Married to Diversity

In my last blog, I had drawn out the conclusion from one of the question marks in Mark 10 that the human race, and really almost all of life, was based upon a reproductive design that was capable of bringing, not cloned organisms, but diverse organisms and humans into existence. To this point, marriage, as Jesus describes it in Mark 10:5-9, was designed in at the very beginning of creation by God so as to create and preserve the crown of his creation, human beings. It was not some judgement made by Moses, or any other sage down through the ages, that is the foundation of the marriage institution. But really, it can be seen from the creation itself. ^{Roman 1:20} For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

But now, to farther extend that observation, it is interesting to look at how the Bible speaks of "The Church" as the "Bride" of Christ. We have already noted that one of the things that the bride does is to bring not a clone of the male into existence, but a completely new and diverse being; a unique mixing of the original gene set. My musings here would be to consider whether that is one of the intentions of Christ in using the marriage analogy. It could have been his way of breathing diversity into his followers who would "take up their cross and follow him." They would be followers of the Master, uniquely able to explore all the diverse nature of God by each grouping being able to specifically focus on some part of God's character. 

A bit of this can be seen in Mark 10:17 when this rich young ruler comes to Christ and asks about the proper path to eternal life. After cross examining him on how well he is following the standard path of keeping the commandments, Jesus points out that there is still but one thing that he lacks; heart-felt charity. That if he was to pick up this characteristic, and come and follow him, that eternal life (as well as great blessing and persecution) would indeed lie in his future. Here we can see that Jesus has diversified the path to eternal life as set forth by the authorities of that day to customize it for this individual. It was a new challenge that he as a unique person really needed to concentrate on. 

Is something like this what is happening with the diversity that we see in the denominationalism  that has cause so many splits in the Christian church. Might it be God's way of showing that the model of marriage is also active, not always in a negative way, but in a positive way, to allow us to see God from a multi-faceted perspective that spiritual clones could never be able to observe. Might it be that my not being able to understand a agree with your Biblical interpretation is not a bad thing, but a good thing. That instead of lobbing grenades at the people not walking our "narrow path", we might do better to hold hands across the divide that separates us; much like we often have to do with our marriage partners!