All of creation is a witness that it is fundamental to the nature of God to love diversity and creativity. He makes every snowflake different, every tree different, and every human being different. There are no two hills, streams, or lakes alike. This must cause us to ask another one of those ultimate questions: “If God so loves diversity and creativity, why is the church, which is supposed to be His representative on the earth, so boringly uniform?”
This reflects one of the great tragedies in how the church has come to misrepresent God on the earth. Where does this pressure to conform come from? Obviously, it is not from God. The answer is at least partly from spiritual racism.
What is “spiritual racism,” and how does this differ from racism? As we have stated, racism is established on two of the ultimate evils of the human heart—pride and/or fear. This causes us to reject those who are not like us as either inferior, or to be feared. “Spiritual racism” is the same thing that causes us to be prone to resist or reject other Christians who may not see everything exactly the way we do, or serve the Lord in exactly the same way we do.
This goes with the understanding that for us to be Christians, we must agree on certain basic doctrines, and practices. However, it has been the bane of Christians for nearly two thousand years to agree on 98 percent and divide over the 2 percent on which they disagree. The overwhelming majority of divisions in the church have been caused by non-essential, peripheral issues. This has caused the church to look more like a Babel of confusion to the heathen rather than being the witness to the one true God, and His habitation that she is called to be.
We are spiritual racists when we think we are better than other Christians because we are part of a certain denomination or movement. We are spiritual racists if we are afraid to have fellowship or interchange with other denominations or movements that are different from us. The church is not only presently separated along racial lines, but we are divided in just about every way that we could be divided from one another. Someone once said: “Eleven o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.” This is probably still true, though it has been changing some. There is also a great deal of interchange and fellowship now going on between denominations and movements. There are few things that we could do to strengthen our own churches than this.
The Lord likened His people to sheep. Any farmer knows that if his heard inbreeds it will get weaker, and more prone to disease with each succeeding generation. The same is true spiritually. Every church, denomination, or movement that becomes isolated will become weaker and sicker with each succeeding spiritual generation.
God made His creation, both the old and the new, to require interchange for its health and well-being. If what we have been building on is so fragile and weak that we are afraid of interchange, then what we are building on is a foundation that will certainly collapse anyway.
If we do not think we need interchange because we already have all we need, then we are obviously already deceived and filled with a pride that has departed from God’s grace. The Scripture is clear that “... we know in part, and we prophesy in part...” (I Corinthians 13:9). Therefore, if we are going to have the complete picture we must put our part together with the others.
Likewise, as this is a study of the prophecies concerning the end times, if we are going to have the complete picture, we are going to have to be open to those who have a different view than we do on these matters. We will find as we proceed that these different views really are not in conflict, but rather fit together to help complete the whole picture.
There are many teachers of eschatology that will shamelessly try to make everyone who does not see things exactly the way that they do, out to be a false teacher or false prophet. But, in fact, to bring that kind of division in the church will make one out to be a heretic according to the proper definition of the term. If we are going to have the complete picture, we are going to need both faith and humility to be open to those who see things differently than we do. We are going to have to resist racism in all of its forms. This is why Paul required that elders be those who were given to hospitality to foreigners, and even said that by doing this they would entertain angels at times.
To know the truth, we must have more faith in the Lord to lead us into all truth than we have in the devil to deceive us. We must also understand the ways of the Lord are higher than our ways. As someone once said, “He does not hide things from us; He hides things for us.” He requires both faith and humility to find the real treasures of knowledge and truth.
In my pursuit of understanding the things that we are addressing in this study, I have found great treasures in almost every denomination and movement. That is, with the exception of those in the strongest prisons of fear and pride, which become almost completely isolated.
As we go forward, let us keep II Corinthians 3:17 in mind: “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” As we search for truth, and as we build what we may feel called to help build for His purposes, we must always resolve to protect one another’s liberty in the Lord if we want His Spirit to go with us.