Why It's Okay That Everyone Is different

Or "Making My Peace With That Horrid Diversity Word."
This is a little lengthy. But I will not apologize because, well, you'll have to read it to understand why I don't need to.

So. Pop-culture and politically-correct phrases and ideologies not being my favorite things in the world, I have resisted with strength and vehemence the hot-button "Diversity" word. Drives me nuts. Turns out, though, that our nutty culture didn't invent the idea. They just trampled on a perfectly good and-- wait for it-- Biblical idea.

Over the last two months I've been thinking a lot about my judgmental spirit. I didn't even know I had the disease until recently (please forgive me, human race, and particularly those in it whom I know personally), but once God brought it up, it opened a can of worms not to be ignored. I and most of the rest of the homo sapiens on the planet have long sought to persuade every other homo sapien that our very own positions/beliefs/talents/etc are the best/most useful/most moral/etc. This has produced, over the centuries, denominations, political parties, family feuds, and over 37,000,000 cornbread recipes. It makes feet and noses embarrassed that they aren't hands and eyes, and vice versa. It makes the save-the-whale-ers hate the people-need-to-eat-fish-ers, and vice versa. It makes the Mac users disdain the PC users, and vice versa. It makes the warriors try to convert the pacifists and vice versa. It makes men hugely frustrated with women and women enormously frustrated with men, and vise-- oh wait.

Now, what this blog is not is a "can't-we-all-just-get-along" plea. Nor is it a dismissal of actually sinful behavior.

This blog is a plea for mutual appreciation.

It's rooted in Romans 14 where Paul talks emphatically about convictions. I read it last month and was knocked over by the idea that if there were one best way for God to get something done, He would have made us all that way. For example, the missions-minded Christians who are gifted that way often try to convince the rest of us that if we aren't "going or sending" we're somehow morally deficient. (Find a deft handling of that scenario by Ria, here.) Or, using Paul's own example, vegetarians versus meat-eaters. (No rotten tomatoes, please-- Paul said it, not me!) Fact is, God made both noses and feet. He made both PC and Mac users. He made both pacifists and warriors. He made both men and women, and none are mutually exclusive. They are not wrong, just different. (Thank you, Emerson Eggerich.)

The conclusion He has led me to is that all these areas need to be covered: endangered animals need to be saved, and people still need to eat meat. (Okay, not the vegetarians. Don't lose me here!) Wars occasionally need to be fought, and occasionally people still need to stand by their God-given convictions and not fight. Men need to be able to think deeply in one "box", women need to be able to think broadly about many related subjects at once, without judgment! Not wrong, different! This gives me huge freedom to back off my rabid defense of my position (which is really only insecurity anyway-- fear I might be wrong, fear that if I can't convince you it makes my ideas invalid, fear that somehow my gifts are less than yours) and extend grace-- no, strike that, because that's arrogant-- and take joy in anothers' gifts and convictions and passions. Because it all has to be covered. A wise woman speaking on one of our dvd series at the Care Center says that to the degree we value something, we value those who possess it. If I value money, I'm going to value someone who has it, and de-value someone who doesn't have it. Very quickly my appreciation for God-sanctioned situations go away. Very quickly I'm looking down on those who are louder than me, don't make decisions as quickly as I do, don't write the way I do, don't talk the way I do-- the possibilities seem endless. Every day I make a plethora of arbitrary, me-centered comparisons that completely ignore the fact that God creates the standard, and if someone is not short of it, who am I to say they ought to be other than they are?

The good news, patient reader, is that this knife cuts both ways. If I should not judge others, then I need not be judged by others. I can say with confidence born from conviction, "I'm glad you write short blogs; I'm going to write a long one."

Because God, apparently, likes both.