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Learning for Life: Cultivating a Student Spirituality
Week 8
Shiao Chong, CRC Campus Minister serving at York University, Toronto
8.1 Shalom and Diversity
“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” Isaiah 11:6-9 NRSV
“Utopia” is an imaginary or hypothetical place of social and political perfection. For non-Christians, Isaiah’s vision of God’s “holy mountain” would definitely be classified as utopian – idealistic but impossible. Isaiah, however, is not describing utopia but rather, Isaiah is describing shalom. “Shalom,” loosely translated into English as “peace” is a Hebrew term derived from the verb “to complete, make sound”. Hence, shalom means more than simply the absence of conflict. Shalom means wholeness and completeness.
In God’s shalom, differences are not erased but differences are reconciled. Wolves and lambs, calves and lions, babies and snakes, parties whose different natures make them natural enemies become friends and live together in harmony and peace. This occurs through changing the more predatory creatures’ natures – lions turn vegetarian, it seems. But the lion is still recognizably a lion and the wolf, a wolf. The “knowledge of the Lord” is the source of such transformation and reconciliation. As the waters cover the sea, so will the immersion of all creatures into the knowledge of the Lord drastically and radically alter the landscape.
When we worship together as a community on Sundays, we immerse ourselves into that knowledge of the Lord. We allow ourselves to be radically transformed in our predatory natures so that we can be reconciled to God and to each other. The Church is called to embody God’s shalom and embrace God’s diversity.
Prayer: Lord God Almighty, we worship you and we ask that we, your people, become the foretaste of shalom. Transform us, remove our violent ways and turn us into lovers and peacemakers. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
Quote: “Shalom is a concept that cannot be captured by a single word, for it includes many dimensions: love, loyalty, truth, grace, salvation, justice, blessing and righteousness. It is a biblical vision in which all of creation is one, every creature living in community and harmony with every other for the joy and well-being of all. Shalom is therefore a vision of connectedness for an entire community: young, elderly, rich, poor, and dependent. Shalom includes the process of denouncing, announcing, and making persons and structures responsible for responding to all with equity and compassion.” – Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, A Many Colored Kingdom: Multicultural Dynamics for Spiritual Formation, (Baker 2004) p.206
8.2 Creational Diversity
“The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. … So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. … God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. … So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. … God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:12, 21, 25, 27 and 31 NRSV)
Diversity is a good thing. Sometimes, in the midst of coping with the dizzying, whirling world of diverse options and worldviews, we forget that diversity is part of God’s good creation. I am struck by the constant repetition of the phrase “of every kind” in Genesis 1. A quick look in your backyard or in your local wooded park will give you proof of the enormous diversity of living plants, animals, and insects in God’s creation. Even humankind is created with gender diversity built in. Not only are there millions of “kinds” of living things, each individual animal, plant, insect and human being is unique, one of a kind.
God the Creator sure seems to love diversity, uniqueness, and difference. God doesn’t seem to be big on uniformity. Why? Isn’t it an inefficient way of ordering the world? Isn’t it easier, simpler to have a cookie-cutter approach to creation? Wouldn’t that make a student’s life in studying creation a whole lot simpler? It may be simpler and more efficient but it wouldn’t be as beautiful or as interesting. Somehow, efficiency, so highly valued in our industrialized world, is not high on God’s priority list. When we feel overwhelmed by the complexities and challenges of a world of diversity and differences, remember that God created diversity and then pray to discern the good in it.
Prayer: Creator God, who made the hosts of creatures to inhabit earth, sky and sea, thank you for your pre-existing Word, the Word that was in the beginning, the Word that creates all things and holds all things together, that unites all creational diversity. Help us, as stewards of your creation, to discern the good creational diversity in our world, and to see how these glorify your name. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
Quote: “Some theologians have [human diversity] part of the very idea of ‘the image of God.’ Not only is each human being created in the divine image, they argue, but the human race as a whole also has the image of God in a collective sense – so that the rich diversity of cultures on the face of the earth shows forth the splendor of God in a way that no individual or group does alone.” – Richard Mouw, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (IVP 1992) p. 78
8.3 Fallen Diversity
“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3 NRSV)
Against the prevalent polytheism of the ancient Near East, Israel was prohibited from worshipping a diversity of gods – they cannot have their idols and Yahweh too. Israel’s monotheism – belief in one god – was really radical in the face of their neighboring cultures. Both Egypt and Babylon/Assyria boasts of a pantheon of gods. Even later on, during New Testament times, the Greeks and Romans believed in numerous gods. Yet, again and again, in the face of such opposing religious trends, the Bible asks its adherents to worship and obey only the one true God. Consistently and repeatedly, Scripture affirms there is only one God who provides the one way, truth and life in Jesus Christ.
There is one diversity that God did not create and which God does not like – the diversity of idolatries. Bringing into reality the option of disobedience, of death, of idolatry is what humanity in Adam and Eve did. This undeniable biblical teaching of the exclusiveness of Jesus Christ is a scandal for our modern North American societies and universities that value tolerance and religious pluralism. How should Christians live in a pluralistic world?
