Similarity and Diversity

I am an ecologist by training. I think in systems and relations, and observe to understand. It's an observational science more than experimental. One thing I know is that the world is wondrously complex. There are innumerable interactions in every place we look. Everything is interrelated in a very real physical sense. We can't even explain or understand the greater portion of them. We don't even know what we don't know, but we are constantly learning how processes we thought we understood are not nearly as simple and are sometimes not even valid systems because of it.

At the same time, there are things that always seem to happen the same way. Patterns that repeat. Order in the chaos. Biological structure is similar on large scales. All vertebrates are built very nearly the same. Our organs function very similarly. Plant structure. Biogeochemical processes. And some things are just plain unified. All life on the planet is built of carbon. The major driving energy source is the sun. No vertebrate has more than 4 limbs. The patterns are even more evident on the microscale.

So these two guiding principles rule our world: There is wondrous diversity and complexity within the self-repeating patterns and unifying factors. The diversity is repeated on all levels, as is the sameness.

I realized recently how this applies to Christianity. Even in the Bible itself, we see great diversity among the writers. Even the writers of the New Testament alone. Each Gospel has it's own flavor, it's own focus. It's more than reinterpretations of the same events to different audiences, though this partly explains it. There are real personal differences in what is important to each author. What stood out to them that Jesus did and said is unique. But they all point to certain things in unison.

The other writers also present varying aspects of the faith. John is all about the divinity and the deeper aspects. Luke describes facts in rigid context and detail. Paul sets out grace and rules for living as Christians. Peter charges hard on foundations of the faith. James focuses on the works of the faith. There is so much diversity in their views that it should be no wonder there is so much diversity of denominations today.

But at the same time, one message is imprinted all the way through. The message of Jesus as savior of humanity. And this salvation by grace through faith. To get the fullest expression of the unified message see the creeds. That is what they were for...to distill the rich fertile wealth of the writings of the faith into a few clear and simple sentences.

But within that framework, there is so much room for diversity, for interpretation, for style. It is like ecology. Both of which bear marks of the common origin of both. No one part contains what the whole is. Yet every part is unique and distinct. Just as God himself is one whole in distinct parts. It's amazing how true this holds. Every avenue I explore yields the same principles.

This is the beauty of God's things. The metaphors don't collapse. The symbolics are repeated in fractal patterns over and over and over as you go up or down or sideways through the system.

How sad that we don't recognize this in our own interactions. You can't improve on it.