Showing posts with label I Corinthians 12. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I Corinthians 12. Show all posts

Friday, May 19, 2017

Unity and Diversity

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I posted this comment several days ago on a friend's blog, in response to his post about the "One Worldism" of the last days.

To date he hasn't "published" my comment, and I'm not sure why.  But I think God put some of His wisdom about "unity" and "diversity" in my comment; so I publish it here.
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Yes, your words highlight some essential truths.  Our choices are between the unity Jesus prays for us (John 17:20-21): joined in Him, the Father, and the Spirit of Truth: or the world's (and the enemy's) counterfeit unity.

Unity is a good thing: else why would Jesus have prayed it for us ?  The world too recognizes so, saying "in unity there is strength."

But the world (and the enemy) cannot create anything good: they can only pervert the good which God creates, and imitate it.  Indeed, the most successful perversions of God's good are those that most closely counterfeits what He creates: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, for example, in counterfeit of the Church of Jesus Christ.

But the world's counterfeits, like its counterfeit coins, have base metal at their core.  God enacts unity through diversity (I Corinthians 12:4ff, Romans 12:4-5, and elsewhere).  Only God's wisdom could even conceive of such a thing: and nothing but God's power could do it.  But the world's (and the enemy's) idea of unity is rigid "likeness."

We see the world operating on its false idea of "unity" in so many contexts.  "Tea Party" Republicans try to "unify" and "strengthen" their party by driving out all who don't share their ideology: Serbs try to "cleanse" their nation by killing its citizens of every other ethnicity.

We do well to question if those who scoff at "diversity" as wimpy "political correctness" understand at all that it is God's chosen vehicle of HIS unity ?