Nothing is More Destructive to Christian Fellowship

‘Nothing could be more destructive to Christian koinonia than the common practice today of pretending not to have any problems.

It is often true that Christian homes may be filled with bickering, squabbling, angry tantrums, even bodily attacks of one member of the family against another, and yet not one word of this is breathed to anyone else and the impression is carefully cultivated before other Christians that this is an ideal Christian family with no problems of any serious consequence to be worked out.

To make matters even worse, this kind of conspiracy of silence is regarded as the Christian thing to do, and the hypocrisy it presents to others (not to mention how it appears to individual members of the family) is considered to be part of the family’s ‘witness’ to the world. How helpful, how wonderfully helpful, it would be if one of the members of the this family (preferably the father) would honestly admit in a gathering of fellow Christians that his family was going through difficulties in working out relationships with one another, and needed very much their prayers and counsel through this time of struggle. The family member would immediately discover at least two things:

(1) That every other Christian in the meeting identified with his problem and held him higher esteem than ever because of his honesty and forthrightness; and

(2) A wealth of helpful counsel would be opened to him from those who had gone through similar struggles and had learned very valuable lessons thereby.

Further, the prayers of other Christians willing to help him bear his burden would release great spiritual power into the situation so that members of the family would be able to see much more clearly the issues to be resolved …’ (Ray Stedman, Body Life)