![]() ![]() That said, intellectually I understood that a Christian life included interactions with others. I’m mostly content to be alone or with a few close friends. Second, as a naturally shy and fairly reserved person, I have always had a tenuous link to the community. Said another way, to the extent that we encourage sameness among our members we weaken our community to the extent that we embrace and make room for diversity among our members, we make our community more powerful. Our strength as a community is not in spite of our differences, but rather it is inextricably connected with our differences. We need different spiritual gifts, different experiences, different ideas, different approaches, different ways of being, etc. Just like a body has and benefits from its many (and very, very different) members, so, also, does the church. We need people to be different: we need eyes to be eyes, and toes to be toes, and hands to be hands, and feet to be feet, and noses to be noses, and eyebrows to be eyebrows, and colons to be colons, and fingernails to be fingernails, and ulnas to be ulnas, and kidneys to be kidneys…. Diversity isn’t just nice, Paul teaches it is absolutely fundamental to a functioning and faithful Christian community (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). I embraced Lavina Fielding Anderson’s expression that there is a “fundamental holiness diversity.” But re-reading Paul this year really brought this home in a new and powerful way. For me, there are three things that really struck me as I studied Paul’s letters this time (alone and with my fellow congregants) that I will carry forward.įirst, for a while now I have valued the fact that members of the church are all, in meaningful ways, very different. However, in our shared voyage through the scriptures, each of us has the opportunity to better understand, or pick up new, treasures of faith that we can continue to carry with us. And, as much as I am looking forward to delving into the Catholic Epistles over the next few weeks, I will miss exploring Paul’s approach to faith in Jesus at my weekly worship services. In the Come, Follow Me study guide we have transitioned out of the writings of Paul.
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