Embracing Difference To Strengthen Community

If you can, take a moment to read this article in the privacy of your own thoughts. I’m going to ask some questions of you, ones that you may not want others to know the answers to.

Here we go:

1. Does everyone you know love you?
2. Does everyone you know admire all that you stand for?
3. Including your followership of Jesus?
4. Are all your relationships harmonious, all of the time?
5. Are you in strong fellowship with all in your church community?

I’m going to assume you have answered “no” to at least one of these questions. 

Let’s look it at another way:

1. What are the things about “who you are as a person” that you feel people around you understand the least?
2. What ways in which you see the world make it difficult for you to love some people?
3. What kind of person do you find the easiest to love?
4. Can you think of times when you have felt unloved, shunned, or left out because of the moral and/or faithful responses you’ve made?
5. Amongst the family, friends and work colleagues that fill your days, who would you want to be able to feel closer to?
6. Has your perspective on faith put you on the outer? 
7. Are your talents (your God-given giftedness) poorly understood, maybe even unappreciated? Perhaps they are even questioned as to their appropriateness. 

We humans are created to carry God’s image. We are separated from all other living things because of this one special characteristic God gave us at humankind’s creation (Genesis 1:26-27). We all fall short of glorifying God in the way we express this image-bearing; nonetheless, God works in and through us, so His handiwork is seen in us (Romans 8:28).

We are unique, each from all others – the combination of our inherited genetic code and our lived experiences means that even identical twins eventually are seen for their unique character traits and choices in life. So, we are all different. 

We humans like to categorise each other. Ethnicities, indigeneity, appearance, healthiness, interests, abilities, ways of thinking, how we are attracted and what that attraction is to. 

And yet, these categories we have created do not remove the fact that we all need to be understood, not for our sameness, but for the difference that God has given us. 

And this can be where life gets tougher. Most of us would say that we like the people who are like us; particularly those who are most like us. 

I am currently reading big chunks of the Gospel narratives in my personal quiet times, and it has struck me anew how this was not the way Jesus taught and lived out his teachings. Not only does he show love for those that no-one particularly loves, he reminds anyone who would listen that they are just as worthy of God’s eternal love as those “who have always done the ‘right’ thing”.

Our contemporary church communities are faced with the unintended consequences of how they deal uncomfortably (or ignore) those who are different to those who gather in their congregations. Often it is dressed up in reasoning that promotes particular forms of worship, studying and preaching of the Bible, even the way people should live if they are to feel welcomed in their midst. Sometimes the response of the church community is simply prejudice. Does God call us to this kind of community? I would say no. 

As a group of Christian families gathered together to do Christian schooling, I would have to extend this answer to the way we gather for school each and every day. How do we handle difference? Do we do it well? How do we handle our differences in a way that helps us do life together better? 

Maybe, now, a set of questions as we each contemplate a way forward, in the midst of all our differences:

1. Are there gifts and talents I have that can give me a different perspective in conversations you have?
2. What do I see in the life practices of others I know, that are helpful for how I understand God better?
3. Who are the people I feel closest to? Why are they “my closest”?
4. What is different about them? How have those differences helped me to learn to love them more and more as I’ve got to know them?
5. How do I best pray for better understanding of “the other” (the people God places in my life whose life and practices I don’t understand or don’t agree with)?

We know unconditional love by this…that the Christ laid down His life for us…and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.  1 John 3:16

We know, through our own personal experiences, what it feels like to be accepted or rejected. We are each responsible to God, each other, and ourselves, for our own actions.  

And, in community, we build up or break each other down by the choices we make in exercising that responsibility. May we be a community who handles that responsibility well, honouring each other in the amazing uniqueness God has given us.  

May we celebrate our remarkable differences well.

Shalom.