There are two extremes to avoid. One is the Crusader approach – “my way or the highway”. This is the way of either converting people to our way or imposing it on others via (political or military) might. The other extreme is the Compromiser way – “your way is as good as mine”. In this way, relativism and tolerance rule the day. I propose the middle way of the Ambassador – “let’s make room for both our ways (and let God work)”. As ambassadors of Christ, Christians need to balance convictions with compassion, being faithful to the God we represent while being respectful, civil and, where possible, helpful to those whose spiritual citizenship lie elsewhere.
Prayer: Our Father in heaven, please forgive us for the idols in our lives. Find and remove any other gods in our hearts. May we be undivided in our love and commitment to you, the one true God. But make us wise as serpents and harmless as doves in loving our neighbors who do not yet know you. Make us faithful witnesses of your Son Jesus Christ’s love and salvation but also make us gracious and humble in our demeanor. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
Quote: “Is the Creator also disturbed by this kind of [religious] pluralism? If we take the Bible seriously, then we really have no choice but to say that he is – that God doesn’t like this kind of diversity. … God disapproves of the pluralism of idolatries.” – Richard Mouw, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (IVP 1992) p. 76
8.4 Biblical Diversity
“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. 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.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-13 NRSV)
Diversity, along with its associated terms – multiculturalism and pluralism – is highly valued in our (post)modern North American culture. But these terms are often used as labels for either practices that ultimately favor division, fragmentation and tribalism or practices that eliminate differences in the name of creating a “neutral” space of the lowest common denominator. Our pluralistic society often give lip service to diversity but often does not tolerate genuine diversity beyond shallow differences of looks, fashion, color, and food. Tolerance may indeed allow us to live peaceably with each other, but it does not help us to live together. In fact, we are probably seeing more cultural or group divisions today than before.
Biblical diversity, on the other hand, is a unified diversity. It is a diversity that insists on each of us being united while remaining distinctly unique. The apostle Paul’s favorite metaphor for the church is that of the body. Paul frequently uses this metaphor to help solve issues of conflict and division in the local churches. Each member of the body – the hand, the feet, the ears, the eyes, the nose – are all different and many but they are all united in one body under one head, Christ Jesus. Each member of the body looks and acts differently and performs different functions but each is indispensable to each other. Regardless of our cultural distinctive markers (Jew or Greek) or our different social backgrounds (slave or free), we are united to each other because of our common faith. We belong together in one body not because of where we come from or what our skin color is or how we have performed socially or economically but because of whom we believe and love: Jesus Christ. And we need each other as much as our nose needs our feet. In order to live and flourish, we need to affirm unity and co-operation but not at the expense of uniformity. In fact, our survival and our flourishing as a community depend on the unique distinctive contributions of each member towards a common goal. For Christians, that goal is to love God in Christ Jesus and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Prayer: Holy Spirit, please bind us together in the love of Christ. Make us as one body with many members. May the world learn and live this biblical diversity from watching your people embodying it. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
Quote: “… the unity of that Jesus Christ died and rose again to bring into being is not a new unity created for the first time, unknown and untested; it is a primal unity restored, a unity re-created. When the world is reconciled through Jesus Christ, it is going back to being a world that has already been and to the one by whom and in whom and through whom all things were created and existed in unity.” – God’s Diverse and Unified Family (CRCNA 1996) p.11
8.5 Love and Diversity
“And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’” (Matthew 3:16-17 NRSV)
“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 John 4:16 NRSV)
The kind of unified diversity or diversified unity that biblical diversity espouses can only become reality through the practice of biblical love. And the Triune Godhead exemplifies this love. In the baptism of Jesus all three persons of the Trinity (or Tri-unity) are present: Jesus the Son, the Holy Spirit as a dove and God the Father’s voice from heaven. The uniquely Christian doctrine of the Trinity may seem illogical, out-dated and irrelevant to some today but it is an indispensable genius of Christianity. The Trinity perfectly captures the biblical concept of unity-in-diversity, of distinction without division and unity without uniformity. The three persons of the godhead are one God yet not one person: the Son is not the Father nor the Father the Spirit. The uniqueness, the “personhood” for lack of a better term, of each is not erased in the unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But neither are they three gods. This divine community of three is marked by mutual love. We see this in Jesus’ baptism where the Father declares the Son as “beloved”. And for the apostle John, love is so much a part of God that anyone who abides in love abides in God.
Thus, to believe in the Trinity is to believe that unity-in-diversity and mutual love are primal and foundational to all of created life. Faith in the Tri-unity obliges us to combat all forms of oppression and injustice that erases diversity; it calls us to resist unnecessary schisms, divisions and conflicts; it commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves: uniquely different and free persons who yet belong tightly in our community as “one of us”.
