WHEN RACES COLLIDE

Our relationship with Christ should be reflected in our unity with one another.
Ephesians 2:11-22

Cultural diversity is the quality of diverse or different cultures.  The phrase can also refer to having different cultures respect each other's differences; it is also sometimes used to mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole.  

Diversity refers to the attributes that people use to confirm themselves with respect to others, “that person is different from me.”  Humans have long sought the differences in people.  It is part of our "gauging the environment."  It seems that we like to arrange our world in hierarchies:  some groups, people, bodies, places, and ideas seem better or more powerful than others.  It seems, for many, that competition is the vehicle to success and that the exhilaration of having come out "on top" is what makes life worth living.  

Paul, however, points us, as Christian members of the family of God,  to look at what it is that makes us the same.  At some point in their life everyone is without God, without citizenship in God's world, without the promises God made towards those who seek God, without hope, and without God, forsaking him as if God were a stranger to be ignored as different and dangerous.

It is in our nature to be discriminating in our environment, it is what allows us to determine threats to ourselves, but making unfair distinctions between different categories of people or things based upon pre-judged distinctions  is discriminatory and, by definition, prejudice.

Paul tells us that there are only two categories of people – those without God in their lives, and those with God in their lives.  He points out to us that the Good News is that God provided an opportunity for those in either category to "have access to the Father in one spirit."

People all around us are trapped in sin, unconscious and unaware of the death that awaits them and the eternal separation from the creator of the universe.  God has called the church – literally "the called out ones" – to work together to invite those without God to become part of the category of those with God in their lives.  

We can all do more to understand one another and learn to cross cultural boundaries in healthy ways.  Let's allow our common lineage as God's people to help us to be a unified family of God!  

We can cultivate a society where civility builds a society that develops a culture of Godly association.
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Society:  "companionship, friendly association with others";"people bound by neighborhood and intercourse, aware of living together in an ordered community"

Civilize:  "to bring out of barbarism, introduce order and civil organization among, refine and enlighten";"relating to a citizen, relating to public life, befitting a citizen; popular, affable, courteous."

Culture:  “learning and taste, the intellectual side of civilization";  

"collective customs and achievements of a people, a particular form of collective intellectual development."