What diversity shows

I have a theory. And I’m serious that at the moment this is only a theory, but nevertheless, here goes.

If you’ve ever noticed, when people become ardent fans of something, that fandom causes them to conform toward a standard set by whatever they love. For instance, musical fans don’t merely often dress alike, speak alike, and even have similar hair styles. This is why it’s relatively easy to tell Grateful Dead fans from Bieber fans from Metallica fans. To put it in more theological language, idolizing something like a musical group reshapes the idolater in the image of the idol, causing a kind of external (and perhaps internal) convergence toward that thing.

So, even though people may feel they are being very independent or “expressing themselves” in their choice of worship, the end reality is that they actually sacrifice their own individuality in conforming to the thing they follow. This makes sense because any human idol in this sense only has the power to reproduce itself, a single unvaried thing, in others. To put the matter in a different, very uncharitable way, cults always eliminate diversity among their members.

In contrast, when people conform to God, what I’ve discovered is that rather than becoming highly similar to each other, they actually seem to grow ever more divergent, at least in external things. It’s almost as if the inherent variety in God (which we see manifested for instance in the creation all around us) is just as potent in having created each of us individually unique from all others. And when we press ever closer to Him, rather than turning us into second-rate versions of each other, we become first-rate versions of ourselves.

Now I’ll admit that it is not always so. When you visit many religious groups, for instance, you may quickly get the sense that they are not as I have described. In fact, their appearance may much more closely resemble the fans of a particular musical idol than the sort of wild but harmonious variety I’m describing. Some may actually even pride themselves on this sort of sub-cultural homogeneity.

And if that’s often the case, I’m beginning to wonder whether that may itself be a rough indicator of whether the group in question truly has hold of the God of infinite wonder described in the Bible or merely has hold of a god of limitation which they have inadvertently settled for or, worse yet, substituted for Him.

Natural harmony requires similarity, and hence natural human association will both preselect for and reinforce this. In contrast, supernatural harmony reveals itself perhaps nowhere more potently than in its ability to exist despite…and because of…vast diversity.