Perspective – The Word Worker

Stewards and Kings

In Tolkien’s famous trilogy, the kingdom of Gondor was ruled by kings who carried elven blood in their veins and lived by a sense of honor stemming from the Valar themselves. These kings ruled from a great throne while their most trusted advisors sat in stewardship below. When Isildur failed and left Gondor kingless, the stewards remained below the throne, vowing to keep their trust for the day the line of kings was restored. That is, until Denethor assumed stewardship and forgot about the throne above him. When the rightful king appeared, Denethor rejected him furiously, resentful of any threat to his own perceived authority. He chose angry despair and self-destruction over hope and redemption, all to preserve his own vanity.

By contrast, the rightful king returned without fanfare. He spent his time fighting in the ranks, walking with the fearful, and comforting the broken. Few even knew his true identity. As the final battle approached and his identity could no longer be hidden, he did not march into the city and seize the throne from the recalcitrant steward. He walked secretly in the camp, healing the injured and bolstering the courage of frightened soldiers. Only when victory was won did he claim his birthright, and then bowed to the smallest of his subjects in humility and service.

The first century Jewish religious elite had developed a reputation of scholarship. Their time spent poring over scrolls and arguing about application inflated their authority in their own eyes. When the King arrived and did not bow to them, His stewards, they flew into a self-destructive rage and went to war against Him. They even allied with those they considered most evil in order to preserve their own self-righteous vanity.

Jesus, the King Himself, came as the humblest of men. He walked the earth in homespun wool, went hungry and thirsty, healed and comforted and fed those with need. He walked the road to the cross, crushed under the weight of responsibility and love, every moment also carrying the unused authority to obliterate his tormentors. Only after resurrection proved Satan’s ultimate defeat was His Kingship proclaimed to the four corners of the earth.

The problem with Denethor and the Jewish elite was that they forgot that a steward is a servant. He or she has no authority, simply cares for another’s most precious assets. A steward carries responsibility to another, responsibility that effaces all other purpose for his or her life. However, all authority lies with the owner of those precious assets, and the steward must give account to the owner for every action taken. A steward who forgets the interests of the owner in favor of his or her own fails. A steward who inflates his own importance to preserve his position fails. A steward who focuses on unproductive actions to the detriment of the owner’s precious assets fails. A steward who takes advice from the owner’s enemy instead of listening to the owner fails.

There is only one King, and souls are His most precious asset. We, humans, are his stewards tasked with preserving souls, including our own. We have no authority over each other in His kingdom, only a responsibility we could never bear without His mercy. Souls are fragile things and require gentle tending to thrive. Each is different and must be carefully cultivated with love and compassion and understanding of what that soul needs in order to reveal the beauty for which it is loved by the King. We as stewards, as humans, as treasured souls, have no other purpose.

A Round Peg in a Square Hole: What is Learning?

Before any of my children were born, I had ideas about what education was supposed to look like. I had been homeschooled and knew I wanted to homeschool my own children, but I thought in terms of curricula, subjects, schedules, and grades. We were going to be academically rigorous and graduate at the top of every expectation. Then my children were born.

My oldest daughter talked fluently at a year old, loved stories and educational TV, and exhibited an empathy and understanding beyond many adults even as a toddler, but couldn’t read until she was nine. My oldest son couldn’t contain himself, struggled to meet anyone else’s expectations, but could name dozens of dinosaurs by the time he could talk, learned to read with zero instruction, and thought like an engineer. My middle daughter struggled to focus on anything, froze up in the face of any expectation, but had perfect pitch and rhythm. My youngest son had no emotional control and struggled with milestones, but could tell you anything you asked about reptiles or amphibians and had an instinct for finding and loving the lonely. My youngest daughter has a mighty will, an insatiable craving for attention, a memory like a steel trap, and a spirit that could not be contained by external forces.

The more they grew the more apparent it became that my grand plans for their education were flawed. Personalities didn’t fit the boxes of expectation. While one was a natural at languages and human behavior patterns, another died of boredom unless producing art of extraordinary talent. While one ravenously feasted on biological principles and mathematical concepts, another lived on exploration and observation of the natural world. Isolated subjects may as well have been babble, assignments caused panic. Stories filled their minds, however, and through stories they learned of mythology, historical events, great minds of the past, and human behavior, and their language skills exploded. Cooking and art instilled mathematical truths about the universe without complicated formulas on paper. Modern technology provided many other opportunities. Games involved strategical reasoning, creative problem solving, and coding skills. Videos and virtual reality allowed experiences that could never have occurred otherwise, exposure to distant places and cultures, scientific experiments beyond our resources, and tutorials for any skill desired.

