As I suggested in the last issue of this article, the call to holiness is the call to become truly a human like Jesus Christ. He is God’s revelation to us about how to be the human that God intended when He created us.

The call to holiness is also a call to be aware that in order to have a relationship with God we must first develop the ability to have genuine relationships with other humans. This means developing the abilities needed to have genuine and true relationships with others.

Research has given us ideas about building human relationships. Again a lot has to do with the way we think. Here are some thoughts about the way we must think if we desire to build relationships.

1. Accept and celebrate differences. One of the biggest challenges we experience in relationships is that we are all different. We can perceive the world in many ways. Certainly a stumbling block that we come across when we try to build relationships is a desire or an expectation that people will think like we do and, therefore, more easily establish rapport with them. We feel more comfortable when we feel that people “get” us and can see our point of view. Life, however, would be very dull if we were all the same and, while we may find it initially easier, the novelty of sameness soon wears off. So accepting and celebrating our differences is a great starting point.

This seems to be true especially when we are talking about “values” or “religious beliefs.” In order to develop the skills necessary to have genuine relationships and, as a result, a genuine relationship with God, we must learn how to have a relationship with anyone who comes across our path in life. We really don’t have the relationship skills needed for a relationship with God when the only people we have a genuine relationship with are those who look like us, talk like us, believe like us and think like us. These types of relationships don’t take any skill or thought.