What do you think of when you hear the word nations? Maybe the word culture comes to mind, possibly a geographical location, or even a different language, political stance, economics, or even pride of one's nation. For some of us, just dicussing another nation may produce a feeling of frustration or anger. Interestingly, the Bible depicts God as not only loving nations and their differences, but he created them. God loves the diversity expressed within nations so much so that we see a track record of God intervening whenever a nation sought to create an empire through the collectivity of nations. The story of Babylon found in Genesis 11 is a story of the descendants of Noah who had gone forth and created 70 beautifully diverse nations, yet Genesis 10:8-10 depicts one of Noah’s grandson’s, Ham, as the one who founded not only this nation who’s pride grew in rebellion to God and sought to elevate themselves both spiritually and physically over other people and even God himself. He went and took the beauty of a diverse nation and sought to transform it into the power over structure of a unified empire.
The tendency of creation to challenge the throne of the Creator is not new to the Biblical narrative and still continues today, yet for those who seek to strive after Christ being continually formed within them, learning to love diversity is learning to love the one who created it.
We are not in our present state able to process the full measure of God’s glory, yet that doesn’t mean that his full glory isn’t revealed to us. His glory is seen in creation and everything that grabs at our senses, and even more so, he designed human beings incredibly diverse in order to evenly distribute the vastness and beauty of his own character.
In 2007 William Paul Young released a controversial book titled “The Shack”. Within this fiction story, God himself is depicted in many forms. Mack was a grieving father mourning the loss of his murdered daughter. As he ventured out to find her missing body in the mountains of Washington, he finds himself dreaming a real life experience while comatosed following a collision that haltered him from even making it to his destination where he through his daughters body may be found.
In his dream, Mack first meets God as an African American woman with a countenance and hospitality any of us would be drawn into, Jesus was a tall, dark, wity, and wise middle eastern craftsman, while the Holy Spirit was an Asian woman named Sarayu. In the narrative, God seems to be leading Mack on a journey of healing and the climax of this journey is the discovery of Macks daughter. Early one morning, Mack is woken up by an older man, dressed and intentional. This man is stern yet welcoming and is soon revealed as God. Together, God guides mack to the location of his daughter is guided by God to offer forgiveness to her killer.
I doubt it’s necessary why I would need to explain that backlash Young received for depicting God so diversely, but if we can step back and see the many layers of emotions Mack experiences through his deeply challenging story, we can see the wisdom of God knowing exactly what his child needed and when.
God is better represented through diversity - not limited to a single gender or ethnicity. He is more fully praised when worship comes from males and females, and from people of different ethnic backgrounds.[1] This diversity will be magnificently displayed in heaven, where people from every nation, tribe, people, and language will worship together, creating a rich tapestry of praise that no single culture could achieve alone.[1][3]. The living God intentionally parents forth a diverse universe with varied creatures, cultures, theologies, and spiritual paths. God deliberately reveals different aspects of Himself, creating and responding to various cultural and religious experiences.[4]
We have two choices to make. We can either be open to learning about things, people, culture, and ideas that are different than ours, or we can rally together against diversity and in the process against God himself. Pharaoh was worried about the state of his own empire and couldn’t appreciate the nation of Israel. Ham led the Babylonians to self promotion and the building of personal empire. Today, each of us still has a choice to choose which king we will worship and the evidence of our selfishness and naivety is manifested in our attempt to build personal empires.
On the day of Pentecost, God once again reveals his multifaceted character as the language of “many tribes and tongues” is once again revealed through the movement of his spirit and the voices of his people.
For us today, it’s worth a hard look within to consider our reaction to diversity. Do we want to resist, stay away from that which is different than we are, possibly even trying to conform that which we don’t understand into only that which we do, or are we willing to be lovers of Jesus who seek to find the endless layers of his beauty and character found in all creation?
To help spur on some thoughts, here are some questions to consider…
What was your first memory of someone who was different than you and how did you react?
How do you feel about different ethnicities?
How do you feel about different denominations?
I have found myself on a theological journey often throwing out entire ways of practicing faith because of a few areas within their beliefs that I disagreed with, yet later found out I had been missing so much because I “threw the baby out with the bath water.” I wasted gifts and blinded myself to beauty that my own pride had blocked. We often give right back to God things we don’t quite understand, yet in doing so we miss out on understanding him.
Ultimately, God created human diversity to teach love, form identity in Christ, create community, and more fully reveal and glorify the Creator.[1]. We are now the gifted ones who are commissioned to be ambassadors of reconciliation. (2 Cor 5). In doing so, we must allow ourselves to see the beauty of an incredibly diverse God in order to see the beauty in the differences we find even within our closest relationships.
[1] Jim Samra, The Gift of Church: How God Designed the Local Church to Meet Our Needs as Christians (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 48.
[3] Chad Brand, Charles Draper, et al., eds., “Diversity,” in Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003), 433.
[4] Andrew M. Davis, From Force to Persuasion: Process-Relational Perspectives on Power and the God of Love (New York, NY: Cascade Books, 2024). [See here.]
*Cover picture is from Getty Images