Although I have watched them learn in wonder every single day, rewriting my expectations of education has taken many years. Societal pressures are powerful, and fear of failing to meet them still remains in the back of my mind. It rears its ugly head whenever someone asks questions about our learning. Usually the questions involve what curriculum we use (none), how we plan to teach advanced high school subjects (they’ll learn it if they need it), what their grades look like (we don’t have them), and other relatively recent constructs. Rarely are the important questions asked, like how well they are able to incorporate skills into life, what understanding do they have of human behavior and natural law, do they know and develop who God created them to be, and the like. When the usual questions are not answered as expected, confusion and worry are plain to see, growing tendrils of unjustified doubt. Because all those expectations have come to be the round hole, it’s hard for most of us to notice square corners. For many, that round hole may be what learning looks like, contained, structured, and entirely predictable or controllable. For the neurodivergent mind – the square peg – learning is in the corners, out of bounds, unpredictable, and exciting, filling spaces that others cannot even see. Learning is life and will never end, will simply change.

Whose Righteousness is Our Passion?

By the time Jesus was born into the physical world, the Jewish culture had become centered around scholarship. Status, wealth, and privilege were guaranteed to increase according to the detail of one’s familiarity with the Hebrew scriptures and the eloquent certainty with which one spoke of them. Their entire political system revolved around heated arguments between religious factions regarding what details they insisted on enforcing as immutable law. Being known as a teacher of teachers became the highest honor a man could aspire to receive, and the focus of manipulation and intrigue.

Most of these ambitious teachers carried great passion for scripture. They truly believed that their focus was righteous; jealous on God’s behalf and eager to defend a cause they saw as threatened (obedience to God), they frantically opposed any slight change they perceived as laxity and punished with impunity the smallest of perceived infractions. Because of this they were both respected and feared; they were the experts, how could they possibly be wrong?

Paul, called to be the voice of God throughout the Roman empire, wrote of these scholars and of those who revered them in his letter to the struggling church in Rome itself. He wrote of their drive and their passion, but he wrote with grief that in spite of all their scholarship they had no knowledge. When God appeared before them they couldn’t accept Him because in their focus on words and details they had lost sight of the original author. They became authors of a new righteousness that they could control, that merely used God’s name as cushioning for their own authority. They had replaced Him with themselves without even realizing what they were doing.

Paul grieved because through the drive and passion of the scholars they and their adherents were lost. They had put all their faith, and thus all their fear, into the success or failure of human knowledge and actions to reach perfection. The love and mercy inherent in Christ escaped them because they had scoured it out of themselves in terror. They sacrificed every hope God offered through misplaced ideals that could never be realized.

There is only one righteousness, and it has nothing to do with what we as humans can know or achieve. It can only come from God, and is only given to those who long with every fiber of their being for His presence in their lives. Humans cannot earn a badge of righteousness and we have no jurisdiction to pass judgment on any human’s spiritual state. We can only feed souls, water hearts, and reach for God. In that passion His righteousness is reflected, His mercy poured out, His children rescued.

Romans 9:30–33; 10:1-4 (CSB): What should we say then? Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained righteousness—namely the righteousness that comes from faith. But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not achieved the righteousness of the law., Why is that? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written, Look, I am putting a stone in Zion to stumble over and a rock to trip over, and the one who believes on him will not be put to shame.Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation. I can testify about them that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Since they are ignorant of the righteousness of God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,…

The Significance of a Baby

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In a tiny, insignificant town a baby was born. His first cries were drowned by the loving and cackling of farm animals and by the busy merriment of hostel guests just the other side of the wall. His young mother wrapped his flailing arms in linen strips stored nearby for the care of newborn lambs, the only material available after a long journey, and lay him in the sturdy but cold stone trough that held the animals’ feed. The apparently illegitimate child of a carpenter from a backwater village and his fiance, his arrival made no impression on anyone but his frazzled parents.

It made no impression, that is, until a choir of angels in a blaze of light sang hallelujah choruses to shepherds in a silent field outside of town. Until those unremarkable herdsmen showed up to that noisy, smelly stable with shouts of joy and no sheep. Until they began rushing around grabbing everyone they met and telling an impossible story about an infant Messiah in a manger.