Prayer: O God, O Three in One, unite us your people – people from different traditions and cultures, ethnic groups and heritage, tongues and tribes, the differently-abled, the marginalized, women, men, children, young and old, the rich and the poor – unite us, O Lord, to love you and to love each other, to serve your world in mission, to work for peace, truth and justice in the name of the Holy Trinity, amen.
Quote: “There is in God genuine diversity as well as true unity. The Christian God is not just a unit but a union, not just unity but community. There is in God something analogous to ‘society’. He is not a single person, loving himself alone, not a self-contained monad or ‘The One’. He is tri-unity: three equal persons, each one dwelling in the other two by virtue of an unceasing movement of mutual love. Amo ergo sum, ‘I love, therefore I am’ … can serve as a motto for God the Holy Trinity.” – Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (St. Vladimir’s 1999 rev. ed.) p. 27
8.6 Diversity in the Church
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28 NRSV
The early church in Galatia were facing ethnic tensions arising from the claims of some Jewish Christians that Gentile Christians need to adhere to Old Testament Jewish laws, such as circumcision, in order to truly be part of God’s people, to partake of the covenant. Note that the argument is not that Gentile Christians need to adopt Jewish ways in order to be saved. Salvation has been available for Gentiles, slaves and women even in the Old Testament. See the stories of Ruth, Rahab (Joshua 2 & 6) and Abraham’s servant (Genesis 24). Thus, what the apostle Paul erases in the unity of Christ between these three major human categories – ethnic (Jew or Greek), economic (slave or free), and gender (male and female) – are social barriers rather than spiritual: you cannot belong to Abraham’s covenant or “Abraham’s offspring” (see Galatians 3) and gain the privileges and responsibilities that come with it unless you become “like one of us”. What is “no longer” are human-made social barriers of circumscribed roles and status: “putting people in their place”, marginalizing groups of people who are different, or claiming special status or role for one group of Christians over others.
This is what theologian Elizabeth Conde-Frazier notes from this passage: “To be one in Christ is not to cease having distinct cultural identities, any more than it means ceasing to be male or female. Paul is declaring, rather, that Christ has levelled the ground. … In God’s eyes, male and female – though distinct – are equals; slave and free are equals; Jew and Gentile are equals. Paul’s words become seeds that later bear fruit among those who rise up to challenge the inequities of slavery, of sexism, and of racism” (A Many Colored Kingdom, Baker 2004, p.60).
Unity in diversity also means equality without sameness. It means justice as well as love. Christian communities or churches that embody biblical diversity honor both.
Prayer: Our Father in heaven, give your church and your people insight to discern the barriers we may have erected that divide us, repentance from them, wisdom to know how to dismantle them, and courage to do so, through the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
Quote: “Reconciliation with God and reconciliation with one another are inseparable in God’s saving work.” – God’s Diverse and Unified Family (CRCNA 1996) p.18
“The reconciliation of people in the church will come about only when new social, economic, and gender patterns that reflect God’s alternative community are intentionally worked toward with full awareness of the complexity of the challenge.” – Mark R. Gornik, To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City (Eerdmans 2002) p. 86
8.7 Diversity in the New Creation
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth … And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God …I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. … People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.” (Revelation 21:1, 2, 22-24, 26 NRSV)
I like the apostle John’s vision of the new creation. I especially liked the fact that John did not see a New Jerusalem inhabited only by people of one color, or one tribe, or one language or culture. I like the idea that when we see each other in heaven and in the new creation, I am still Chong, a Malaysian-born Chinese Canadian Christian of the Reformed tradition. I like the fact that when all sin and evil are removed and dealt with once and for all at the second coming of Jesus, cultural, linguistic, gender and ethnic diversity will still remain. The New Creation is multi-cultural.
In fact, the glory and honor of the many different nations will be brought into the New Jerusalem where God dwells with humanity. “Nations” in the original Greek is ethnos, where we derive the English word for ethnic and ethnicity. “Nations” was often a Jewish shorthand to mean Gentiles, all the other nations besides Israel. Hence, John’s vision of “nations” in the New Creation clearly suggests ethnic and cultural diversity will be part of the new world order. Imagine the whole world united in worship of God and the Lamb, each culture bringing in its best and finest offerings – its glory – to share with the Lord and with all peoples. This is not a vision of cultural imperialism where the Jewish New Jerusalem imposes its culture on all nations. Rather, it is an inter-cultural vision where all the nations are welcomed along with their cultural treasures into the new city – a cosmopolitan image.
If you have the privilege of worshipping this Sunday in an inter-cultural congregation, savor the experience as a foretaste of the new creation and allow it to deepen your desire, your resolve and your efforts at being God’s instrument in making that new creation a reality. If your current worshipping community is not inter-cultural, it may be time to ask why.
Prayer: Come Lord Jesus and renew, restore and revive your good creation that is even now groaning as in birth pains, groaning for its liberation and salvation from the chains of sin, of evil, of death and decay. Come Lord Jesus to create a new humanity out of the many divisions of class, gender and race. Come Lord Jesus, Come. Amen.
Quote: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” Revelation 7:9 NRSV
Copyright © CRCMA 2008
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