Beauty in Diversity
Recently my pastor has been on a roll – preaching about living a life fully submitted to Christ and how that relates to community. It’s gone really well with what I’ve been reading in Francis Chan’s book, Letters to the Church and what God’s been teaching me this year.
My word at the beginning of the year was liberty and in classic fashion, my understanding of liberty hasn’t come in the ways I’ve expected it. Instead of incredible freedom from my mental health battles, God has been setting me free from other things instead and while I may externally prefer not having to constantly fight lies about my self-worth, it’s actually been really exciting being set free from these other things.
The biggest thing, God’s been teaching me and liberating me from this year, is a White Republican Evangelical view of Christianity and to some extents a Western view as well. Because the reality is – the Kingdom of God isn’t confined to a certain political, geographical, or cultural leaning. Republicans in the heartland of America are NOT God’s chosen people. God’s chosen people are all that He calls and adopts into His family and that family is vastly different and diverse. God’s family includes people of all races, sexual orientations, political leanings, cultures, ages, etc. Oh and Jesus didn’t have long brown hair and blue eyes. He was a Jewish man born in the Middle-East and had no real distinguishing features.
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. – Isaiah 53:2.
So if your picture of Jesus has him white and attractive – you may want to work on that.
The reality here is – there are Christians who are pro-life and there are Christians who are pro-choice. There are Christians who are LGBTQ+. There are Christians who are pro-gun control and those that are not. There are Christians who see the value in taking care of the Earth and stopping global warming and there are Christians who eat takeout every day and never recycle. There are Christians who believe capitalism is God’s gift to mankind and those that see the Biblical reasoning behind socialism. There are Christians who have sex outside of marriage and Christians who are waiting. There are Christians who are black and fear for their lives daily and there are Christians who are white and refuse to acknowledge their privilege. Some Christians even believe that marriage isn’t the be all and end all, since it’s temporal and all – and guess what? God still loves them.
So if that paragraph bothered you – I recommend asking the Holy Spirit why it did. It’s okay to feel a little taken aback. Cognitive Dissonance is a thing and I think it’s something a lot of people struggle with because the Bible on its own teaches one thing and our culture teaches us another and it is our job to do the work to break those lies and live in the freedom and truth that Jesus won for us on the cross.
And that’s just what God’s been doing in my heart this year. He’s been showing me small ways I’ve turned my relationship with Him and His Kingdom into something it never was. He’s been convicting me to be consistent in my beliefs, actions, and thoughts. And one of those that’s not political and has been the hardest is: diversity in my community.
See when God calls us into His family, He’s calling us into family and it’s been my experience that families are messy and imperfect. Even the best ones have their issues. Reality is – you don’t always get along with every member of your family – you may even have ones you avoid. But living for Christ means dying to self (another post for another time) and that means we lay down our preferences for community.
That means our top 15 or so friends shouldn’t all be like us – heck our top 5 friends shouldn’t either. There’s this popular quote (which is backed Biblically by Proverbs 13:20) that you are the average of your five closest friends or the five people you spend the most time with. Which means if you spend time with five people who are like you in gender, race, socio-economic status, education, giftings, beliefs, etc. – you’re really not getting challenged or learning much. You’re just affirming what you are. The beautiful thing about the Body of Christ is – it’s so diverse yet in that diversity there is unity – we can surround ourselves with people who fundamentally believe the same things yet challenge and grow us in other ways.
Confession: I am not good at this. My top five friends are white. The top five people I spend most time with – also white. The top five people I probably see most often are two of my best friends Adrian and Daria, my co-youth leaders and friends Auke and Bev, and my friend David because he’s in my community group and we work together. With the exception of Auke – we all grew up in middle-class homes in America – he grew up in the Netherlands. Daria, David, Bev and I are all born and raised New Englanders and only one of them didn’t graduate from college. Despite this sameness we all do believe slightly different things about the church and have VASTLY different gifts.
But I could do better – I should do better. While I love the crap out of these people and enjoy almost every second spent with them – God’s family is diverse and beautiful and I am missing out on experiencing the full range of who He is by limiting my friends to people so similar to myself.
If you’re thinking about your friends and having a minor breakdown over this realization in your own life – have grace for yourself. We are not perfect and we cannot be perfect. What we can do is realize our errors and make changes.
So if this is completely foreign to you – maybe start by having a close friend whose team Cap while you’re on team Iron Man. It sounds silly but even that sparks a good conversation and can help you grow. If you’re a Gryffindor get some Huffplepuffs, Ravenclaws or even Slytherin’s in your circle. Once you’ve nailed that down – be best friends with someone who supports your least favorite sports team and watch a game with them. You can survive that. I promise and you may even get to a point where you love each other so much you would want your team to lose so your friend’s team could win. (Isaac - I love you forever for that). After that, stretch yourself by finding someone who’s political leanings are different or who’s an Old Earther while you’re staunchly a seven-days creationist and talk to them about it. Science can be fun. So I’ve been told.
Three of my best friends aren’t artistic. Only two of them are serious readers while a different pair love football. Only because they love me would any of them go to a Carrie Underwood concert with me. These are small things but they are also things I would use to define myself and they are a start. While I’m learning that I need to do better – I also want to acknowledge where I am making an effort to surround myself with people who challenge me and reflect a different facet of God. That’s why I value my male friends so much – because we may be similar in every other way but the very fact that one of us is female and the other is male – means we have so much we can learn from one another.
But let’s never settle. Let’s always look to assess how and with whom do we spend our time. Make friends with people who are significantly older, a different race or culture, a different gender or sexual preference, etc. Oh and listen to them. Really seek to get to know them and learn from them. Humble yourself and ask questions and be willing to be wrong. Get vulnerable and admit where you might be bringing biases and privilege into a conversation and relationship.
This doesn’t mean we seek out token friends. This means we address the comfortability of sameness in our hearts and ask God to correct things that need to be corrected and expand our love and compassion for those who are different. Because friends, there is so much more beauty in diversity than in the lie of homogeneity.
Photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplash