Many members, one body
Many members, one body
Paul reaches for the human body to explain the church, and the image is precise. The body is not one member, he says, but many. A body made entirely of eyes could not walk; a body made entirely of hands could not see. The body works precisely because it is diverse — because the parts are different and need one another, each doing what the others cannot.
The same is gloriously true of the ways we love God. A church where everyone worshiped identically would be as deformed as a body that was all one organ. The naturalist needs the traditionalist's depth; the activist needs the contemplative's stillness; the enthusiast needs the intellectual's ballast, and each of them needs all the others. The diversity of pathways is not the church's problem; it is the church's health.
And Paul presses further: the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. We are not merely to tolerate those who draw near to God differently; we are to need them. The believer whose spirituality looks nothing like yours holds something you lack, sees a side of God you cannot see alone. To despise their pathway is to amputate part of your own body.
“For the body is not one member, but many.”
— Paul, to the Corinthians — 1 Corinthians 12:14 (WEB)
Not merely tolerate but need those who love God differently than you — receiving in their pathway a facet of God you cannot see alone.
“The eye can't tell the hand, I have no need for you.”
We gather with those who love God as we do and grow suspicious of the rest, each tribe sure its way is the mature one — a body trying to be all one organ. The interior work is to move from tolerating to needing the others, recognizing that those whose pathways seem strange to us hold facets of God we are blind to, and that no single temperament can apprehend a God this large.
This week, seek out and learn from a believer whose way of loving God differs from yours: ask what they see in God that you might be missing, and let their pathway enlarge rather than threaten your own.
Pride splits the body along the lines of its own diversity, the reserved distrusting the exuberant and the activists impatient with the contemplatives, each tribe ready to amputate the others it was made to need. But the church and the soul are kept whole by needing those differences — and a body that does sees the whole of a God too large for any one temperament to hold.
Our instinct is to gather with people who love God the way we do and to be quietly suspicious of those who do not — the reserved distrusting the exuberant, the activists impatient with the contemplatives, each tribe certain its way is the mature one. Paul calls this what it is: a body trying to be all one organ, and crippling itself in the attempt.
The health of the church, and of your own soul, depends on needing the others. The pathways you find strange are carried by people who see facets of God you are blind to, and who need, in turn, what you carry. None of us holds the whole picture alone; God is too large for any single temperament to apprehend. Before you dismiss another believer's way as lesser, consider that God may have given them to you precisely because they have what you lack.
- Do I merely tolerate, or genuinely need, those who love God differently?
- Whose pathway have I dismissed that might hold what I lack?
- What facet of God might I be blind to without the rest of the body?
Lord, I gather with those like me and dismiss the rest, trying to be a body of one organ. Teach me to need those who love you differently. Show me the facets of yourself they carry, and knit me into a body that honors its diversity. Amen.