IF NOT BROTHERHOOD, THEN COEXISTENCE

Ralph Bunche, our deputy ambassador to the United Nations, made an observation about brotherhood recently that merits our study. In an interview in Psychology Today, the famed Negro commented: “We can save the world with a lot less than brotherhood. With coexistence! I used to make speeches about brotherhood, but I never mention it anymore. Brotherhood is a misused, misleading term. What we need in this world is not brotherhood but coexistence. We need the right of every person to his own dignity. We need mutual respect.”

In speaking against brotherhood in this way, Mr. Bunche is revealing that he has a very high regard for its meaning. He implies that brotherhood is more than dignified treatment and mutual respect, for he is willing to settle for these values, which he equates with coexistence.

It is to suggest that brotherhood among men is too much to expect, at least for now, and that we would do well to settle for a more realistic goal.

As one views the tragic divisions among God’s people, especially the Restoration brotherhood, he sees wisdom in Bunche’s analysis. We ourselves are so far from real brotherhood that we too might do well to settle for coexistence, at least for the present. Since we are so slow in learning how to treat some of God’s children brotherly, we might try first learning how to refrain from treating them unbrotherly. If I cannot love a man, perhaps I can at least avoid hating him. If I cannot help him, I can at least refrain from hurting him.

Most of us have been guilty of giving lip-service to brotherhood while treating sons of the Father more like aliens than brothers. We must get away from an institutional view of brotherhood and see men as brothers because they are sons of our heavenly Father. Let him be “a member of the family” rather than “belonging to the church.” The boys’ school that issues a picture with a lad carrying another and saying, “Father, he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother!” may get closer to the meaning of brotherhood than does our behavior in the Church of Christ. The splendor of brotherhood shines through to us when we view it in terms of the family. How do we receive and treat our brothers and sisters who are the children of our own parents?

I am not suspicious of them, but trust them. Even when they do things I do not like, I put the best interpretation possible on what they say and do. I extend to them the benefit of every doubt. I enjoy being with them. I rejoice over their good fortunes and am saddened by their losses. I am ready and eager to help when they are in trouble. I hope for them fulness of life and eternal peace with God, even when they annoy me with their skepticism. When they err, I seek to protect them from loss or embarrassment. I would not think of abusing them or advertising their weaknesses. When we are together as a family, I am gratified, but we are all conscious of the absent brother or sister. “All of us are here” is a blessing we seldom give voice to as the years of our lives multiply. That the family circle of eight children remains unbroken by death is a recognized blessing. We sometime wonder who will be the first to go, a painful anticipation.

This description would be typical of so many families across the land, and this is brotherhood. Should it be less vital and precious in the family of God?

On the desk beside me is a journal from the “conservative” wing of our brotherhood. In it are no less than two extended articles about a brother who was of its persuasion, but who has now “departed from the faith.” As one reads these two writers, both of whom refer to the offending member as a brother, he can hardly get the impression that they love the man as they would a member of their own family. They are resentful of what he has said and done. They challenge him to debate and castigate him for refusing to accept. He is referred to negatively again and again, even with his name emblazoned in the title of the articles. One gets the impression that they are after him. They are after their brother.

God knows, and some of you know, that I too have been guilty of this. It pains me to thumb through some of my earlier writings and remind myself of how I “cleaned the plow” of men I should have been treating as brothers. For months I rode a fellow editor as “Brother Hit and Run” because he would attack me in his paper and give me no chance to reply. Another I teased because he was once a mere sign-painter and now a highly-paid minister. I nettled others as “whistling in the dark” and billed Guy N. Woods, whom I twice debated, as Guy-in-Woods. I even “wrote ‘em up” when they put me in jail! And through the years I wouldn’t let them forget what they had done!

I would not have responded to my brothers in the flesh in these ways, and I was wrong in showing bitterness and resentment. I should have responded with “the sweet reasonableness of Christ.” But those are among the sins of yesteryear. Now I long to treat every man as one for whom Christ died, and those who are Christ’s I desire to treat with special tenderness. God forgive me when I fail to do this!

We must learn to appreciate more deeply what it means to be brothers. The poet Edwin Markham says it in a single line: “The crest and crowning of all good, life’s final star, is Brotherhood.” Paul surely understood the meaning of brotherhood or he could never have written: “If food is a cause of my brother’s falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall” (1 Cor. 13:8). The apostle speaks tenderly of “the brother for whom Christ died.” Oh, if we could but see each other in this light!

If Paul could forego meat, something completely within his right, in order to relieve a brother’s conscience, we can surely refrain from that stare, avoidance, sarcasm, indifference, or a writeup that wounds a brother. It is sobering to realize that the way we treat a brother is indeed the way we are treating Christ. This caused Paul to write: “Sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.”

It appears, however, that this kind of brotherliness has thus far eluded us or we have eluded it. So we might let the first step be coexistence, which would be, as defined by Ralph Bunche, a great improvement over our present behavior.

A visitor in a Texas city was asking the secretary at the largest Church of Christ about the other congregations in the area. When she named those that were on the approved list, the visitor inquired about two others, one premillennial and the other non-Sunday School. Her answer was “We are not in fellowship with those churches.”

A Texas church selected a Louisiana town in which to do mission work, for “the gospel has never been preached there,” wholly ignoring a premillennial congregation that had been there 50 years. Once on the scene the missionary from Texas acted as if the premill brethren did not exist.

It is common practice among us for churches in a city to erect a sign on the highway inviting people to visit “The Churches of Christ of ” Almost without exception there are other Churches of Christ that are not listed and who were not even consulted. It is as if they did not exist.

Our papers carry news items of Christian Church ministers who have been “converted to the truth”, or they have “accepted New Testament Christianity.” The editors in the Christian Church are kind enough not to do us that way when our men go to them, as they often have.

Brethren who move to a new location just happen sometime to identify themselves with a premill congregation and are happily situated, not noticing or not caring that they are premillennial. Such ones are soon called on by “loyal” brethren and warned of their evil association.

These illustrations, which are by no means atypical, show that we do not even coexist with those who are “brothers for whom Christ died.” If we cannot bless, we can at least not curse; if we cannot accept, we can at least not reject. A Hindu proverb reads: “Help thy brother’s boat across, and lo! thine own has reached the shore.” We have not yet learned to refrain from puncturing holes in our brother’s boat.

Coexistence may not allow for the likes of pulpit exchanges, cooperative efforts, or even mutual visitation. But it will mean an admission of existence, a kind of live and let live relationship. It may not be like sending a dove of peace, but it will be like calling off the dogs.

But brotherhood itself is the end in view. The call for a policy of coexistence as the stage setting for something still higher. Once we begin to coexist we will trail out toward real brotherhood. Respect and tolerance will give way to brotherly affection.

Thomas V. Smith expresses my sentiments:

“Brotherhood is in essence, a hope on the road the long road to fulfillment. To claim it to be already a full grown fact is to be guilty of hypocrisy. To admit it to be always a fiction is to be guilty of cynicism. Let us avoid both.”

—the Editor