About the family of God

The family of God, for me, is the most important image of humanity, but what does it actually mean, I wondered? What is it in reality to me? How do we all fit into each others' lives?

Well, because, and only because, I was born and have remained a Catholic, Catholics seem to me to be like my brothers and sisters. This is similar to my biological family; just because we were born and raised in the same family doesn't make us best friends or more important to each other than anyone else; far from it. It just means that we have so many shared experiences and memories, were brought up with the same standards and values, shared the same house, same relatives, listened/watched the same programmes, etc etc, that there is a terrific familiarity.

Other Christians seem to me to be like my first cousins. As it happens, I am tremendously close to some of my cousins; we share the same wider family and have similar natures. Often we can see the family likenesses in our children and can share the same sense of humour and the like. But we weren't brought up in the same household so don't have that very particular background that individual families have.

People of other faiths seem to be like my second cousins; we don't know each other as well, but recognise some unifying factors in our experiences, have relatives in common and the like. People of no faith are like my neighbours; we share the same environment, even if we don't know each other very well. We have the same interests in common as regards the place where we live and most of us want the best for that space for ourselves and for each other, as, ultimately, that is what is in all our best interests.

In that way, everyone matters to me in some way or another because we all share the same planet, however well or little we know each other. No-one has ever expressed this better than John Donne in that marvellous piece of prose which begins; "No man is an island", well worth anyone's reading.

Had I been born and reared in an Anglican or Methodist, Jewish, Islamic or atheistic family, the relationships would be similar but juxtaposed. It would be so marvellous, I believe, if we could all learn to see each other in this way; so many concerns and interests in common; so many reasons to work together, rather than apart, to build a better world for all.