Thirty years would pass, and that strange story would be forgotten along with the nondescript baby wrapped in sheep linen. Infant years in which the God of Heaven squalled and writhed like any helpless infant, learned to grasp and walk and babble like any toddler, years of scraped knees and lost teeth like any child. His nose ran and his tummy hurt; he learned to use a saw and hammer without hurting himself and memorized scripture with other boys in the synagogue. He cried and laughed, ate when he was hungry, slept when he grew tired. His younger siblings teased and quarreled with him, and his parents developed gray hair teaching them all to be productive members of society.

At the end of the thirty years the world would once again hear about this boy become man, would be shown once more their Messiah. His death would carry a weight and a promise that could never be forgotten, and few would remember those years in the shadow of the cross. Yet it was the baby who was heralded by Heaven, and those quiet years among the working class of an ignored village that formed the ground beneath that cross. The God of infinite power made himself helpless, utterly dependent on the care of His own creation. The God of infinite knowledge and wisdom painstakingly learned in the mind and body of a child. The God of infinite presence spent a human life within the bounds of a few square miles, spent His days under the cramped roof of a petty craftsman. The God of unimaginable majesty walked in the dust and sweated in the workshop. The God that created the universe chose to be born with nothing rather than materialize in grandeur. That insignificant baby in an unassuming stable was the reason we are able to see the cross and the impact of the empty tomb.

Hebrews 4:15 (CSB): For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 2:17–18 (CSB): Therefore, he had to be like his brothers and sisters in every way, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in matters pertaining to God, to make atonement, for the sins of the people.
18 For since he himself has suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.

The Round Peg in a Square Hole: No Words

I’m a writer. I don’t mean that I write for the public, though obviously I do. I mean that I express myself through the written word. I love the way words come together to depict complex ideas and emotions, the beauty in the way they flow. With my pen, I can think. Except when I can’t.

For a person with neurodiverse brains, self-expression is a constant challenge. When left alone, expression finds outlet in natural ways: sounds, movements, sensations, hyperfocused interests. But other people expect words. Not just any words, but specific combinations of words delivered in specific ways. There are no official rules, and different people expect different combinations. Different situations require different combinations.

You try to translate all your natural self-expression into words, but things don’t match. You can’t find a word that describes the feeling relieved by cocooning in a heavy blanket in ninety degree weather, or the surge of undirected energy prompting the need to hum a set musical phrase on repeat. The words other people direct toward you don’t make sense either; they are too flat somehow, or the sounds making up the words trigger responses that confuse and anger the speakers.

Living in a household full of neurodivergent brains has taught me a lot about communication. While words are still a huge part of our lives (seriously, they never seem to stop talking), we have to listen beneath the words to understand. Because sometimes there are no words, not for the real things we need to say.

As a word person in a non-word house, I have discovered a strange empathy with that deeper, wordless self-expression. The strength of it overwhelms until I must share it or drown, yet all I have is words. I try to write the feelings and ideas down in ways that other people can see their beauty. I try again and again, writing and erasing until my mind is as full of rips as the paper, but I cannot find the combination that others will understand. Suddenly there are no words left.

Listen to the notes. Dance with the motions. Oggle at the skill produced from hyperfocus. Buy the heavy blankets. Share the smiles and the tears and the squeals. Maybe you’ll find no words are needed.

Service or Advertisement?

We’ve all seen them, the advertising campaigns purporting awareness of some issue or another, some need. We’ve seen the politicians showing up at events or businesses when there is personal advantage to be gained. Many platitudes are exchanged, few practical or permanent solutions are implemented. Usually the one who benefits most from such is the supposed benefactor.

In the early weeks following the events of Pentecost, the newly faithful experienced a heady sense of fellowship, of unity. This togetherness extended to the sharing of physical resources so that the needs of all were met. Their unfeigned generosity spoke to the masses, drawing more and more people who wanted to experience what changed these people so profoundly, what made them so selfless.

Not all attracted to the expression of faith understood its source. They saw the overwhelming response to kindness and wanted that sort of attention for themselves. Ananias and Sapphira turned an everyday business transaction into a personal advertisement by donating less and calling it more. Simon, who before conversion had built a life on pretending to solve people’s problems for personal gain, even in his sincere desire to change treated the power of God as just another commodity for enriching him personally.

This attitude was hardly new to humanity, or to those publicly bearing God’s name. Absalom, resentful that his well-intentioned but questionable behavior had not been sanctioned, turned what should have been his responsibility to help serve the people into a way to manipulate their perception of right and wrong. He traded on visible work to increase his personal authority and punish the good man who held him accountable.

