Difference

Difference isn't the most important thing about people, but it is something. As Christians we should never be leading with our differences but with our shared identity in Christ, and yet living within the body of believers in a way that circumvents differences is living foolishly. When we ignore difference, the result is often an unintentional division. A division not born out of aggression but as a natural outcome of ignoring the ways in which we are not the same. The result is that we live apart.

Being grouped by commonality is not a bad thing necessarily. We often cater events towards different types of people within the church and broader culture--new moms, college students, business owners, etc.--so that people can find others to walk with in their unique set of circumstances or even others who enjoy the same spaces and activities as they do. When we make groups for different interests, passions, abilities, etc., the beauty is in creating space for each one of those to thrive and be appreciated. And yet we know those cannot be the only type of event we have or we will miss out on the value gained by walking in community with those who don't share our story, our interests, or our personality.

When we only group ourselves by sameness, by a joint cause, by what we have in common, we become separate from anyone who is not like us, and the longer we stay in these spaces, the greater the distance stretches between us. And if we are inundated with these spaces, most of us won't even realize the lack in our communities.

And that's why we don't only meet as a Women's Ministry or a Marriage Ministry or an Empty-Nesters Ministry. If all our churches had were these groups and we never gathered as the full body, we'd see the lack pretty quickly. The lack of inter-generational fellowship, of different relational statuses, of the presence of both genders. We'd be limited, and that's not the vision of the Body that we want. Sameness can bring us valuable connection, relief, and safety, but it cannot meet our needs, encourage our growth, and strengthen our churches in the same way a diverse group of people can.

And even when we tend to separate on Sunday mornings into people with shared convictions, this can never be the entirety of our community. We still need relationships with other Christians who share the same foundational beliefs if not the details that are essential to our personal beliefs. We are still called to unity and community within the broader Church and to remembering that despite our differences, we are one and are welcome with each other. Even when our Sunday mornings might be separate week to week (though never in an exclusionary way), our God is still the same.

We know this.

But what about when it comes to race?

Recently, I scanned a room of believers joined in worship, and what I saw was a sea of white faces. Those were not the only faces present, and yet they still formed the overall effect. And as I looked, I was struck by the thought, There is no difference.

Black, White, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous--There is no difference. That is the lie a colorblind society has taught us to believe. Has taught us to raise up and applaud. I don't see color. I don't see difference. We are all the same. It's noble in the eyes of our majority culture but why? Because it has ascribed different values to the differences we see, and in doing so people (mostly white people) have been trained to see an acknowledgement of difference as a statement of more or less value based on those differences. If racism was built around differences, we think we can get rid of racism by ignoring differences.

Kids are lauded up as the peak of anti-discrimination. Pictures of children of different colors playing together always come up in times of racial tension with their sweet innocence and an admonition for us to be like them. For us to not see color but to value people based on who they are.

Posts like these tend to deny the fact that our racial and ethnic experiences inform who we are just like any other part of our lives, but they also ignore the ways kids do and do not see difference. We know that kids physically see color; our praise comes from their lack of discrimination based on color. That is worthy of praise, but is it actually how kids work? Do kids really not discriminate against others because of their differences? Or is this just another part of their development? I'm by no means a child psychologist, but from my perspective kids often live with the assumption that everyone has shared the same experiences, interests, and knowledge as them. Part of growing up is being taught that just because they've done or enjoy something, doesn't mean that everyone else will. Part of growing up is learning that they have differences with their friends, but neither is better or worse for those differences. We train kids as they grow to see beyond their own lens and framework, to know their experiences are not the standard that everyone knows, relates to, and wants. Difference opens the door for discrimination (and we've seen plenty of children bullying others for being different), but it is the childlike assumption that everyone lives like they do that makes some difference so hard to comprehend for children. Do children really lack prejudice or do they simply lack the maturity to understand some differences? And if it's the latter, why is that what we as adults want to model?

Choosing a friend based on enjoying each other is good and should be the standard, but that doesn't remove us from differences that come together in relationships. We praise those who don't see race, but how much of a person and of ourselves do we miss when we don't?

There is no difference of equality, and yet their is difference of experience.

As with anyone else, our culture, our family, our environment, our gifts and interests, they all affect who we become, how we interact in the world, what we are drawn to, etc. And within those frameworks, we still have the vast array of different personalities and passions and ways of interpreting the world. 

But we become afraid of labeling our differences because we feel like it could be misconstrued. 

We see this even in gender. We know men and women have differences, but when so many place higher value on one over the other or when overgeneralized expectations are placed on how we must live within that gender, it becomes more difficult to talk about those differences. We fear giving offense. Or we are so saturated by the cultural discrimination that we unknowingly speak that offense. Something factual becomes something controversial because of the society in which we live. And yet in the Church we still preach on those differences, we still have events catered to those differences, we still know the value of coming together in groups and as a whole. Though the temptation is there, we do not deny God's creation for fear of saying the wrong thing. We continue to seek Him even when it requires more prayer and discernment on how to steward His truth well.

