A problem we commonly face is to manage human differences. There is an unspoken inner feeling that we should be more alike in that we have elbows, noses, mouths, ears, elbows and toes. We have a rather clear idea about where to find them on every person. The distortions we see in someone like the Hunchback of Notre Dame almost forces the vast majority to want to hide these persons from view. They violate our limited picture of what persons should look like – if they are physically normal. Some societies, stern about expectations, will take the life of the new-born, if deviation from normal is discernible. Even gender identity may mean death for a child, as occurred in China at the turn of the century. Such treatment of differences is evidence of human depravity that determines worth of persons by physical characteristics.
Normalcy becomes for most persons what they are as individuals. This is my language, my race, my gender, my education, my community. From here all kinds of combinations arise, the worst being violence against this or that person, against this or that community – the worst culminating in bloody warfare between nations. In war we find God’s creation going against God’s creation. We enjoy the seasons, the changes in the colors, the variety that seems fitting to us, as individuals, but we find offense when other persons function differently than we do, when they cast another hue in life than we do. The wise person knows to serve his or her own generation, and permit the variables to work themselves out. In this each person ought to recognize the purpose to serve, even if that person is seen as odd to norms. Variance is meant to serve social anthropology. Colors, textures and forms vary in every context of life.
Certainly some factors serve us better than others, but differences offer another reason for education. In this we become educated about life and the human condition. Differences call for service. How may one serve the other in the differences? Once this is learned in the innumerable differences, we carry the virtues of steadfastness, patience, dignity, even creativity to find ways to bridge differences, and gain the benefits of the larger creation that includes defiance – some good and some bad. Helen Keller defied blindness and deafness to the inspiration of normal persons. Most of the world lives in a kind of armed threat against differences. In this morning’s paper there is the story of the deaths of a number of Islamists fighting Islamists – the Sunnis against the Shiites. They claim the same god, but slay one another. If persons of faith do not practice peace, there will be slim hope for the world to find personal or international peace. When Christians were belligerent to the non-Christian world, the church, in history, lost some of the meaning as the House of God, and became the house of government to compel men and women to get into line. It is well to remember that God is quite able to take care of himself, and if warfare were his style, he could call legions of angels to fight his cause. (Guess who would win.)
To the contrary, God prefers a kind of attitude related to humaneness (given of God, so to be respected), then the understanding and decision to love (also provided from the nature of God, so to be adapted); then to serve in peace the needs of mankind (emanating from the commandment of God, so to give proof to all that the servant believes and trusts in God he claims to serve). This is the way of the servant of Jesus Christ. I have seen it most fully in missionaries (not all, but nearly all) I have known. On occasion there is some person who is so different even in his or her concept of professional life, that he/she will adjust to the culture, even the Christian culture, and become a missionary of sorts. Such hypocrisy may serve common grace. We can be sure that Judas served the needs of persons during the good days with Jesus and the disciples. The true missionary is an advocate for Christ so to teach; provide comfort, perhaps some medical aid; work on to improve daily life in an accepted culture; and, even participate in community for better farming or to dig wells so to have fresh water. Missionaries illustrate common grace and divine grace in their work. Their modeling of the Christian life taken with their witness becomes a gift of God meaningful to foreign cultures. The story is magnificent, inadequately told. Sometimes the secular world misses the entire context so may distort it, diluting meaning. There is some current research under way on the media usage of biblical passages, usage once common but significantly declining. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020