During the times of kings and prophets, many of the leaders of Israel turned the gathering of resources meant for service into their own personal stranglehold over the lives and needs of the people. In response, the people hoarded for themselves, forgetting concern for anything outside of their own needs and wants. The entire nation vaunted its perceived wealth while abusing God’s generosity with grasping avarice.

It’s easy to see the comparison with such behavior in the examples of modern societal hypocrisy mentioned above, but those claiming faith are not any more immune to selfishness than anyone else in history. Every day some one or more of us holds our reasonable service hostage to our insistence on personal control. We may work, but only with a spotlight and a mirror pointed at ourselves. Godliness, or at least behavior that makes us stand out, is our commodity, and we are unsatisfied unless any paying forward occurs within that harsh circle of artificial light.

A man named Joseph set the greatest example of service to those early first century faithful, yet no one remembers his name. It is mentioned only once in the entirety of scripture. This man apparently didn’t have much of monetary substance because God highlighted his donation of the proceeds of one field as remarkable in the midst of an entire church sharing their resources. When a murderer turned preacher was ostracized by understandably frightened people of God, this man offered opportunity and connection, his own character standing as testimony for that of the other. When a boy missionary failed to persevere in the face of opposition and hardship on his first attempt, this man fought others for the boy’s second chance, and when none would take the risk, offered that opportunity himself. As a result that boy is mentioned later as an unshakeable defender of faith and supporter of the faithful. This man whose name is forgotten is known by the term of affection used for him by God’s chosen messengers: Barnabas, or “son of encouragement.” It is his impact on others, his unwavering desire to build others up, that is remembered.

If Barnabas’s first concern had been to draw attention to himself or even to the church as an image of perfection, he would never have even considered supporting a murderer, much less one who had last been seen trying to kill the faithful. By human standards, that sort of person not only looks bad, but would draw all sorts of negative attention from the murderers’ former associates. If his priority had been to rise in authority, even just among the faithful, he would never have stood up for those with damaged reputations. Instead, he would have bowed and scraped and heralded the doubts of respected but mistaken men who failed to recognize God’s called.

Unlike Ananias and Saphira, Simon, Absalom, or the Israelite leaders, Barnabas was not a walking advertisement. He didn’t paste labels on his work, didn’t send out shiny mailers denigrating the character of others or campaigning for a following, didn’t spy on others to make sure they didn’t mess up. He simply filled needs, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. He served without reservation, trusting the God who redeemed him to discern hearts and build a people greater than human bounds.

The Burden of the Blame Game

When Adam and Eve were faced with the exposure of their poor choice in the garden, they were overwhelmed with guilt. They suddenly knew the weight of disobedience, the loss of rebellion, and in a childish effort to rid themselves of those feelings they began pointing fingers. “It’s her fault.” “It’s his fault.” “It’s your fault for making us.” I’m surprised they didn’t say it was the fruit’s fault, as that seems to be one of the most common excuses for bad behavior these days.

Every day I hear it. “X thing is the reason for y behavior.” “The world would be a better place if X thing didn’t exist.” “I knew someone who used X thing and ended up struggling with Y problem, so never use X thing.” It all sounds like a child calling a toy stupid after breaking it. If it isn’t some object at the tip of our pointed finger, it’s an expression or a poor unfortunate soul.

In the garden, Satan knew the power of conscience and exploited it, twisting need and trust into desperation and despair. The choice Adam and Eve made to eat the fruit was made in innocence, the innocence of a child wanting the privileges of adulthood without the ability to meet the responsibilities. The choice they made to pass blame was made in full awareness and with intention, and it was that choice that cost them the garden.

The fruit that God forbade didn’t offer all knowledge as Satan claimed. It was simply an object, a symbol of trust that God had all knowledge and used it in love for the children He chose to create. It was a reminder that God wanted to love and be loved. It was proof that God carried all responsibility as Creator of all our characteristics. When eaten against His warning, the fruit simply brought pain into that reminder. All Adam and Eve gained was the weight of a responsibility they could never carry.

Ever since the horrible day that Adam and Eve had to experience the burden of their choices, God has presented demonstration after demonstration that guilt is not His goal. Time after time He showed His children pictures of redemption. His heartbroken words to Cain calling him back from sin into relationship fell on deaf ears. The sacrificial goat to symbolically carry the sin of an entire nation away from the center of worship failed to make an impression on a people drowning in denial. The Son of God speaking redemption from the cross itself only enraged a religious culture addicted to the power of guilt. The never-failing presence of God at the seat of Mercy, in the cloud that led them, in the angel army that stood between them and their enemies, in the impossible queen of a pagan oppressor, or in an unassuming son of a carpenter went unappreciated.

