one trigger for its use.
Take what happened to me just a few months ago. I received a call from a customer who was dissatisfied with one of my stores. The call came to me several days after the date of her visit, and she had already been contacted by three of our employees who tried to make things right for her: we had replaced the food she was unhappy with; given back her money; apologized for not meeting her expectations; and explained that our commitment to hospitality and customer satisfaction was of primary importance to our business purpose. None of that was satisfying, so the call made its way to me.
Right.
After twenty minutes on the phone with her it was difficult to see if we had found any common ground other than she thought (and said so) that we were a bunch of bozo’s. She also promised me she would never visit one of our restaurants again. With no end in sight, I began to seek an ending when she asked me what I thought about her calling the newspapers about her experience.
Aha. It finally occurred to me that this was a good old fashioned shake-down. Our call ended badly.
But here’s the thing, God’s admonition still stands. I am pretty sure God knows it is very difficult to live at peace with some people. Yet the Scripture says that is what we are supposed to do.
Here’s another example. My wife was at a local retail shop a few days ago. She had left something in the car that she needed and had gone to retrieve it when she noticed a car pulling in to the space next to hers, parking a hairsbreadth away from her driver’s side door. Worse, an elderly female passenger, opening her door, had bumped into our door. My wife approached the woman and politely said that if she would close the door (she had not yet exited the vehicle—she couldn’t fit), she would move our car over and make more room for everyone.
After moving our car, my wife approached the store again to find the elderly man (driver) and the woman waiting at the entrance. The man said, “Do you think we hit your car door?”
“Yes.”
“We did not.”
“Yes you did, but no worries. I looked and your door just hit our rubber bumper guard. No problem at all.”
Looking first at my wife, and then at his wife, the man grimaced and said disgustedly, “Well, she’s just stupid.”
Right.
My wife said the woman stared morosely at the ground. Hoping to ease the tension, my wife attempted to make small talk with the lady, but the man had opened the door and was standing there holding it open. He said, “Well, are we going to go in or are you just going to stand there talking?”
She let them go in by themselves, and whispered to herself a less than kind sobriquet of the man.
A fellow I worked with once, a Christian man, used to say about difficult people he came in contact with that “I am sure his Mama loved him just like my Mama loved me.” It was his way of trying to reach into the humanity of an adversary, or just plain cantankerous human beings. I saw it work a few times when he used it; it has even worked a few times for me, but not often.
My father used to say, “There just ain’t no getting along with some people.”
I cling to the “if possible” phrase in Romans 12:18. I know that Jesus told the Disciples to shake the dust off their feet when they left a town that would not accept them (kind of like the “if possible” language), and I know that Paul would get pretty irritated with some of his adversaries, but the goal remains: Try and get along.
And I also do one other thing when getting along isn’t possible. I pray about the matter. I pray for the individual I could not get along with. I pray for myself: to have more understanding, more patience, less pride, and less desire to always be right.
I want to grow more and more into the likeness of Jesus and to leave judging others to Him. I do not want my temper to dissuade another from Christ. I do not want my temper to dampen my witness to God.
Lord, preserve me from making another say “right” when they have to deal with me.