Our culture is very different from that of the early church, but think for a moment about the Jews and Gentiles attempting to come together in unity in those days. The Jewish people worshipped the one true God, while the rest of the Greco-Roman world worshipped many gods and goddesses. The Jewish people ate a strict kosher diet that seemed odd to the Gentiles, and it wasn’t just their diet that was odd. The Jewish people had quite a few customs that would have seemed pretty strange to the new Gentile converts, not least of all, circumcision.
Celebrated but not Elevated
Recently, in our sermon series on the book of Acts, we’ve heard about how these differences in culture and custom created some friction in the early church. This shouldn’t surprise us one bit. Differences continue to create friction throughout the world to this day because of the sin and brokenness of the human heart. We are pretty good at taking beautiful things that God created and turning them into a problem. Diversity and difference in skin color, in culture, traditions, clothing and other customs give glory to God as creator and have the potential to bring a joyful and varied experience to all of us. Unfortunately, we let pride elevate our differences over and above others. We begin to build our identity around our own unique markers and even make idols of our own culture and tradition. Instead of celebrating the differences we see in one another as gifts from God, we elevate our differences to the level of pride and identity.
It can be tempting to minimize our differences. We may think that the best way to create unity is to homogenize the church; but when we attempt to do this, we take away something special that God wants us to enjoy and appreciate. By way of simple analogy, imagine that an author took the time over his career to write several beautiful novels meant to spark the imaginations of his readers. If his wife was afraid of making him feel that one book was better than the others and simply told him, “All of your books are the same to me because I like them all equally,” our author would be heartbroken.
We see then, that we have to avoid hurtful minimizations of differences and cultural markers, both in society and in the church. In response though, we can be tempted to elevate our differences to a degree that reinforces a sort of tribalism. That is to say, rather than believing, “My people group does things differently, and that is good,” we say to ourselves, “My people group does things differently and that is better.” Or it may sound like, “We are different by God’s design,” vs “We are different and that is the most important thing about us.” In each of these comparisons, the first statement celebrates God’s unique creative image in our differences while the second statement elevates our difference to a level of pride and idolatry that makes it difficult for us to even connect with anyone who is different from us.
Pastor and author Timothy Keller said it well:
There is always a danger of putting so much emphasis on the unity of the human race that we come to insist that race is unimportant as the older liberalism taught, namely that we should be completely ‘color-blind.’ But it is also possible, especially today in the time of the newer progressivism and identity politics, to put too much emphasis on irreconcilable diversity, so no racial group has the right to ‘speak into’ the experience of the other, which obscures our common humanity.
“Our differences are not the problem; our pride is the problem. So what is the solution? ”
Diverse but not Divided
God created us diverse because he is creative, and Scripture does not shy away from our ethnic and cultural differences. This is great news for several reasons. Most simply, this is good because we get to enjoy food from different cultures and the beauty of various skin tones, music from all over the world, as well as other art and culture.
Most importantly though, this is wonderful because of what it demonstrates. God uses our differences to illustrate just how unifying the gospel of Jesus is! These differences that are, in one sense, very significant are completely leveled at the foot of the cross. If we ask those of different cultures to assimilate to our culture and preferences, that is not impressive. That does not adorn the gospel. Do you know what does show the gospel to be beautiful? The gospel is made beautiful to a watching world when people of all walks of life, many different cultures and preferences are able to come together in unity under that banner of Jesus the messiah. Jews and Gentiles were not likely to come together so easily in the early church because of their significant cultural differences, yet they were made one body in Jesus. Nobody is saved because of the culture they identify with, and you aren’t made whole because of your racial or cultural identity either. Justification is by faith alone through grace alone. The most important thing about you is your status before God, that you are made righteous in Christ. This unites you with all those who share your faith in Jesus. This, and nothing else, is the most important thing about you. The gospel of Jesus is the ultimate unifier.
The foundation for our unity is not our commonality; it is Jesus.