Courtney Gilmore My mom is an artist. She creates the most beautiful paintings! They are always colorful and bright and it makes me happy just to look at them. She is so creative and versatile, crossing into several different mediums while also switching utensils and surfaces. My mom creates portraits, landscapes, abstracts, stills, and animals; in water color, acrylic, and pencil; with brushes, pencils, and pallet knives; on canvas, paper, glass, and yupo paper. I would say her diversity is one of her strengths. Each piece is unique and beautiful in a different way.
She also taught my children how to paint and they are both very good, too. But each of them likes something different. My daughter likes to drop the paint and let it move where it wills. My son meticulously places each stroke. He mostly does pencil portraits, working for months on one piece to make it look exactly as it’s supposed to. My daughter has no interest in precision or lengthy projects. It’s all about creativity and beauty for her. Her paintings are colorful, wonderful, and imaginative, while my sons are detailed and exact.
They are all impressive in totally different ways. I love to look at them all! But I hate painting myself! I once told a former teacher that I hated being creative. It made her laugh when I told her it irritates me, and she asked me why. Because she is also very creative, she could not understand. But I, like my son, get very frustrated when the color flows as it wills. I want it to go where I put it and stay there. Mixing with others is strictly prohibited. Then, if it does not look exactly like the picture, it belongs in the trash. Needless to say, all mine went in the trash.
We Need Everyone
Though I hate painting, I am so thankful there are people out there like my mom. She brings beauty into the world. I can’t imagine living with only precise, detailed, and exact people. The world would be so boring and ugly. Although, I guess our vehicles would run perfectly and our pocketbooks would be fat with all the mechanics and accountants out there. I also really want precision in my surgeons and pilots, and an architect’s plans need to be exact. So, the point is, we need it all. The people who like to drop the color and see where it runs and those who like to function in the black and white. We need them all!
It seems like we all used to know this. Everyone offered their own unique talent, skill, interest, culture, knowledge, ideas, experience, and opinions to the group and everyone benefited. Though we were all individuals, together we made a family, community, church, or society. We may not have always done it perfectly, but that was the goal.
The World Divides Us
Today, the goal seems very different, at least from the people pushing the agenda. They seem to be splitting us into different groups to pit us against each other. We are divided by class, race, economic status, political party, religion, age, sex, and level of education.
They say diversity is our strength but the very act of separating into different people groups causes division. Once divided, we begin to see those in our group as good and those opposite us as bad. Soon, even though we have many things in common and may ultimately want many of the same things, we begin to separate ourselves from the “others.” Teachers and parents, cops and community members, elected officials and the populus, working moms and stay-at-home moms are all looking at the one opposite them as the “other.”
Instead of uniting around what we have in common, complimenting one another, and working as a team, we are all otherized and separated. Both parent and teacher should be united for the child, as should moms who work and those who stay at home. Cops, officials, representatives, and community members should be united for the safety and good of society. Yet we refuse to see things from the other person’s perspective, which further divides.
Parts of the Whole
With this current model, diversity will never be our strength. That which is divided is weaker than that which is united. We must learn to use our differences instead of dismissing them.
The body is not one member but many. If the foot said, “Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body? Or if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?
God has set each member in the body just as He pleased. If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” No, rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary.
Those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor; and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
1 Corinthians 12:14-26
We cannot tear down one group to make another stronger. This weakens society as a whole. Instead, we should be building everyone up together.
How to Be a Uniter
So, do your part to unify and not divide. Be confident in who God made you to be and what you have to offer. Then, work to find common ground with others and to see how their differences can be of benefit. No one is more or less important than another. So, strive to build up instead of tear down.
Walk worthy of the calling with which you were called with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace… He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, the work of the ministry, the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
Ephesians 4:1-3, 11-16
We are tossed to and fro when we allow others to pull us in different directions. The enemy uses that space between us for deception and trickery. So, don’t let your differences separate you. Instead, let them be the part that the whole has been missing.
Links
As a tribute to my mom for Mother’s Day, check out Angie Lilljedahl’s art on Facebook or Instagram. Then, comment on your favorite painting.
This is an excerpt from “Civil War Makes Us Weak” as taught on YouTube, Podcast, and written on Substack. Read the beginning of the lesson for free. Or read it in its entirety, along with previous lessons over Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges for $6/month or $60/year. Once subscribed, you’ll receive one lesson each week thereafter by email. Cancel anytime.
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