Oneness, but not Sameness

 

Family is messy and complicated. Blood runs thicker than water as you know, and we don't choose the family that we have. So what is the most necessary thing for a healthy family? Is it a well ordered structure where the authority lines are abundantly clear and no one gets out of line with the tune everyone plays? Not really. That sort of family culture breeds contempt and hurt.

Rather the most important thing for a family is honesty and truth. Unity is not about sameness, but about oneness. Being together, unified. And the only way that happens is when there is open honestly and everyone is on the same page. The opposite of this is playing a game of wack-a-mole when someone steps out of line.

One of the best examples of this I know of is from the TV show Blue Bloods. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it. The show follows a large family, all either working in or around the NYPD. The patriarch is the current police commissioner, the grandpa is a former police commissioner, one brother is a detective, the other a beat-cop, and the sister is a prosecutor. They all have different perspectives, life-experiences and ways of doing things. In every single episode they come together for a family meal on Sunday, pray, and enjoy time together.

The crazy thing is that with that unity and love that they share it is also filled with so much conflict. The siblings get is fights over work related stuff, there is tension between kid and parent, and all the other messiness that comes along with being a person in a family of similarly broken and complicated people. And yet in all of that there is abounding love, even in the deepest of disagreements. Why? Because there is honesty. Watch the linked clip above if you haven't to see what I mean!

What happens when the opposite is true? I have in the past known and lived some of the tensions of that reality. Where the presumed pretense is to keep your mouth closed, and your opinions to yourself because they go against the prevailing dogma. The truth and honesty between people is not there, and you never actually get to know the other person because you are presenting a fascade to “go along to get along”, and you know the other person is likely as well.

Jesus talked about whited sepulchers when describing the pharisees (Matthew 23:27). The outside may have looked pretty, but inside was rotting flesh, and dry bones.

So which one is better. Honest messiness that doesn’t look as pretty, but is real and true? Or a fabricated image of “everything is perfect, there are no problems, and we are all in line”? I can just about guarantee with few exceptions that the latter is a fabrication that is built on fear and hurt. We are all messy and broken. That is the reality of being human. And even more fundamentally that is the hope that the Gospel brings.

In all of our broken messiness, Christ loved us so much He gave His life while we were yet sinners! For those of us who have accepted that gift of salvation we are now part of His family and His Kingdom. But that Kingdom is not one of rigid uniformity and sameness. Rather, Christ’s Kingdom is built of all of our differences beautifully pieced together like a mosaic, working together to build His Kingdom as a representation of the beauty of His creation. We are all different, and with that difference we are all commonly bonded together by that amazing work of salvation through Christ.

The unity of His Kingdom is not sameness, it is recognizing how our common experience of salvation reinstates us to the fullness of our created intention, in all its many differences.

Think bigger and broader. If you are in a place of rigidity, where everything is forced to look and operate in a specific way, there is so much more that Christ offers.