Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Diversity in the church

I have a friend who told me the following story.  This friend was listening to a talk by BYU President Dallin H. Oaks given to the missionaries in the old LTM (before the MTC).  This was in the era of the hippy movement and "free love" and such things.  President Oaks told the missionaries that to find the true diversity of mankind, don't look to the hippy communes where "do your own thing" is the catchphrase.  Rather look to the faithful members of the church.  My friend felt it an ironic message to a sea of missionaries in identical coats and ties and nametags.  But before he could reject the idea, President Oaks said that if you didn't believe him, wait until your mission president changes.  That stopped my friend cold.  When his mission president had changed, he had wondered if the two presidents could have even been from the same planet.



The message to me is that real healthy diversity will flourish when grown in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We shouldn't expect the church to simply have a monolithic uniform culture where everyone moves in lockstep.  I think it's interesting that the church is often portrayed as exactly such a culture, when it was those in the hippy movement who all basically dressed the same, spoke the same way, listened to the same music, and had the same political views, or they would not have been accepted as members of the culture.  But the church should be different.  And if you look carefully, you'll find that it is different.

There is a place in the church for those of us who are not heterosexually oriented.  The places we take will be individualized, different for each person.  But despite the view of many in the world, we can be faithful and true to the Lord, regardless of our orientation.  And it is healthy for the church to embrace this kind of diversity.  Only together can we build the Kingdom of God on the Earth.

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