Since we’ve been given the biblical mandate that we all belong to each other {Romans 12:5, NLT}, this fall at (in)courage we wanted to spend some deliberate time together unpacking what that means.
To focus on what it means to love my neighbor as myself.
To open our hearts for dialogue about what it might look like to walk around in someone else’s shoes.
So we’re hosting a conversation here every Wednesday for the next few weeks about what it looks like to do life in a way that reflects the timely truth that we actually are better together. Won’t you join us as we invite writers from our community to share what doing life Better Together has looked like in real time for them?
And then consider what living life — like we are better together — might look like for you too.
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When God scattered men like seeds riding the wind, with mixed tongues and confused speech, He always meant for the corners of the world to inhabit praise.
He always meant for His name to go far and wide.
I imagine the tower of Babel, the hands of men making their way to the heavens by sheer will and determination and no small measure of pride. The arrogance to stay huddled and similar when all along God commands our reach further than we’re comfortable. Genesis 11:1 says, “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.”
But God dispersed them with tangled tongues.
Still, we find each other. The ones who are the same. The ones with the same stories, the same language, the same look. The ones who will help us build our kingdom just the way we like it.
Some days I look at the church and wonder if we’re not attempting to build towers of Babel once more. To align our speech and thoughts and works to try to reach our own heaven. To make a mighty name for ourselves. Because we often speak in like tongues, but it clangs against the speech of God.
We confuse unity and peace with uniformity and passivity. We stay clustered and similar, familiar and unchallenged.
We offer up words like colorblindness as a solution to the hard work of diversity. We mean well.
We say everything is a sin issue but refuse to name the sin racism. We don’t want to get our palates dirty on ugly words while some among us choke and cry out, “I can’t breathe.” When will those lives matter to us? When will black lives matter to us?
Some of us refuse to admit that all things are not equal. Racism, racial profiling, ethnic cleansing, genocide, the systematic oppression of so many people God created in His image. The roots of hate and pride and the narrowing of tongues to define what we exalt and what we justify like stacked bricks to Babel. The sameness of the stories we tell stifles us all, the witness to God’s church soiled and skewed.
We were made for more.
We often fail to see that diversity often means disparity, a large gap between how one is seen and how one is treated. But diversity was God’s initiative, His creative manifesto to paint humanity with vibrancy, color, and timbre. To make each freckle and speck of color in the iris, to coil hair in wiry locks, or lay them smooth like strawberry grain, to soak our skins in a thousand colors and draw them over the bodies of his men and women. The created ones who hold infinite value and the cost of the cross in their souls.
He chose to form languages that click and hum and roll off tongues or rattle in the throat like the hum of a bumblebee. To make words that purr and sing in a prism of different notes.
He stretched out His hand and formed the body, the heart, and the mind.
He placed us in time, in place, in culture. He knew only a body of many different parts would ever be able to reflect His glory.
He called us His bride, His beloved. He named us the church. But we’re failing our parts. Our body is sick. We walk a disjointed, hobbled step when we lurch toward unity and peace without including the need for diversity and justice. There are broken and hurting among us. When will we listen?
We are incarnational beings. We are not disembodied souls roaming the land. Our skin color, our race, our ethnicity, our language, our history matters to God. We cannot be blind to what He has created and purposed for His glory.
I’ve wept hot angry tears at the carnage seen when we forget that we belong to each other. I’ve lamented the pain we cause when we say those people instead of us. The pain and anguish and suffering in this world isn’t just ours to behold but is our burden to bear when we love like Christ.
To love like Christ, we must choose to see each other. To rest our soul among another’s and say I’ll walk with you. I’ll have your back. I’ll fight for you and cry with you and pray for you.
I’ll ask forgiveness and I’ll offer it.
I’ll answer hard questions, I’ll ask them of myself, I’ll learn and be teachable. I’ll humble myself to seek and see and not just assume. I’ll sit in lament and rise up in praise. I’ll be with you and for you. You belong to me and I belong to you because I choose the hard way, the path of Christ.
We must proclaim, I am the church at Pentecost, speaking with a unified tongue, not because we all come speaking the same language, but because we are all called by the Spirit of God to a singular purpose.
We were created to inhabit the presence of God. Not only God with us, but God in us. Because God in us makes us one.
We are the dwelling place for diversity, the reflection of God in unified form.
We belong to each other. We belong to Christ.
