Embracing Diversity: Are We Missing Out on God’s Blessing?

By Larry Short

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” Revelation 7:9-10

As a conservative Christian, I’m often made nervous when I hear words such as inclusiveness and diversity bandied around. The devil is always in how you define your phrases.

But recently I’ve come to realize that we as Christians are missing out on a huge part of the blessing that God desires to bestow upon us if we are unwilling to embrace or even seek true diversity in our lives and within the Body of Christ.

Let me start with three experiences that have shaped me. The first happened about the time I started college at Biola, circa 1975. The youth pastor at our church was a young man named John I had a huge respect for, as he made an enormous impact in my life.

John invited me during one summer break to live with him in the parsonage of a small church in downtown Los Angeles where he was interning, in a suburb called Cudahy, which at the time was the most densely populated square mile on the planet. This church was indeed culturally unique. It was actually seven churches that met in a single small building, a different church each day of the week.

And each church was based in a different racial and cultural tradition: Hispanic, Black, Samoan, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. The style of worship of each was correspondingly diverse.

One of my most powerful memories is of lying in bed at night and drifting off to sleep while listening to the singing next door, which was taking place in a manner I had never experienced growing up in my white conservative Baptist church. Not better, not worse, just different.

And I remember thinking, “This must be what Heaven is like!” Hearing God praised in different tongues, in different styles, with different types of artistry and music, while foreign to my inexperienced ears, still raised me up into the presence of God. Amazing.

My second awakening came when traveling for World Vision. I spent time in Romania, worshipping with Eastern Orthodox Christians; in Honduras, worshipping with Latin American charismatics; and in South Africa, worshipping with Anglicans. Previously, I hadn’t even been aware that these groups were what I would call Christians. But in each of those diverse experiences, I discovered that worshipping God in different ways brought new and previously unknown experiences and revelations. They weren’t better Christians or worse Christians than I was used to—they were simply brothers and sisters in Christ who opened my eyes to new ways to see God.

The third experience came in my last few years with World Vision. When I worked in Media Relations, I got to know a colleague named Cynthia whom I deeply respected for her love for Christ and others, her professionalism, and her commitment to service. Cynthia is Black and lives with her family, including two boys at the time in their late teens, in Washington, DC.

As we got to know each other, we began to share family experiences, joys and frustrations and fears. And I was stunned to learn that Cynthia’s greatest fears were very different from mine.

“I weep and pray every time my boys leave the house,” she confessed. “What if they were to be stopped by the police? I’ve taught them how to carefully and respectfully comply. But there are so many of their peers for whom these confrontations go desperately sideways. How can I protect my children?”

I had hopes, dreams, and fears for my own two white children. But I have never once shed tears of worry that they might be abused by the authority figures they depend on to keep them safe.

The events of these past few weeks have renewed in me a commitment to do what I began to do when I worked for World Vision: to listen! Do I truly understand (and do I want to understand) where the pain that we are seeing manifested in the culture around us is coming from? Am I willing to actively oppose the personal and systemic racism that is at its heart?

Revelation 7 tells us of a “great multitude” that we will be standing shoulder to shoulder with, before the throne of the Lamb. (No social distancing there, and no masks required!) We will be interspersed with every diverse nation, tribe, people, and language. And we will all be praising God together!

How are we preparing for that day NOW? Are we embracing the diversity that God has built into all of His wonderful creation, on this planet and beyond? God doesn’t make junk, and He doesn’t make things for no reason. He has created people very different from us and expects us to embrace those differences and figure out how we all fit together in this diverse organism we call the Body of Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28

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