Monoculture and Diversity, Redux

Azure had a comment on “Monoculture and Diversity“:

I was thinking of Romans 10:12 – “For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him…” And maybe I’ll throw in Exodus 22:21 – “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”

Those are a couple of verses that come to mind that I think someone could use to make the argument that, from a Christian perspective, diversity is a moral imperative.

Ed had a good comment here, especially in his last sentence: “Diversity in Christ is a matter of calling and mission; there has to be a shared confession in there somewhere or you can’t work well together.” This is probably no more apparent than in Jesus’ inner circle of disciple, the Apostles. There was an admixture of backgrounds among those twelve, Simon the Zealot versus Matthew/Levi perhaps being the sharpest contrast. Those two would have been at each other instantly if they had met outside the context of Jesus’ mission—while together there was most likely a strong requirement of self-restraint on the part of those two for stability’s sake. In a real sense, all the diversity among the Apostles was subsumed into the monoculture of Jesus’ mission; it’s pretty clear that Jesus was the type of guy who, not unusual for a Hebraic ascetic preacher of His time, strongly preferred some things to be left at the door if one were to sign onto the mission.