There is a wonderful beauty in diversity and difference. Why don’t we celebrate our differences, especially in the context of church? Why do we try to make everyone more the same rather than more profoundly unique? I believe our desire to conform people who are different stems from insecurity and fear.
When you meet someone who claims to be a Christian but has very different standards than you (in certain cases that are not clearly scriptural issues) your first instinct is probably judgment or rejection. It is important to understand that I am talking about the grey areas where our standards are not defined by scripture, but by personal convictions. Let’s take eating habits as an example. One person feels convinced that they should be a strict vegetarian and only eat organic foods because that is the moral thing to do. Another person feels that eating pork chops from Wal-Mart is morally neutral. Often it is our instinct to judge those with looser standards than ourselves as thoughtless or overindulgent. Those with stricter standards are often seen as puritanical or self-righteous. Why?
We often forget that we are all very different from one another. Then, when we are confronted with differences, we are a bit shocked and place too much emphasis on the difference, rather than the commonalities we share. Difference does not mean inequality. Difference does not imply greater or lesser value. Difference should not lead to separation because of difference, but greater fellowship in the one thing we claim to have in common. We claim that all people are the children of God. In this we are all equal, and no difference can destroy that link between us.
When friends, spouses, families, or churches split over petty arguments it is a resounding message to those around us about what we really believe. When churches split over music or other human traditions it tells everyone that hears about it how superficial that church’s belief in the importance of the equality God has created us with and demanded that we protect. Isn’t it arrogant to think that we “take God’s side” in disputes when ultimately He sent his son to create unity? “God’s side” is not on the side of contemporary worship or traditional hymns. It is not on the side of the conservative or liberal. Those who take God’s side are those who humble themselves and become the servant of their enemies.
Furthermore the unity we have in the mutual Lordship of Jesus in not a unity of sameness and conforming to each other. It is a unity that underlies and supersedes our difference. Unity through whitewashing difference is doomed to fail; unity celebrating difference as inconsequential to the depths of our brotherhood is unshakeable.