Today we carry guilt like a badge of honor. We drown in victimhood to Satan’s lies, blaming whatever item that has been misused or whatever platitude we have misapplied or anyone else available for the consequences of choices we have made. We claim we shouldn’t bear consequences because we were innocent, we were misled, we were confused, all because in our deepest soul we know that we can never make it right. We can never save ourselves. We can never eliminate the knowledge of our betrayal of trust. This is Satan’s victory.

No one and nothing in this world contains the power to either impose or remove guilt. No object or person can bear the responsibility for our choices. Any effort to place that burden on any earthly being or object leads only to more misery. Only the Source of power and knowledge is capable of not only bearing it, but eliminating it entirely. Our part is simply to preserve our innocence by trusting Him, not acknowledging or giving credence to Satan’s whispers, and choosing to use the very best of our little in gratitude for His responsibility without dwelling on our mistakes. There is no guilt, there is no burden, there is no blame game in God’s embrace.

The Round Peg in a Square Hole: Decisions, Decisions

To be clear, I am the abnormal one in my family. No, not the “neurodivergent” one. That’s the other six people in the house. I’m the round peg. All my life decisions were something I took for granted. What will I eat for breakfast? Which TV show do I feel like watching? What job will I apply for? Which chore will I tackle first today? Even more stressful decisions merely took more time; I thought about them carefully, eventually made one, and life moved on.

For square pegs, decisions are something else entirely. The extra space in those corners reflects variables that simply do not exist for circle pegs. Some decisions careen off into empty space, out of the realm of conscious thought, rather like Dug’s attention in the movie _Up_ whenever he sees a squirrel. Some get jammed into the corners like the dust in the cranny where two walls meet that neither a broom or a vacuum cleaner can reach. Some jump from corner to corner and side to side like the old Windows screensaver, skating away in a new direction whenever almost within reach.

In a world requiring fast-paced decision making, square pegs stay in a state of agonized malfunction. Squirrels might become amazing adventures, but who can enjoy adventure with the decision posse riding around every corner? The posse is sure that square pegs can be reformed, that a decision can be forced with enough pressure, but all they accomplish is driving their prey into hiding, jamming that dust deeper and deeper into corners. No one gets anything, not decision or adventure.

As the circle peg, learning to appreciate the corners was a challenge. I was sure that love or responsibility or both would ensure efficient decisions in matters that affected all of us. That is, I was sure about that until I decided to go on the adventure too. When I did, I discovered a different kind of decision making, the decisions of imagination and possibility. A process independent of time or expectations, intuitively reacting to every new idea. A process that, rather than preventing functionality or progress as perceived, provided new solutions to problems, new paths to expected decisions.

My expectations about decisions were quite right for circle pegs, but entirely wrong for square ones. The pressure of rapid decisions polished my curves but scarred their corners. Their decisions weren’t “efficient” in a circle world, but when given time to sharpen the corners were often richer and more complex, adding variety, beauty, and excitement that as a circle I would never have otherwise experienced.

The Round Peg in a Square Hole: What is Normal?

Most of us played with shape sorters as children. As part of learning the different shapes and creating the proper connections, we tried fitting shapes into holes they didn’t match. Some of those mismatches didn’t fit at all; the shape simply would not pass through the hole. The corners of a square, for example, will never fit inside the curves of a circle. Others, however, would sometimes slide through, or could be forced through, certain incorrect holes. A circle could actually fit through the square hole, even though its curves did not fill out the square’s corners.

From the time we are very small, our society pushes patterns of behavior on us. “Be normal,” we’re told. If we don’t fit the shape expected, we are labeled, separated, and therapied to death until we meet expectations or break. But who decided which shape is normal? When we played with the shape sorters, we might have begun by trying to fit everything into the same shape because we liked something about that shape, but eventually we learned that each shape had its own place. Can you imagine someone saying, “The only shape allowed in the world anymore is the square? Circles, triangles, stars – they are all wrong and must be redesigned into squares.”

