Why stay? Because we're family.

Wise words, here, from Bill Tammeus, in an opinion piece published today on the Presbyterian Outlook website.

If you like what he has to say, check out the full article.

"Friends occasionally call me a cockeyed optimist, a charge to which I sometimes plead guilty. But my hope in the case of 10-A is that the folks who wanted to defeat it will do what folks who have wanted to pass it — but lost repeatedly — have done: stay in the church.

Those of us who have favored getting rid of G-6.0106(b) have remained in the church even though we’ve had to live with something we believed was wrong. Why did we stay? Because we love the church — and by “church,” I mean the people in the church, even the people with whom we disagree.

I have three sisters and sometimes have disagreed with them. But I’ve never considered declaring them (or me) outside the family. Between us, my wife and I have six children and six grandchildren, some of whom sometimes have made choices we don’t like. But it’s never occurred to us to cut them (or us) out of our family.

In the title of a sermon I once gave, water is thicker than blood. By which I mean that the water of baptism creates a family more eternal than the family created by blood relationships."

Once again, here's where to find the full article.