True Diversity

Today, “diversity” is a buzzword. While the dictionary definition means “variety or difference,” all too often, “diversity” is a code word for an outward signifier like race, gender, or sexual orientation. Take academia, the field I worked in for more than a decade.

Academics like to talk about diversity. We look for a diversity hire when filling a vacant spot on the faculty, and we must write diversity statements on our syllabi, which explain our experience teaching a diverse body of students.  In my experience, a diversity hire means a candidate who is not white, male, heterosexual, politically moderate or conservative. In the second, it means that we have experience teaching students who are not white, middle class, and heterosexual, although no university would ever admit as much. The outcome of such diversity policies is that colleges and universities—at least the ones I worked for in the Northeast--hire people who look different from other faculty members but very much fall in line with the ranking professors’s ideology. In my academic experience, ideological diversity was not tolerated.

I’ve come to appreciate that true diversity exists in the Body of Christ, for God’s plan for the Church is imbued with His love and wisdom. In the Body of Christ exists both unity and diversity.   

1 Corinthians 12:12-26 (NIV)

12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 

13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 

14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 

16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 

17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 

18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 

19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 

20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”

 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 

23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 

24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 

25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 

26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

I’ve always thought verses 15-21 were comically ironic. Did the saints in the first-century chuckle as this part of Paul’s letter was read aloud? A talking foot and a talking ear moaning about their function is pretty funny stuff. A body made up entirely of an eye or an ear is also comical. There’s a point to be made here.

Thinking about yourself as unimportant or unnecessary is ludicrous, as ludicrous as a talking ear or a giant, body-sized eyeball. Moreover, deeming a fellow believer unimportant or unnecessary is equally silly. What’s the antidote? Recognize and rejoice in the true diversity of the One Body.

God designed the Body of Christ and placed the members in that Body as it pleased Him (1 Corin. 12:18). There is true diversity in the Body of Christ, for each one has a role to play and a function to fulfill.

We are warned in the Scriptures not to compare ourselves to other saints. Why? Because we will inevitably conclude that we are either superior (“I have no need of you!”) or inferior (“They have no need of me.”)  Don’t do it!  Recall that this person may have a gift and ability that you don’t have, and that you may have  gifts and abilities that they don’t have! Each is needed.

We can rejoice in the true diversity God has recognized in the One Body. And, we are to get busy using whatever gifts we have to serve others: 

1 Peter 4:10 (NIV)

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.