Diversity is Divinity

There are three common ways of dealing with diversity: hate it, tolerate it, or accept it. Hitler was not a fan of diversity. I know many people who merely tolerate diversity. When an African American family moved into our mostly white neighborhood, my neighbor told me that he was not too happy about it, but there was nothing he could do about it, because it is 2020 not 1950. He was just tolerating it.

According to Webster’s dictionary, tolerate means to “bear or put up with someone or something not especially liked.”

Accepting is a little better than tolerating because, it means to “agree, consent to, or approve favorably.”

I think we should go beyond merely tolerating or just accepting to engaging in celebrating diversity because that is the ethos of the Earth. Riding on Earth — honoring and praising its diversity — can help us thrive in life, just as the Earth thrives in her diversity. Fighting against it will only make us miserable misfits in a diverse universe.

Diversity is God’s plan. Going against that plan is not going to make us godly people.

Look at the story of creation, in Genesis 1.26. “Let us create man in our image, in our likeness.” You don’t have to take this verse literally to understand its deeper meaning. The word used is plural. God doesn’t say let me make but let us make.

The US of God is distributed all around us and as us.

It is my conviction about God, being with us, within us, around us, and as us which inspired the title of my first book — God is Plural. Superficial critics dismissed it as a clever title, but for me, it is the fundamental thesis of my theism and the foundational tenet of my existence on this planet.

For me, God is Plural, does not mean pantheism (everything is God), or polytheism (many Gods), but panentheism which means everything is in God or God is in everything.

Apostle Paul proclaimed it more than 2000 years ago, when talking about God to the gentiles. Paul told them that God does not live in man-made temples. God does not need anything such as praise and worship from humans. God is not separate from humans. “In Him we live, move and have our being” added Paul. Centuries later, another Paul, German theologian Paul Tillich, said the same when he described God as The Ground of being.

God who is the creator of the universe has imprinted His image on creation in varying degrees and intensity, in humans, animals, plants, planets, and the entire creation. Realization of that truth made the psalmist erupt in exuberance with these words: “The Earth proclaims the glory of God!”

Acknowledging that fact is the easiest and simplest way to God-realization. Training courses in theology are not needed. Years of monastic life is not necessary. Hours of sitting on a cushion with closed eyes is not required.

Ralph Waldo Emerson who understood this truth puts it beautifully: “The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bowed head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.”

Centuries before Emerson, Gregory of Nyssa, wondered how anyone could fail to notice the divinity around him.

“For who, when taking a survey of the universe, is so simple as to not believe that there is Deity in everything, penetrating it, embracing it and seated in it?”

(from Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a heavenly Life)