Appreciating the Family of God
“As humans, we typically gravitate to people like us. We like to hang out with people who are similar in age or stage of life. We feel more comfortable with people who have similar values and beliefs and backgrounds. But when you see the early Church, you realize that it really was a melting pot of all of society.” – Tony Walliser
Read Romans 16:1-27
Appreciating the Family of God
You might be old enough to remember the classic TV sitcom, “All in the Family.” (If you’re not, you can find reruns on some stations or on YouTube.) Anyway, the show featured cantankerous, conservative Archie Bucker and his doting wife Edith, along with their live-in daughter Gloria and her hippie husband, Michael Stivic, whom Archie referred to as “Meathead.”
Much of “All in the Family’s” humor probably would create a furor in today’s politically correct society, but in many ways the show presented a good picture of what many families look like, including the church family – the family of God.
Archie often found himself at odds with his very liberal son-in-law, while Edith and Gloria tried their best to maintain domestic peace. Diversity was portrayed in other ways as well, including the Jeffersons, the Bunkers’ African-American neighbors. The “All in the Family” characters were exaggerated caricatures, but they did accurately reflect typical families: having different personalities and values, liking some members more than others, and dealing with conflict.
This also sounds like the Church – both modern and ancient. We have different denominations, different doctrines, different rites and rituals, and different forms of worship. We’re part of the same family of God, but sometimes those variations in theology and practice can separate us like oil and vinegar.
Years ago, as an occasional churchgoer but not yet a follower of Christ, I was invited to attend a church of a certain denomination. During the sermon the pastor declared if a person hadn’t been baptized by immersion, he or she would go to hell. Not knowing any better at the time, I went forward to be baptized. I thought, “I’m not going to be left out on a technicality!” Sometime later I discovered that is not what “baptism of repentance” (Luke 3:3) really means. (And I never returned to that church.)
Some of the differences within the body of Christ are significant, maybe enough to keep us from engaging in fellowship with one another. At the same time, there’s also a wondrous beauty in being able to worship with fellow believers from different cultures, ethnicities, languages, and traditions.
Galatians 3:28 makes this clear: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” We might make distinctions, but God doesn’t.
For several years I worked with an international ministry that gave me opportunities to travel to several countries in Europe, as well as Central and Latin America, and even Jamaica. I also participated in conferences where representatives from Asian and African countries were in attendance. During those visits, as I worshiped with men and women singing praises in different languages, my view of God expanded tremendously.
I discovered the Lord could be worshiped just as joyously and fervently in Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, German, Dutch, Patois, Swahili, Afrikaans, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino.
One of my Mexican friends (“amigos”) would quip, “Did you know in Heaven everyone will speak English?” When people asked why, he’d chuckle, “Because Americans can’t speak any other language!” There is a tendency to view God through our own narrow cultural lens; being able to get to know and enjoy fellowship with non-American brothers and sisters in Christ helped me to better understand that when John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world,” it literally means the entire world.
Learning to appreciate the incredible diversity in the family of God – different cultures, styles of worship, races, economic circumstances, even male and female – can deepen our knowledge and understanding of Him. After all, He created all of us “in His own image, in the image of God He created him” (Genesis 1:27).