God has placed each part in the body just as he wanted it to be. If all the parts were the same, how could there be a body? As it is, there are many parts. 1 Corinthians 12:18-20

You’ve probably heard it said, “Imagine how boring the world would be if we were all the same”. And most of us would agree. It’s not a pleasant thought to imagine a world or a local church or business where everyone just like you or me.

And that’s not just because clones of you or me would be…uh, kind of weird, but also because there would be no one to fill in the gaps in our knowledge, experience, or abilities. Just as the body consists of various parts all working together to achieve different things, we Christians achieve the most for God’s Kingdom when we are being ourselves.

But it rarely works out quite that simply: Cloaked in nice spiritual terms like “we are one in the spirit” and “like-mindedness” is the idea that we all have to be in lockstep with each other or there’s ‘disunity’ or even ‘confusion’. There are scads of biblical examples where God debunks this idea. David wasn’t supposed to be in lockstep with his brothers even though he was youngest. Peter tried to press Jesus’ plan for his life on John and Jesus put him in his place. Lots of other examples exist, including Uzziah deciding to be the same as a priest…it didn’t go well for him.

In the true Body of Christ, everyone is different: different gifts, strengths, personalities and experiences… Everyone contributes to the whole Kingdom by doing the piece God has given to them in a way that fits with who He made them to be. Hands can’t look down on the feet and say, “Why you don’t even have enough coordination to peel an apple.” Nor the feet to the hand, “Yeah, well, you look pretty clumsy when you try to walk.”

The beauty of the Body of Christ is that when one thing goes one way, another thing goes a different way…not in contention or in argument but in harmony so that in the end all the bases are covered.

But the stifling spirit of religion will often demand sameness—conformity—squeezing all sorts of people into the same mold. It’s like we become insecure when we see someone doing something differently than we do it. We feel vulnerable and exposed.

And here’s the problem: whenever someone finds something that works for them, it gets noticed; they may even write a book or be interviewed on Christian media. Then everyone else wants to do it their way. A fad is born and a lot of zeal and excitement carries the fad/program forward as many others jump on board. Only then do we find that it doesn’t work for everyone. (So we read more books trying to find out why these successful techniques with their glowing testimonials don’t seem to work for us.)

It’s like a fallen star. A fallen star is just a unique heavenly body that has a unique orbit that gets caught up in some other planet’s gravitational attraction and that pulls it out of its unique orbit and that new orbit doesn’t work for its size and shape and it ends up burning up in the sky or crashing to the ground. Spectacular, but not a path most of want to take.

As Christians, we need to get out of other people’s orbit and go out and be the innovators that God has called us to be with our own unique orbit that God can use us in and bless because He made us for it in the first place.

In 2017: Avoid the spirit of sameness. Explore ways to be ourselves.