For the large part, however, our culture (and subsequently our church culture) doesn't know how to talk about race. We still have a lot of the history around it to address, but instead of delving into that history, we try too quickly to move on from it, ignoring or avoiding its implications. America's history places more value on white skin, and while many do not hold to that, the lie of value has been tied to the truth of difference. And with the reality that most white people don't want to be seen as racist, we adopted a society that ignores difference in attempts to blot out (or cover up in many cases) racism. 

Instead of addressing the lie, we react with another lie. The bias of difference becomes our default, and we seek to undo it. But not by weeding out the bias--rather, by turning a blind eye to the difference. But difference is real, and it's not bad. We have taught ourselves as a culture to ascribe value based on difference, but difference from us does not hold intrinsically more or less value. And when we believe it does, we have to reject difference in order to reject the unequal values placed on them.

But even here we must ask the question, different from what? What is the standard? That's the question a race-based discrimination has bred, and its answer is different from majority, white culture. In God's design, however, the answer is different. We are simply different from each other. We are different expressions of His multitudes. We all get to display Him in particular ways.

The problem is that the United States is not ordered according to God's Kingdom. We have to understand that white culture is the majority culture in our country, or any attempts to solve the problem of inordinate sameness will result in assimilation tactics.

The majority of Americans have a baseline understanding of what church looks like; the problem is that we don't understand that our default is actually a white culture of church. Because that was (and is) the kind of church given cultural significance, we equate it with the church standard. Black churches, Asian churches, African churches, and every other kind of church are seen as subsets of the church standard. But for the most part what many white Christians see as the genuine template for worship (even if it varies between denominations), is just another subset, another iteration, of God's Church.

If all the colors of the rainbow are joined together, they create white, but the same is not true of our culture. White culture is the majority in the United States, but it is not the standard of God's design. God has made a beautiful tapestry of different cultures coming together as one Church, but too often white people do not understand that we are a part of that tapestry. We feel, instead, like we are the common thread. Sometimes even like our culture is the natural expression of humanity and like other cultures are adaptations of that. And though most of us wouldn't say that, those are the results of not understanding that we have our own culture too.

Our differences are not the primary things we see about each other, but our differences matter. When brought together, they create a fuller picture of the One who made us. A multi-colored creation to represent a God of multitudes. We are different, unique, valuable, and united. We are all image-bearers, we display God's glory, and when we miss the differences between us, we miss a way He has imaged Himself to us.

We have to see differences and honor them. Because by not doing so, we miss what God has put before us. The goodness He has intended for His people. We fail to cultivate spaces that are hospitable to different people. We don't know how to navigate conversations with those who think differently from us (whether in views or even in thought patterns). We naturally form into bubbles of sameness, and we lose the value of difference. We remain childlike, we see ourselves as the template, we cannot bridge the divide, and we often don't even know how to try.

And even if we become aware of our lack of diversity, this rhetoric keeps us from solutions. If we see ourselves as the template, any diversity we try to add will result in trivial measures and tokenism. Like adding a football game to an event for breastfeeding moms in hopes that it'll attract men, we miss the point. I'd love to sing songs on Sunday mornings in different languages, but the best these can do is honor people of different backgrounds who have decided to make our church their home; they aren't enough to create a home. We can't take small measures and be taken aback that someone still feels out of place. We can't think our college-aged group is equally accessible to a woman in her 60s as it is to a man in his freshman year, and then claim as though it were purely preferential that the woman in her 60s just didn't want to come to the group.

Even real effort to make deep change falls flat if we do so without understanding different cultures and expressions of faith including our own. True unity takes work, and working through our differences takes a lot of discovery of and dying to self. 

I'm not speaking against different cultures or groups. I'm not advocating for us to get rid of any churches based around shared cultures. I am, however, calling us to notice when we have been blinded by a colorblind society into believing that our church is equally hospitable to any who might enter. When we've looked around at a homogeneous room and believed our lack of diversity is purely a preference of those outside of our church and that nothing we are doing or are not doing bears weight on it. 

I'm not even calling us to change our Sunday mornings; true unity in diversity is much bigger than I know how to tackle. But I know we'll never be able to tackle it if we ignore the truth of difference or believe the lie of value systems based on difference. And I know even our multi-cultural churches will always fall short if they are based around adding color to a white space. That is not the make-up of a multi-cultural family, and that's part of what can make it so difficult for multi-cultural families to find a church home. We have to go back to the foundations and create something new. Something based around the joining of many cultures and not merely the addition of them.

And I know that this issue is bigger than Sunday mornings. This affects how we connect with churches across our region, our nation, and our globe. We cannot plan broader church events in the same way we plan events for our white-dominant church, or we will make the space more hospitable to some of our brothers and sisters than to others. We will continue to ask brothers and sisters of color to reach outside of their comfort zone or to adapt to our ways while leaving ourselves comfortable. 

We cannot live blinded to our differences or we will live separated by them. We will miss the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. 3:10). Even when our individual bodies look different from each other, we must find unity amongst our brothers and sisters within and outside of our church home, not ignoring but celebrating differences, that we might better know the goodness and diversity of God as we truly become a house of prayer for all peoples (Is. 56:7).