I have rarely considered whether unity or diversity is more spiritual, more desirable to the Father. However, as I read the common argument against diversity in The Gift of the Stranger, based on the Babel story, I realized this has been an underlying theology in my ideas and many around me – unspoken and unconsidered. A dangerous, ethnocentric idea that could destroy my effectiveness as a teacher and example in China. Life revels in diversity. It longs for it. Breathes it. And yet our sinful natures rebel against such ideas. There’s comfort, security, power in unity – look at the people of Babal. They forgot the call upon their lives, trying to replace it with security and power by uniting together. Even more we can see unity as powerful in Acts 2 when all the followers were gathered together and great power came upon them – they did not hold onto this power, though, desperate to keep it. They laid it down, realizing where the power truly came from and continued to follow the call placed on their lives – a call to GO.

So often, when people pull together in mock unity, they stop listening to truth and just listening to their own warped ideas of truth and what’s right. Smith and Carvill point out several times in chapter one the importance of ‘hearing’. Israel was called to be a hearing people and so are we. The Son called again and again for ‘those who have ears to hear.’ But hearing/listening is hard. To begin learning a new language one must listen – listen to the strange words, the strange sounds – if s/he ever wants to actually speak it. Listening/hearing requires caring about another person and truly considering the words spoken. Smith and Carvill say “Hearing the voice of the other takes time, commitment, sensitivity, vulnerability. When the other is a stranger, it might even involve learn the other’s language.” How important is this ‘other’ to each of us?

I really loved the section in chapter one about the voice of the stranger – a call to accept all people, no racism. Looking at the world now, I think “Ah, what a nice pipe dream.” Never going to happen. And it might not in my life time, but the day will come that all people do come together in all the beauty of diversity and then each of us must face the aliens we ignored, criticized or deemed lesser than ourselves. Basically those we treated in direct contrast to the desire of the Father, who we serve. The description of Israel on page 11 is a picture of how each of us should be, I believe (in a bit narrower sense as we are not whole nations on our own). “Beyond her[Israel’s] borders she is to be a light to the other nations; within her borders she is to be a blessing to strangers, to those from other nation who have taken up residence in her mist.” To those outside my immediate circle of influence I must be a light, a beacon drawing them into truth. To those inside my circle of influence (students, colleagues, teammates, etc…) I am to be a blessing, to those who may have never seen a foreign face before, to those whose heart’s are broken, to those who are significantly different from me. To love the one who is different from me, either due to language, skin color, culture, personality, or whatever, I am loving a stranger – a stranger, which is “a significant aspect of loving one’s neighbor as oneself.” – One of the two greatest commandments laid down by the Son.

And how do I show these strangers in my circle of influence that I love them. Well, I help them. I provide them with tools to improve their lives, with skills to overcome trouble, with unconditional love they may have never experienced, and with confidence to step into the world before them. And I can do all that in the language classroom. J