Greater Than Excerpt:

Why did the banana cross the road?

Bananas may be nature’s perfect food. Rich in potassium, low in calories, and high in taste, we Americans consume them by the ton. From banana pudding to banana nut bread to frozen chocolate covered bananas on a stick, you can make almost anything out of them. There are banana splits and banana shakes, banana muffins and New England-style banana Foster. You can eat them plain or put them in fruit salad or mix them into ice cream or my personal favorite, slice them on top of a bowl of Wheaties. Ummm, the perfect food on top of the perfect breakfast cereal.

But the banana smorgasbord may be coming to an end. Recent published reports warn bananas may soon go the way of the dodo and the dinosaur. If something isn’t done quickly, bananas may disappear within ten years. We aren’t eating them into extinction. After all, unlike money, they do grow on trees and those trees spread across the tropics around the world. Therein lies the problem. The vast majority of banana trees regardless of location are virtual carbon copies of one another. The modern banana lacks genetic diversity. Therefore, any parasite or disease that strikes one tree has the potential to wipe out the world’s supply.

Isn’t it ironic? The fruit we eat in a thousand different ways finds itself threatened by its uniformity.

The banana crisis shouldn’t surprise us. Uniformity always makes a species weaker. The more alike plants or people may be, the more at risk they actually are. This is especially true of the human race. Most of us feel threatened by those aren’t like us. Whether the pigmentation in the skin is different or someone’s ideas run counter to our own or their outlook in life is just plain strange, diversity makes us uncomfortable. Variety may be the spice of life, but most people prefer their life bland. Those strange people with their strange ways of doing things perplex us. And worse.

In our minds we start deducting IQ points from those who are different, since anyone who would rather listen to Toby Keith over Jimmy Eat World can’t be playing with a full deck. If you agree with the preceding statement you can also rest assured that somewhere a country music fan thinks the exact thing about you. Before long we perceive people’s differences as a threat. If you aren’t for us, you must be against us, and if you aren’t like us, you must have some hidden agenda.

So what do we do? We separate ourselves from the weirdies and erect barriers to keep the radicals with their radical ideas at bay. When we do find ourselves in the proximity of someone who doesn’t look like us or sound like us or smell like us, we fight and push and try to either make everyone exactly like ourselves or put as much distance between us as possible. Through it all we wonder how anyone could be so blind, so unthinking, so wrong.

Most people see diversity as a threat when in fact it should be our greatest strength. God could have made us all exactly alike. He could have given us one color of skin and one height and one weight and one way of thinking about the world. If He had wanted, He could have made us all extroverts and He could have given us all an ear for classic rock and a taste for Italian food. But when He made the human race, He made us all different, unique. Those differences don’t threaten us. Quite the opposite. They are the source of our strength. History shows uniform cultures are most at risk of falling under the spell of tyrants. Freedom and progress demand differences that clash in the marketplace of ideas. Without them we would soon join the banana on the threshold of extinction.

Diversity is especially important in our quest to follow Christ. You and I aren’t alone on this journey. Sometimes we think we are. In our minds we picture ourselves walking along with Christ, our hand in His, just the two of us, alone on a lonely beach. But we aren’t alone. Right now, at this very moment, there are millions of other Christ followers clinging to His hand who are spread out across the world on every continent. This group includes people from every race, nearly every nationality, with every hue of skin God in His creative imagination chose to create. Our gifts are different, the way we see the world is different, even some of our beliefs are different. Although we all agree on who Jesus is and what He did to save us, the expressions of our faith vary from place to place and person to person.

And this is a good thing.

Don’t Just Take My Word for It

Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. God made us different for a reason. 1 Corinthians 12 tells us to think of our differences like the differences between the parts of our body. Imagine if your whole body were nothing but one giant eye. School would be just plain creepy with a few hundred giant eyeballs jumping around the halls and bouncing into one another. Or what if your entire body was nothing but a giant nose? That would make life more fun, especially during cold and flu season. I think our bodies should be nothing but a giant navel. Yep, one big belly button from head to toe (which of course we wouldn’t have since our heads and toes would be part of the big belly button).

If the thought of a body with only one part sounds absurd, how much more absurd is the thought of the human race all being clones of you? Agent Smith tried that in Matrix Revolutions and it didn’t work out too well for him either. Since God made us all different for a reason, what should your attitude be toward people who look and act completely different from you be?

Look back over 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. Even though everyone is different, what one thing do we all need? Or should I say, Who do we all need? Do all of our differences disappear when we become followers of Jesus? Why or why not?

Look around at the other Christians you hang out with. How are you all different? Look beyond the obvious, such as hair color and race and the external stuff. What differences do you see that sometimes causes disagreements and arguments? What can you do to make that diversity a strength rather than a weakness? How can the differences be used by God to accomplish His purposes in the world? What would happen if all of your differences disappeared?

You and I might be more comfortable hanging out with people who are exactly like us, but God doesn’t share this belief. He made us different for a reason. After all, in the eyes of that guy over there, you are the strange one.

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