Diversity – Deon Unthank
According to Webster, Diversity comes from the word Diverse. It’s definition is:
adjective
- 1. of a different kind, form, character, etc.; unlike: a wide range of diverse opinions.
2. of various kinds or forms; multiform.
3. including representatives from more than one social, cultural, or economic group, especially members of ethnic or religious minority groups: a diverse student body.
Diversity sounds so nice. It’s such an innocent word. I mean diversity means you like Rock and Roll, Country, Jazz, and Gospel Music. Diversity means you like Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs, Lincolns and jalopies. Diversity means you like Chocolate cake and chocolate pie. I mean how great is that. Really, if you like salad, steak and potato your diet is pretty rounded.
All of that stuff you like makes you pretty diverse, right?
Well, what if your diversity goes a little bit further, you like water, ice tea, Coke, and bleach to drink with your meals. How about a bicycle, and baseball, a skateboard, and a loaded gun for our kids to play with.
Diversity with no limitations is a very dangerous thing. Diversity with no limitations is bad enough in our personal lives where we at least have some control over changing the situation, but when it extends to the government where we only have one vote the situation is devastating.
When the morality of the nation slides there are always minorities who want to take things to the extreme. It’s no longer “ask not what my country can do for me, but what can I do for my country“, but “I don’t care what I can do for my country, but what can my country do for me”.
This is where we are today. Our morals as a nation have slidden back to almost obscurity. Abortion is considered the norm, homosexuality seems to be considered the preference, marriage is a second choice to living together (in fact marriage doesn’t even have to be between a man and a woman), murder is just an everyday thing, rape is something that just happens to women, robbery is just because of the environment the thugs live in, and the list could go on and on.
You don’t have to go back 200 years to see the difference, just go back two or three generations and the morals that people were raised in are 180 degrees from what we see today.
Our government is in shambles and unless something drastic happens this great nation will just be an empty shell of what we have been.
Now this may shock some of you, but I do not lay the blame for the state of our nation on the government. The government has only done what the people have allowed. The people voted (or didn’t vote) the politicians in office who have legislated with the morality that is bringing this nation down to her knees.
No, let’s lay the blame squarely where it belongs…. at the feet of the CHURCH!!!! The church has become so comfortable as a “bless me club” that she has lost influence that she once had.
The church has lost that fire that she had even just 50 or 60 years ago. We didn’t wake up one morning and realize that the influence of the church was gone, it was a gradual process.
I have proclaimed for a long time now that the church needs to get back to what the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:
4 And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:
5 That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
The church has lost the “demonstration of the Spirit and the power of God”. People are not enticed to come to church to hear music that they can jump up and down to, they can do that in bars and clubs. They are not enticed to come to hear inspiring messages of how to do better in life, they can see that on television, but they will come to see a fire. We had a whole building of 12 apartments burn a few months ago in the apartment complex I live in. People came from the highways and byways…. Literally. We are right off the Interstate so people came from there to see the fire. They came from neighborhood streets, they were coming from everywhere.
Here’s the thing, if the church will get on fire, it will draw people in from everywhere. If the church is on fire, lives will be changed, people will be healed, delivered, set free from depression and many other needs met. When this happens, it goes out of the church doors and spreads to the neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and the homeless man on the street.
The church’s diversity has lowered our standards and morals to accommodate the very people we are trying to reach. There is a saying that says “as the church goes, so goes the nation”. It’s so true. As the church has hidden its head, because we didn’t want to appear different from the world, we have lost that power and demonstration that attracted people of every race to the standards and morals that this country was founded on.
It’s not too late. That same power and demonstration of the Spirit are still available today.