Unity, uniformity, & diversity
Sneetches
When my kids were younger one of my favorite books to read was the Dr. Seuss book about the Sneetches. If you’re not familiar: a slick salesman comes riding into town & convinces half the Sneetches that the most fashionable trend around is getting a star on your belly. But then the other Sneetches don’t have a star, and want one, so he gives THEM stars too, but then the other Sneetches are like “gross, THEY have stars now get it off!” and back and forth and back and forth with the salesman turning a tidy profit along the way.
The story is ultimately about consumerism run amuck, but it’s also – maybe more subtly – about how human beings (and Sneetches too, it would seem) like to create uniformity. The Sneetches want to create a star – or non-star – community, that separates them from the others.
We gravitate toward spaces with people who tend to look like us, think like us, talk like us, vote like us.
The Allure of Uniformity
Increasingly people are choosing where to move based almost entirely on “do these people think/act/believe like me.” And according to a recent study 46% of people want to be part of a church that shares their political point of view. Humans are wired to want to be around people like us, & our current cultural climate is cranking that up to a non-negotiable must.
This is why we need to be careful when we talk about what it means for there to be “unity in the church.” When we think of unity, it’s very easy to assume that means 1) the absence of conflict and 2) everyone more or less being the same. And the painful truth is that these are the driving characteristics of most churches. Very few churches try to be this way – at least not consciously – but the unwritten rules that you’ll never find on the website are “never cause conflict that might make people leave” and “blend in to whatever the dominant group is.”
Some churches even create a model of their target congregant – the average person who walks in their door – and tries to build everything around reaching that person as possible!
Biblical unity is found in diversity
But this is SO far from a Biblical definition of unity. Take a look at the disciples Jesus calls: there are poor devout fisherman, and rich sellout tax collectors, and violent revolutionaries, all expected to figure it out together. Look at Romans 16, where we see the names of men and women, Jews and Greeks, rich and poor, slaves and free, all living in small house church communities, trying to figure it out.
Unity, from a Biblical perspective, doesn’t happen through uniformity. Biblical unity is found in diversity! Being truly committed to this, in a church body, is going to require at least three things:
1) Unity in diversity requires discomfort.
We all like the idea of diversity, that’s why a bland, hassle-free version of it shows up in every Coke commercial & TV show. But actual unity in diversity requires discomfort. It means learning to sign worship songs in a different language, learning how to have civil conversations with someone who votes different than you, or learning how to be sensitive in how you talk around someone from a completely different socioeconomic bracket.
2) Unity in diversity requires humility.
And this will inevitably require humility! If you’re married, you know what it’s like to have a way that is obviously the right way to do something only for your spouse to have The Gall to suggest that maybe there’s another way to do something (this is not true about toilet paper though. There is only one right way to unroll TP).
This is what happens when we try to build unity through diversity. We have to learn to listen to points of view we haven’t considered. We have to be, as the Bible tells us, quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.
3) Unity in diversity is a work of the Holy Spirit.
It’s easy to feel discouraged by all of this, if only because of how rare it is to see it! Transparently, while The Porch Church wants to be a church that finds unity in diversity, not uniformity, we have a long way to go.
The good news is that it’s not our job to create it, it’s just our job to submit to the Holy Spirit creating it. Paul makes it clear we are unified in the Spirit, which means the more we submit to God, and to each other, the more the Spirit will teach us how to do this.
In Revelation we see every nation, tribe, and tongue praising King Jesus together! They aren’t in their own individual churches worshipping in their own way, and they aren’t all singing songs only in English, Spanish, or Mandarin. Rather each culture is represented, is actively being who God made them to be, and yet is unified around Christ.
That’s where the story is headed. And we get to work toward that now.