As many of you know, I recently spent several days in London with a group of wonderful Believers who are originally from Nigeria, at an event for Joshua’s Army.  We were joined by a pastor from Lagos, Nigeria, and by a pastor in the Nigerian community in London, both strong men of God.  Our weekend discussion was about how husbands and fathers can better model Christ with our wives and children.

While there were many beautiful facets to the weekend together, the one I want to focus on for this post is that when Believers gather to fellowship and to study God’s Word, we are all one. All the same. We believe the same Truths, pray the same prayers, and try to live our lives in submission to God’s will and to His teaching in the same ways.

The Sunday morning message preached by the pastor from Lagos could have been preached by the local pastor of virtually any church in America.

I am reminded by this experience that, yes, there are obvious differences between us: black, brown, white, male, female, rich, poor, short, tall, old, young, etc.; and yet there are not.  We are all, beyond those minor differences, children of God.  Created by Him. ALL created in His image.  All equal.  All destined for one of two eternities.

All saved not by who we are, how we look, or what we’ve done, but by the grace of God and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—THE great leveler!

Christian believers emphasize human unity—that we are all of equal worth because we are all sons and daughters of the same Creator.  With July 4th in ten days, it’s important to recall that the Founding Fathers got it exactly right in the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.  At the time, the details meant that only white, property owning males could vote. But the ideal, the Truth, because it is God’s Truth, acted as a powerful beacon to lead us on to securing equal rights for one group after the other.  In what other nation, for example, have over 360,000 members of the majority died to free the minority from slavery?

Secular Progressives would have us believe that only they care for others, and that Christian believers are mostly conservative bigots who want special privileges.  Nothing could be further from the truth. By definition if we are all nothing more than the result of random genetic evolution, it must be that some people are more advanced than others.  Some more worthy than others.  Darwin “proved” (in the same non-scientific way that he “proved” other “truths”) that whites are superior to blacks, and that men are superior to women.  That is what he wrote. Obviously he was wrong. (See this post for several sources). Others took Darwin’s “proven scientific truths” and went on to advocate everything from abortions for black babies to sterilization or euthanasia for the mentally ill to the Holocaust, all based on the Darwinian “fact” that some people are actually not equal to others.  Again, Darwin was simply wrong, not scientific, and that is not what Christ taught.

Progressive ideas like Diversity Day in high schools and Identity Politics at the ballot box are supposed to bring us together, but in fact they divide us further.  Do teenagers really need to be reminded of their differences?  Is there much else that teenagers think about?  Why not have a Unity Day, in which we discuss how we are all similar, if not exactly the same?

Why not? Because it might bring up the question of how we got here, and on most high school campuses the Creator is not welcome.  That has got to change.

And if some are not quite up to par as humans, then it must follow that some are better than others, those leading the evolutionary process.  Thus a less violent but still poisonous result of secularism is the belief that there are elites among us who are more capable of ruling and regulating than the rest of us, and so they must be of greater worth to society.   They say, We know what is best for your children, and so we must be in charge of their education. We know what is best for your health care, and so you must buy insurance, and it must be exactly the same for everyone.  We know that alcohol is bad for you, and so we will prohibit its manufacture, distribution or sale (the disaster of Prohibition). We know how to protect you from poverty, and so we will give you just enough to keep you on the government plantation for generations, also insuring that you continue to elect us.

Of course I am totally in favor of experts and scientific progress.  What I oppose is the idea that an elite group will then impose rules, taxes, bribes, gerrymandering, Prohibition, speech restrictions and regulations on us, beyond the most basic safety requirements, to mold us to their flawed concept of correct behavior. That flies in the face of our individual rights to Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  We all are of equal value and worth and should therefore be treated equally, but we are not all guaranteed equal outcomes.

I thank my Nigerian friends for a wonderful time together, and for teaching me so much.  And I thank my Creator that we are all of equal value in His eyes. We may have different gifts, talents and roles, but we are nevertheless all of equal worth and dignity.

Remind me of that truth Lord, every day and in every situation, at traffic lights, watching the news, listening to those with whom I disagree on policy. It is so easy, in many circumstances, to feel superior to others. Forgive me, Lord.

What if Jesus had correctly felt superior in his divinity and refused to come to earth in his humanity to save the sin-stained likes of me?  What would be my eternity if Jesus practiced survival of the fittest? In all my relationships, Lord, teach me to model Jesus, not Darwin.