Diversity, Uniqueness, and Freedom

by JoAnne Crough, M.A., L.P.C.

We can look forward to hearing a lot about diversity in the many months leading up to the next presidential election.  For many, political action and policy changes represent the greatest hope for transforming how the disenfranchised are treated.  However, what can happen when change occurs from the inside out, rather than from the outside (legal/political) in?  Check out Job in Chapters 39 and 40. When God responds to Job, He refers to many of His creatures in loving and appreciative terms for their unique natures.  I can't help but see the connection among the vastly different animals God lovingly describes and the diversity among His people. 

            For example, in Job 39:13-18 God talks about the ostrich being careless about its young, useless for flight, deprived of wisdom, but oh, how He delights in how she runs, being able to pass even the swiftest horse!  We could easily devalue the ostrich for not taking care of its young.  Yet, God doesn't criticize the ostrich for her neglect. Quite to the contrary, He delights in her swiftness.  Later, He calls the hippopotamus a prime example of His amazing handiwork.   Might we not think the hippo is rather ugly and overweight?  Not God.  He says the hippo demonstrates God's action!  How much more must He delight in us then, the creatures He formed in His own likeness and image?

            Since God has intentionally placed specific dispositions into each of His creatures, He of course appreciates each of them for their own unique being, nature and purpose.  What is God's response to diversity?  Since He created it, His response, consistent with His nature, is to love it and delight in it.  In fact, that's where all the value and dignity and worth of Creation lies - in God's response to it.  He says it is good - not the society or dominant culture.  This is a key component to healthy living for if we understand this, if we know we are truly God's beloved, how can it not change our response to the world? How can it not help to expose the lies our culture tells us and reveal the distorted demands it makes of us?  

            This is an ongoing issue in therapy.  As we understand more about ourselves and our true value, this changes the choices we can perceive as available to us and how we are able to receive and respond to others in their own uniqueness.  Ultimately, as we learn more about God, we learn more about who He created us to be.  Through our lives we can help to call that forth in others.  In contrast with political change, this kind of living in synergy with our uniqueness starts with believing that God gives us our value, not our accomplishments or failures.  The next step is simple yet profound:  modifying the only thing that we can change - ourselves.  This is the kind of revolutionary change that's been happening one person at a time since that very first Easter morning.  It's the kind of change that is anchored in true freedom.