Making Allowances

W. Carl Ketcherside

[Page 13]

     "Accept life with humility and patience, making allowances for each other because you love each other." This is the translation of Ephesians 4:2 by J. B. Phillips. It contains the secret for living together in peace and harmony. Pride and impatience often produce, and certainly perpetuate, frictions in the church. We need to learn how to accept life. We cannot have our way about everything. Even God had to suffer some things which He did not approve until conditions could be altered for the better.

     Love is the golden key of fellowship. If we love each other, we will make allowances for each other. We do not thrust out one physically crippled because he cannot walk like we do. We do not exclude one for abnormal physical vision or a visual defect. Then why should we drive out those who are intellectually crippled or who do not look at everything as we do? Should we not try to correct the defect in love? Parents spend their whole lives and all of their substance trying to cure a crippled child. Can we not exert every effort to help a brother with warped vision? Will it assist him to be treated like an outcast or placed in the deep freeze?

     I must make allowances for those who grow old, cease to study, and become inflexible in opinion, for I will grow old. I must make allowances for those whose youth and immaturity in judgment leads them to believe they have arrived, for I was once young and knew all the answers. I must consider the circumstances of birth, early environment, parental training, temperament and disposition, of the brethren, and make allowances for these. One is not necessarily dishonest because he disagrees with me. A man may be sincere and unable to see everything like I see it. Shall I seek to undermine his influence, destroy his effectiveness, ruin his work and do him harm? Not if I love him. I will make allowances for him!

     If I had been brought up to believe that Bible classes were a sign of apostasy, or that individual cups constituted a snare of Satan; if I had been taught that instrumental music in the public praise service was pleasing to God and all who opposed it were stubborn "antis," I might even now be on the other side of certain issues. In view of this, I shall make allowances for my brethren--all of them--because I love them.