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Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (otherwise known as DEI) has become a pejorative label for the “evils” of progressives that is a target of the Trump administration in their take down of government as it existed when Donald Trump took office. I don’t want to talk about politics. I want to address something to the Church in America. Something I think we need to think about prayerfully in these times.

I have been through a DEI session as a mandatory component of my professional continuing education. My experience is limited, so I discount it, but it will serve my purpose of introducing the subject I want to address.

Honestly, I would characterize the DEI session I went through as cringy. It was uber sincere, preachy, and not a little condescending. I also didn’t think it was very effective for these and other reasons. Well-intentioned, maybe. I will give it the benefit of the doubt, but I am afraid it rubbed me the wrong way – privileged white man that I am.

I can see how people outside the church might feel about the uber sincerity, preachiness, and condescension of Christians. It can be … well, cringy. I find it ironic that the progressive world (it seems to me) has overtaken the Church in self-righteous condescension, preachiness, and overall cringe in its own beliefs that it appears to be trying to cram down the throats of people it views as less than.

But, I digress. I want to take a step back and re-examine the ideas of diversity, equality, and inclusion. I am not going to do a deep dive, but I want to recapture these words that have been hijacked by political operatives and used alternatively as political bludgeons and pejoratives.

Diversity was created by God when he confused the languages of the people. God confused their languages because the people had unified together with one common language to make a name for themselves and to resist God’s instruction to be fruitful and multiply over the earth. God “confused the language of the whole world” to scatter people around the world as He originally intended. (Genesis 11:1-9)

From this, we see that God is in control, and He has a plan. Well, He is still in control, and He still has a plan. People are either working with Him, or they are working at cross purposes to His plan.

As Christians, we don’t ever want to be working at cross purposes to God! Diversity was God’s idea going all the way back to Genesis, and He shows where He is going with it in Revelation. This is the vision He gave John to share with the world to let us know His end game:

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“After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.  And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb."

Revelation 7:9

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God’s plan is to bring all the nations, tribes, and languages back together in all their diversity! Every different nation, and every different tribe, in all their different languages – diversity. But, they will be unified in their worship of the Lamb who sits on the throne. (Notice, it isn’t the Lion of Judah who appears on the throne, but the Lamb of God.)

God celebrates the diversity He created by gathering all the nations, tribes, and tongues together from around the world where they were scattered. Diversity is not pejorative. It is something God created in His wisdom that we can celebrate as we worship Him in one voice and many tongues.

If we pray authentically as Jesus taught us, we pray, “Our Father, who is in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven!” If we are praying for God’s kingdom on earth – now – as it is in heaven, we cannot really mean that if we do not embrace the diversity that God created on earth.

How about equality? Where does that come from? Is that some progressive trope to be despised and resisted?

No! Again, this comes from Genesis, and even earlier than diversity. When God created humans, God created them in His image. He created them male and female in His image. (Genesis 1:26-27)

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That simple idea – that God created all people (male and female) in His image – means that all people are equally valuable, equally dignified, and equally deserving. It doesn’t matter what gender, what ethnicity, what means we have, or what abilities (or disabilities) we have. We are all equally valued in God’s eyes.

Not even our goodness or badness sets us apart, because we have all sinned and fallen short. Thankfully, we are also all saved by grace through faith. This is nothing that any of us earn. It is given freely to one and to all. We are equals before God.

It’s hard to appreciate how revolutionary these words from Paul were in the First Century, Greco-Roman world:

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

Galatians 3:28-29

God created us equal in that sense, but he made us diverse, and that creates our need to embrace inclusion. Contrary to the popular sentiment of disbelief, Christianity is not an exclusive religion. Jesus came for “whoever believes in him”, and he came to save the whole world through him, and that includes the whole world in all its diversity. (John 3:16-17)

When Jesus was born into the line of King David of Israel, God’s chosen people, they thought he came only for them. They neglected to remember or appreciate that God’s promise to Abraham was to bless all the nations of the earth through him. They saw only Jews (insiders) and Gentiles (outsiders).

But, Jesus blew the lid open on that perspective. He made the two groups one and destroyed the barrier (“the dividing wall of hostility”) between these two groups. (Eph. 2:14) “His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity….” Eph. 2:15) Through Christ, now all people have access to the Father through one Spirit. (Eph. 2:18)

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“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household.”

Ephesians 2:19

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Diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) is central to God’s kingdom! He intends us to be like family. Just as God creating humans male and female was required to represent with appropriate nuance God’s image, the diversity of mankind represents the multifaced nuance of God’s character.

Isn’t it just like the enemy to take what God means for good and to warp it and twist for his own purposes? I don’t “blame” the enemy, though, and he is ultimately powerless to frustrate God’s design and purposes.

I do think, however, that the Church has some culpability in the way things are right now. We were asleep at the wheel, and the enemy came in and created his own model of DEI. In doing so, he seems to have turned us against the very ideas of diversity, equality, and inclusion, and he has weaponized them against us.

More ironically, and tragically, we are fighting a culture war over these things. Many Christians are fighting the idea of diversity, equality, and inclusion – things that come from God and are key to His purposes. Thus, not only are we derelict in not embracing these things that are part of God’s very purposes; we are fighting these very principles that God has blessed.

We have lost sight of the fact that these things come from God because our enemy has warped them and used them against us in the same self-righteous, preachy and cringy way we can sometimes be toward the world. I believe this is because we left a vacuum, and the world has rushed into claim them.

We need to take them back and reclaim the value of diversity, equality, and inclusion for God’s purposes. We need to be wise as serpents, knowing that the enemy can only use what God has created and designed, and the enemy warps those good things to use them against us. Worse, he has provoked us to reject them and fight against them in cross purposes to God’s design.

Instead of being wise as we are instructed, we have attacked the very ideas themselves. Diversity, equality, and inclusion were established by God as part of His purposes. If we are going to advance God’s purposes, we need to take them back and apply them as God intended.

When we pray, “Your will be done, on earth as it is Heaven,” we need to be willing to align ourselves with God’s will and to go where where He is taking us. He intends to bring all the nations, tribes, and languages together in Him – diverse people living together in equality “in” alignment with His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

We need to do this authentically with self-awareness. Sincerity is not enough. We are not better than any other sinner, as we have also sinned and fallen short. We are equals in the grace God extends to all.

God scattered people around the world because of their unified opposition to Him, but He desires to bring all people back in unity in Him. We should get with the gameplan.

“My prayer is not for [the First Century followers] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

John 17:20-23