Thank God For Denominations

Don’t you just wish the earth was flat? I mean, the sun would rise at the same time for everyone and everyone would wake up at the same time. We would go to the same workplace and do the same jobs and go home to apartments on the same block.

Don’t you wish we were all the same age? We would celebrate our birthdays on the same day and it would be one huge global celebration with fireworks and the stars for candles, one for each of us and then some. We would attend the same school and have the same teachers and learn the same lessons.

We would all fall in love at the same time, go out on dates in the same parks and wine and dine at the same restaurant and eventually get married in the same chapel.

Does this sound ridiculous? If it doesn’t, then please stop reading. But if you find this idea even remotely bland or boring, then please keep on.

Denominations of Kenya currency

It is easy to hate differences. Differences are messy and muddy and they complicate life. When people and people’s ideas are different, a lot of time is spent explaining things and catching people up and correcting each other. But do we want a world where we all have the same understanding and the same experiences and gifts and talents? You know, a world where we are all swimmers and golfers and poets and doctors? 

I know I don’t want such a world. That world is boring. A world with no differences is a world with no variety. It is  world with no roads — because everyone has arrived. A world with no difference is a world without trees to climb — because everyone is already at the top. A world without differences is a world without children, and students, because everyone is grown up and everyone already knows all they need to know.

No, I don’t want that world. Whether broken by evil or simply diversified in perfection, give me a multicolored world over the monochromatic madness of sameness — any time. Give me a world where unity is found in diversity rather than in uniformity. Give me a world where people are learning and growing and disagreeing (agreeably, of course) over a world where heads are in a perpetual nod. Give me denominations that serve as the lenses of a kaleidoscope: correcting and magnifying and reflecting the same light in multicolored ways.

Of course, I cannot deny or ignore the fact that I live in a broken world. A world corrupted by evil. So I admit the possibility that some of those lenses are cracked and tainted and misted and corrupted. But the solution is not to smash all lenses and melt them into one bland and boring wall of glass. I am persuaded that problem with denominations is not the fact that they exist, but the fact that they are corrupted.

Denominations are the very depth and substance of life. Our problem is us — irrespective of which denomination we belong to, or which one we deny allegiance to. Our problem is what we make of denominations, when we see them as arks instead of lighthouses, the sun instead of satellites.

May we learn to see differences, not as divisions, but as the different faces in a crowd chasing after unity. Please don’t misunderstand me. This is not an elaborate denial of the idea that there is such a thing as a single, ultimate truth. No, consider this a recognition (and appreciation) of different classrooms for, different understandings of, different exposures to, and different experiences of… that truth.

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CN