Kingdom Relationships: Unlike

In October, at the age of 108, my Aunt Laura Hoffman peacefully passed into the presence of Jesus. A year earlier she asked me to speak at her memorial service, telling me what she wanted me to say on her behalf as a parting word:

Be careful not to judge people with disabilities, including ones that are not easy to see or identify.

My early memories of my Aunt Laura include her beautiful soprano voice when she sang in church, our visits to her home to play with cousins, her really good cooking and dessert pies, and, along with all this, the way she cared for people who were hurting.

For years, she cared for her invalid father who was in a upstairs room of her home. After his death, she tended her aging mother in the same attentive way. Later, she assisted a daughter amid the complications of Type 1 Diabetes. In her 90’s—or maybe her early 100’s—she still served, weaving plastic bags into sleeping mats for the homeless.

One time, well after she had lost her sight, an aide came to her room. From the tone of her voice, Aunt Laura could tell the aide was upset and asked, “Are you doing okay?” The aide told about the terminal diagnosis of a family member. Even without seeing, Aunt Laura could discern and care and pray for people in distress.

Her life experiences caring for people may have prompted my aunt's parting word. In her final years, Aunt Laura endured her own unseen disability, Charles-Bonnet syndrome. This is a condition that causes vivid, involuntary mental images in people with significant vision loss. When the eyes cannot send enough information to the brain, the brain generates its own images—a sort of seeing with the mind.

On several occasions Aunt Laura saw three little girls standing at her side. Another time, she saw a line of clothes, hanging out to dry. More imaginatively, she once saw a band of little kittens playing musical instruments. One time she saw tables of cakes and pies—with the observation that not one of the pastries was good enough to serve.

The concern Aunt Laura expressed to me was not so much what others may have thought about her when she commented on things she was seeing, but rather that we are to be long-suffering, slow to judge others who are in the midst of difficulties of one kind or another.

Hard as it is at times, the biblical admonition is to interact with everyone in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:1-3).

To paraphrase the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together, this means we must bear the burden of one another. At times we must suffer and endure one another.

As other illustrative instances, in keeping with my aunt’s concern, this may encompass people on the margins of our families, churches, communities, and culture. Jesus had a notable exchange with a Jewish lawyer who, looking for a way to evade the biblical admonition to love our neighbors as ourselves, asked: “And who is my neighbor?” With the provocative story about a good Samaritan, Jesus answered: anyone in need is our neighbor (Luke 10:25-37).

An Australian sociologist, Judy Singer, coined the word “neurodiversity” nearly thirty years ago. The word describes people who have strengths, often exceptional ones, along with struggles that differ, many times in quite challenging ways, from people whose brains work more typically. Whether neurodivergent or neurotypical, we do not easily interact with one another. We need to make allowances and adjustments for good understanding and communication.

For most of us, there will likely be a handful of persons who, for one reason or another, we just don’t like. In our default thinking, we are “regular” and the people who bug us are “irregular.” Unlike persons with whom we have “chemistry,” these persons set off adverse internal reactions. Our annoyance, frustration, and repugnance can boil inside, seep out indirectly in slander, or explode directly in hard words.

Aunt Laura said life is short—which was an interesting observation coming from a woman of 107 at the time. She was burdened for people to meet Jesus. She did not want any unfair misjudgments to keep us from loving everyone and sharing Jesus with them.

She wanted us to obey the most important commandment of Jesus:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ [And] ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

It is hard to love persons we misjudge. It can seem like we are talking with strangers, trying to make sense of people we don’t really know. Despite our good intentions, we misread and misunderstand them.

In his book, Let Us be on Our Way, Pope John Paul II quoted the Polish poet, Jerzy Liebert, who succinctly offered a powerful antidote to such misunderstandings.

I study you, my friend,

Slowly I study you, slowly.

This difficult task, its gain,

Brings joy to my heart and pain.

When we encounter persons who are unlike us, especially any who may have seen or unseen challenges, we can listen. We can ask to hear their story. Slowly, over time, we can study them. We can seek to understand them, look for ways to serve them, and share Jesus with them.

This is a parting word from my Aunt Laura to all of us.

Laura Hoffman, 1917—2025

This is the last of four posts on kingdom relationships: single, married, chaste, and unlike.