It is profitable to elaborate on my decision to "become the diversity" in my local church. The
And let us not think that any other ethnicity is free from criticism on this point, except in international ministries to those for whom language barriers are quite real. Are you Korean? You can go to a church where Korean identity is paraded at or above Christian identity. Are you Dutch? You are probably expected to be Dutch Reformed. Are you Irish? The Scottish Presbyterians would be surprised to see you. And of course, I do not argue for a complete ignorance of the cultures that we all come from. God has placed us where we are to feel our way towards Him (Acts 17), and we ought to praise Him for placing us where He has.
In Unfashionable, Tullian Tchividjian recommends that those who find fault in the church's lack of diversity go "be the diversity" at a church full of people that do not look like them. By God's grace, I can speak from the perspective of one who has done that. As of right now, I am, on most Sundays, the only white person in my church. So what would drive me to do that?
Starting several years before I began attending my church, I had what I have always believed a God-given passion for the Philippines. In His providence, He brought several families into my life who had moved to the US from there. One of them had previously attended my church and switched churches to help their children assimilate into American culture. Having fellowship with them each Sunday at my previous church after the service strengthened my ties to their culture. After several years, I went to a Philippine festival and decided to start visiting Philippine churches in our area; and now, I have gone to one of those churches as many Sundays as possible for almost two years. Yet I still live in America and have held lifelong interests in several aspects of American culture. It is not possible for me to wave a magic wand and become Filipino.
Yet God has shown me the profit of laying down cultural identity to focus on Christian identity. In going to my church, I have had to make practical adjustments in my life and invest my time in learning about the culture that my friends there come from. But I do not seek to take on their identity as my own. Our first identity is in Christ and is far more important. Christ did not die for only the Jews, the Americans, the Filipinos, or any other ethnic group. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek (Galatians 3:28). One of the ways in which God glorifies Himself in the new covenant is by gathering a people for Himself that transcends every ethnic, national, and language barrier (Revelation 5:9). The cultural identities that He gives us serve a purpose in that He uses them to glorify Himself. In heaven, He does not deny these identities; but He uses them to make much of Himself through those identities and to show that His seal upon them binds them together much stronger than any cultural identity in this world ever can.
Christ lived in this world during the Roman Empire, and doubtless many people in that day thought of themselves as citizens of Rome more than anything else. Rome was the only citizenship that most of them knew. It continued on throughout the entire lives of many people throughout centuries and centuries of history. Yet God appointed a time for the Roman Empire to crumble and fall. The people in the apostles' time did not see this happen, but God made their identity as Romans expire. He made the Latin language die. Other nations took the place of Rome, and studying history now, we see that "Roman" was a temporal, not eternal, identity.
Yet, as many have said well, history repeats itself. Many people in well-to-do nations see their countries as unconquerable and "God and country" as the banner that they wave. Yet if we place anything next to the Most High in our identity, we cease to see Him as the Most High. No other name - "America", "the Philippines", "Dallas Cowboys", "Manchester United", "Boston Red Sox", "New York Yankees", and so on - deserves to be elevated to equal stature with God. I could not be content with only spending time with those who put "American" or any other country on the same level as "Christian". We worship God alone.
It has taken a lot of work to know enough of my friends' culture to be able to fellowship with them. I have had to invest less time in closer, long-running friendships with people from my previous church. To put it more clearly, this has also cost me many of those friends. I have had to read books on Philippine culture, learn some Tagalog, and ask questions about cross-cultural interactions about which I am unclear. In some ways, it resembles a cross-cultural missionary's preparation, though of course they invest a higher level of effort. So it is important to occasionally - not in rabid, constant introspection - check my motivations for doing this. I must remain sure that I do this from a pure heart that wants to see God's name glorified. Only then can this be more than a sociological experiment.
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“In Christ there is no East or West,
In Him no South or North;
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the whole wide earth.
“In Him shall true hearts everywhere
Their high communion find;
His service is the golden cord,
Close binding humankind.
“Join hands, then, members of the faith,
Whatever your race may be!
Who serves my Father as His child
Is surely kin to me.
“In Christ now meet both East and West,
In Him meet North and South;
All Christly souls are one in Him
Throughout the whole wide earth.”
- William Dunkerley, “In Christ There Is No East or West”
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