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Jas says
Thank you Alia such a tough topic for so many but you have pointed out the truth that we do belong to each other underneath the differences of our outward appearance and native tongues we are all the same, Gods children and need to walk with, defend, love, understand and be for each other in order to accomplish what God has planned for us. I was born in the era of cultural diversity in Australia, the year “multiculturalism ” was political policy, although the application of these policies were handled very differently by each state and I would not say equality existed for all, I only knew life as the child of a black mother and white father. The world over people suffer are still suffering from embedded racism whether in political systems, conflicts or everyday attitudes but these are problems of the world – God loves us all and made us all unique these differences exhibit his creative artistry, a celebration in difference yet we are all his masterpiece, no two the same. We need to celebrate this very fact in our actions and interactions with each other. Thank you for the reminder.
Bev @ Walking Well With God says
Alia Joy,
I think we are afraid of those who are different than us. I also think we have pride, thinking that we are somehow better than someone else. Fear and pride both keep us from the greatest commandment…to love others as we love ourselves. I admit being somewhat afraid of those from Middle Eastern culture, basically because I didn’t truly know someone up close and personal. In working with my brothers and sisters in Christ to build a school in the epicenter of evil in the Middle East, I am getting to know and understand their walk. Attempting to try on their shoes and walk a mile breaks down fear and pride and builds love and unity. Our cultures are vastly different, but we are of the same Spirit…the Holy Spirit. They are most definitely persecuted for their faith…this is something foreign to me. We are called, however, even to love those who persecute them (tougher still). As you said, though we are diverse, together we are a true reflection and representation of God. I believe, if we open our hearts, Love can build a bride between our hearts and those who may be different from us. Loved this post!
Blessings,
Bev
Penny says
Alia Joy,
I believe this is how the Lord meant for us to be.
Thank-you for gently reminding us.
Amen (to your prayer).
Penny
Joanne Peterson says
Alia Joy, I would like to thank you for writing this. Afraid to say too much, I have incriminated myself. I would like to add to the list of racism, ethnicity,language, color, culture, history. I also see as damaging and not treating the people as created in the image and likeness of God those with mental illness, poverty, neighborhood they live in, homelessness, family dysfunction, destructive generational strongholds, prison, families who have children in foster care, etc. We run in fear from those we are to be loving, and pretending we don’t see, or make our judgement calls, or overwhelmed by needs or our own feelings of inadequacy of what we do, or our desire to be accepted, etc. There are differences. Thank you for pointing this out, and our stories are not the same, but valuable to make a we/us, the shared family and body in Christ. I don’t think I’ve made sense, I know what I want to say, but am struggling to find the words in my own brain to wrap all of this up in my own head and how this affects me and the way I think and act, and respond. Also as you said to be teachable, and humble, and ask the hard questions of them, but also of myself. Blessings, Joanne
Beth Williams says
Alia,
I am reminded of Matthew West’s song Do Something. It speaks of seeing a world in trouble and wanting God to do something about it! God’s response is I did something I created you! Meaning God expects us to love our neighbors-the homeless, mentally ill, blacks, Hispanics, poor, etc. He wants us to go out there and do something about all this! Is it hard & scary at times –yes! But, God is with us and gives us the strength we need to just do it!
I worked at a university for a while. I got to see a lot of diversity there! I dealt with LGBT, foreign students even from Middle East wearing burkas. It was hard to deal with them, but you just treated them like everyone else and showed them God’s love!!
Blessings 🙂
Linda Stoll says
Alia … you never fail to wield a beautiful word paintbrush … I am always enriched as I savor your words, your heart. Thanks for widening my borders, for adding depth to my heart. I always smile when I see your name show up … I know I’m in for a bountiful feast.
My best to you today …
Alia_Joy says
You bless me, Linda. Thank you.
Larry Brook says
This piece reminds me of something I wrote a couple of months ago.
THE OTHER SIDE
by Larry Brook
September 2015
Have we come this far to be so far apart:
you on the one side andI on the other.
What remains in this vast wasteland in between:
You on one side and I on the other.
Once I called you brother , and you did the same:
now here we are you on one side and I on the other.
I wish the choice could be another:
not leaving you on one side
and I on the other.
Karrilee Aggett says
I love you, and I have missed you. (Insert rest of gushing comment and all the Yes and Amens appropriate – which is all of them, indeed!) That is all.