God loves diversity

I went walking to the supermarket the other day. That’s nothing new, by the way. I do that often. But this time I didn’t rush, and that is new. I slowed down and paid attention to other things besides the traffic lights, the drivers going so fast one would think the world will be over if they don’t reach the exact place at the exact time, and the bicycles that always entangle me in a weird dance as we try to dodge each other on the sidewalk. Because of this new attentiveness, I discovered something that made my blood go cold.

We humans have made for ourselves a dull, boring world.

Each condominium or apartment building looks pretty much the same as all the others on the block, the street, the neighborhood —heck, probably the entire city. (Trust me, I went so far as driving around just to test my theory.) There’s a parking lot, a building that looks for all the world like a collection of masonry boxes stacked one upon the other and piled side by side, and either a token hedge or a low wall separating the parking lot from the sidewalk. Many of the condos and buildings are even painted in the same color. A similar principle applies to individual houses, to community parks, schools, you name it.

I’m sorry to report that we live in the age of standardization. We rush to fill our standardized homes with mass-produced objects. We even try to standardize our ideas. Shortly before reaching the supermarket, I almost got bowled over by someone in a big hurry because I tried to sidestep the lady preacher offering salvation on the corner of the shopping plaza. Now, I’ve got nothing against religion, of whatever kind it might be. But I can’t help but dislike this urge to convert every last human being on Earth —and the aliens too, if they ever show up— to just one God, one Way to worship. One Way to do things in Washington, D.C.

I will say this first: sometimes I have caught myself thinking that I’m a Catholic, because that’s how my mother raised me —but I’m almost completely sure that the Catholic Church would deny that statement. (They did ask me twice, very politely, to stop attending their catechism classes because I kept asking all sorts of inconvenient questions.) Most of the time these days, however, I don’t consider myself a Christian at all, of any kind.

I will say this next: one of the smartest people I have ever met was a Baptist deacon in a humble neighborhood of Havana, Cuba. And not just because of his ingenuity and practical sense when dealing with the twists and complications of everyday life —he possessed both qualities in great abundance—, but also because he once found a phrase in a book written by an American preacher, recognized its worth, and turned it into the cornerstone of his own religious philosophy. The phrase went something like this, or perhaps exactly like this: “God loves diversity.”

And that is True. With a capital T for added emphasis. The proof can be found everywhere you care to look. For the sake of conversation, imagine you’re standing on the beach at Bill Baggs Cape State Park, in Key Biscayne, Florida. There’s the seaweed right where the water meets the sand, crab tracks all over the place, some bigger than others. The dunes just behind the beach are covered with several species of plants, and the forest beyond is even more diverse. Five minutes of standing still once rewarded me with three kinds of butterflies, several spiders, a raccoon, a red-tailed hawk, and several other birds that flew past too quickly to be identified —but they all looked different. The water on the other side of the seawall is deeper; manatees graze along the shore and fish dart around them.

So many species of plants and animals —so many different communities, each with its own way of doing things, finding sustenance, chasing others away from its turf. And that’s just a corner of a small island. Imagine the whole planet. God made a VERY diverse world, so He/She/It must have liked it that way. You would think that’s a clue as to how God wants us to behave.

You would think we’d take the hint and start letting the differences back into our human world.