We can, but we all have to put in the effort. “Can we all get along?” are the famous words of Rodney King in 1992 after an all-white jury acquitted the officers who brutally beat King after a chase and arrest, filmed by a bystander that became a world-wide story. Although King was not perfect, he did not deserve the beating and treatment from officers, and his story exposed the huge injustices taking place at that time. His honest question has been asked since the beginning of sin. The first impact of sin was the division it brought between Adam and Eve, who hid from each other and blamed others rather than working together as they had done before sin.

            The Pandemic of 2020 and the almost world-wide quarantine has most people asking that same question. Trapped in homes under fear of being exposed to a fatal disease, job loss, or doing school or work from home, taxing family resources, isolating from human support of church, school, friends and entertainment can create tension. We are all feeling it. The answer is “Yes, we can all get along if we try to see people for who they are.”

            In Dialectical Behavioral Therapy you learn seven assumptions. You are told these assumptions cannot be proven; you just need to accept them to gain the benefit of the therapy. You don’t even have to accept all seven; you just need to agree to accept at least three or four of them. The seven assumptions put forth by Marsha M. Linehan have been adapted in this way.

• People are doing the best that they can.
  
• People want to improve. 
  
• People need to do better, try harder, and be more motivated to change.
  
• People may not have caused all of their problems, but they still have to solve them anyway.
  
• New behavior has to be learned in all relevant contexts.
  
• All behaviors (actions, thoughts, emotions) are caused.
  
• Figuring out and changing the causes of behavior work better than judging and blaming
  

            After sin, we all have to work hard and learn how to get along. It doesn’t come naturally. I am amazed by the number of people who had conflict before being on forced isolation that have found their own ways to solve the conflicts that arise. When your survival depends on getting along, it influences your willingness to get along. James wrote about this in his letter instructing the early Christians. He wrote:What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures(James 4:1-3).

          If people want to learn how to get along, they need to accept that we are all doing the best we can. If we want to improve, we need to ask for God’s help and his motivation to change. I may not have the same problems as others; but if they are living in my house, I need to solve the problem I am having with them anyway. I need to ask for God’s help to change me. Rather than judge and blame the people who are driving me crazy, I need to ask God to help me with my selfish desires and enable Him to empower me with love and wisdom to respond not react to the people I live with.

          You can even apply James 4 by writing out how the seven assumptions are true about the person you are blaming and judging. Use them to help you see them in a different light. Believe in the power of God to give you the love you need to get along as long as it takes and, after the quarantine is over, to love the people in your life in deeper and richer ways.

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