Unity Without Monotony

Have you noticed creation? Isn’t it beautiful?

Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like before the fall, since Paul says all creation was subjected to frustration and groans for redemption (Romans 8:19-22). Yet, diversity still stands before us.

Psalm 104 looks at this multiplicity and exclaims, “How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all” (Psalm 104:24). Proverbs says the Lord founded the earth with wisdom (Proverbs 3:19). Variety doesn’t show up as noise. It appears as the Creator’s handiwork.

And then we come to a text that has always seemed beautiful to me and, in a sense, even amusing: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

I don’t know two human expressions more evidently distinct than male and female.

And yet, both fall under the same statement: image of God.

Unity of origin. Equal dignity. Real distinction.

Perhaps we should hold onto this combination.

We have a curious inclination towards uniformity. Fashion comes in waves. Houses start to look alike. Cars lose features that once allowed you to recognize a brand from afar. Churches do this too. A model seems to work, and soon everyone starts singing the same, talking the same, organizing the same, lighting the same, preaching the same.

There’s no inherent sin in resembling someone.

But there’s a difference between learning and disappearing.

Paul speaks of a body where the gifts are different, the services are different, the workings are different, but the Spirit and the Lord are the same (1 Corinthians 12:4-6). And he goes further: the eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you” (1 Corinthians 12:21).

The unity of the body depends precisely on it not being just one thing repeated many times.

This should already make us a bit skeptical of the idea that the ideal church would be one where all local communities think, serve, and organize exactly the same way.

And there’s an even deeper issue. The Christian faith confesses a triune God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three gods, nor three successive masks of the same character. God is one. And yet, Christian language doesn’t eliminate the distinction of persons (Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14).

I’m not saying denominations are an image of the Trinity. That would be stretching the argument too far.

I’m saying something simpler: difference is not, in itself, an offense to unity.

In creation, there is difference. In the body, there is difference. In the gifts, there is difference. Among the apostles, there was difference. And in the end, John still sees before the Lamb a multitude of nations, tribes, and languages (Revelation 7:9).

Curiously, eternity doesn’t seem to resolve diversity by erasing it.

Perhaps our issue isn’t too much difference.

Perhaps it’s that we’ve forgotten how to live with difference without turning it into a threat.