Two terms that have become popular in recent years are neurotypical and neurodivergent. I understand the intent behind the use of these words, and occasionally use them myself in order to frame concepts in a way people can understand them. Unfortunately, these terms also reinforce the idea that only one shape is normal. Labels are created, therapies are invented, medications are prescribed. All of these have the purpose of making people with different shapes appear to be the preferred one. The focus is always placed on what is “wrong,” what is “abnormal,” that makes a person different then eliminating it.

But again I ask, what is normal? Just as every shape is unique and has its own place on the shape sorter (and it’s own mathematical purpose), every human is unique and has place and purpose. What is normal for one is abnormal for another. What one is capable of doing another is not. What one cannot accomplish another can. Corners and curves are both necessary; elimination of one or the other creates a world that cannot function.

What if, instead of looking for “normal” we strove to celebrate individuality? What if, instead of trying to shave off corners or flatten curves, we recognized the needed functions of both? It’s true that circles can fit within the square, but they don’t belong. Circles will never be able to reach into the corners and fulfill the purpose of squares. If forced to pretend to be squares, circles will always feel inadequate, and will never experience or even know their full potential as circles. Squares, on the other hand, can never fit in the circles as they are. They will either try to shave off parts of themselves leaving raw, gaping wounds in order to squeeze in, or they will be smashed against edges again and again until they break. Either way they lose their identity and their purpose and, like the ill-fitting circle, will never experience or recognize their potential as squares.

Our society has become adept at forcing round pegs into square holes. We admire the work and contributions of those circles who managed to find their circle holes and give us great discoveries or achievements, as long as we don’t have to acknowledge that they were circles in the first place. Because we carefully avoid recognizing the ill-fitting circles, we also prevent ourselves from seeing the broken squares. We have decided to be the infant trying to smash all the shapes into the hole that pleases us best, but unlike the infant, we don’t learn from our failures. We just keep smashing and screaming in frustration until everything is broken.

What if, instead of breaking others to look like ourselves, or breaking ourselves to look like others, we all found our own purpose as who we are? God doesn’t make mistakes. He made each of us exactly the way we are. He has purpose, specific and absolute purpose, for each and every individual exactly the way He created us. Imagine what we could all be together if every single one of us found our own.

Cultural Religion

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As someone who enjoys learning history, I have noticed a human tendency to confuse culture with morality. Every society throughout history has developed its own cultural norms: clothing styles, hair styles, living arrangements, traditions, entertainment, etc. These cultural norms are usually responses to environmental factors like economics, weather, or topography. The key word regarding any cultural element is “develop.” Environmental factors change. People migrate to and from other areas, bringing their own cultural elements with them.

In every instance of change, conflict arises between cultures. Both hold the other to be immoral in their standards. (Pants instead of skirts?! Rock and roll?!) The children exposed equally to both easily absorb elements of both creating an entirely new culture, considered immoral by both original cultures alike.

In the midst of all of this cultural change and conflict, actual moral principles are often discarded in order to defend culture. Life is only valued among those holding to the desired culture. Property is only protected for those who embrace the desired culture. Kindness is only allowed or acknowledged between those of the same culture. Wear the prescribed clothes, enjoy the prescribed entertainment, speak the prescribed language, practice the prescribed traditions, work the prescribed jobs. Different is evil and must be prevented at all costs.

The God-created will and capacity to choose combined with our longing for security and belonging repeatedly embroils humanity in this turmoil. Our choices become our religion, and our religion becomes a prison. We cast even our own freedom to choose into a dungeon dug out of our own fear, shackled by compulsion that only feeds our terror and rage.

God created us with the ability to be creative, to adapt, to learn, to make independent decisions based on both need and desire. Like a single human body is made up of millions of cells with different functions, of hundreds of parts performing different tasks, so is humanity made up of incredible variety. What one cannot do, another can. What one cannot understand another can teach. What one cannot imagine another can produce. Without what the one does, the other cannot meet its potential.

If we never allow any challenge to our cultural norms, we leave no room for self-reflection. Without self-reflection we cannot grow, and growth is essential to human life. Traditions are not evil. New is not evil. Turning either into a religion that vilifies anyone else is.

Romans 14:16–20 (CSB): Therefore, do not let your good be slandered, for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever serves Christ in this way is acceptable to God and receives human approval. So then, let us pursue what promotes peace and what builds up one another.

A unified human body cannot by nature include only cells of the exact same type. It is unified precisely because of its many different parts working in harmony. Humanity cannot by nature be uniform either. Only by celebrating and harmonizing our myriad individuality can we function as a unified whole. Culture cannot become religion.