I am thinking about the tendency most people have (well, me anyway) to make whatever they are doing the thing that other people should do. It is a hard thing to embrace diversity. But the hardest thing is to live in the tension between embracing everything and only liking your own thing...

Yeah, I know, that is not making much sense. But here's something of what I mean. I think the poor, the people whom society finds undesirable, the rejects, whatever name you want to use, are vital to the understanding of what Christ was trying to communicate to us. There's a part of me that says every follower of Christ should be embracing the poor, identifying themselves with the "losers" of the earth. But, there are those in the Christian realm who don't share that value. How to handle that?

I guess you just get to a place where the only thing you really can do is live out the passion that God gives you. Show what is true by how you live. Speak loudly what you think, but don't deny another their voice in the conversation. But ultimately and finally, you've got to figure out the things that are absolutely true for you, and then act on them. For most people, that is much more convincing than a loud argument.

I think that is what I see in Jesus. He "embraced the other" in his actions, though sometimes he vehemently opposed their ideas (so embracing diversity can't just mean agreeing with everyone and not opposing anything). A lot of things he was vague and shrouded in communicating. But if there is one thing you can nail him down on, it is the importance of being born again into Love; experiencing a heart change that brings about kindness, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, etc. So for me that is absolutely True. Those things I can pursue with passion. But this all gets tricky when you translate it into action. Knowing how to interpret these values into an appropriate action is where the guesswork begins.

Convoluted, eh? Gimme grace, I am just guessing my way through life!