Get Real November 23 Devotional
November 23, 2024
1 CORINTHIANS 12:12-13 | 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
As it is often presented, diversity is an incoherent or unsustainable ideal. Celebrating diversity can mean separating people into groups by race, gender, sexual differences, or any other feature. Hence colleges that now create “affinity areas” or safe zones for certain categories of people. But this produces an incipient and sinister sameness within each of these now separated groups. What starts out as a diversity project turns into a uniformity exercise. Diversity without unity is stillborn.
The church aims at a diversified unity or a unified diversity. Rather than settle for an identity that simply affirmed differences as somehow fundamental, permanent, and sacred, it sought a deeper level of shared identity and purpose that incorporated distinct and different people into a single community with a common purpose. Thus groups that never communed or connected, like Jews and Greeks, or slaves and free individuals, become friends and partners. This variegated unity shocked the ancient world and can still surprise the modern one.
What does diversity mean to you?
