Speaking about the person Jesus, the Bible says in Colossians 1:16 that “by him all things were created.”
To put this differently, this means Jesus is God and he has made everything. From the birds to the bees, the grass and the trees, the mountains and seas—and he has made every single person who has ever lived since the beginning of time.
Everyone has been made by the same Maker.
We don’t know exactly what Jesus looked like because the Bible doesn’t give us a description of his eye color or skin tone, but we do know that he was a man of Jewish descent who lived in the first century. That means he would have been brown-skinned and to our eyes today he would have looked like he was from the Middle East.
This same Jesus who had brown-skin made people with every different kind of skin color and eye color and hair color and body shape that there is.
Pointing out God’s love for the creation he has made, C.S. Lewis once said, “God loves matter, he invented it!” Jesus truly is creative, and his creativity is on full display when we pause at an airport terminal to look around at all of the people he made.
Unfortunately, not every person who has claimed to be a follower of Jesus has loved other people the same way that Jesus loves different people.
It’s because of this tragic reason that people today tend to think the Bible is against diversity and is a white man’s religion—a religion that hungers for power and uses it to oppress others and will do just about anything it can to hold onto power.
But this is not at all what Jesus had in mind when he taught his first disciples the second greatest commandment: “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:29-31).
Jesus’ vision for his disciples was to love others well and without qualification or prejudice. One lawyer approached Jesus and asked, “Who is my neighbor?” to which Jesus responded (I’ll paraphrase here): anyone and everyone who needs your help. You don’t get to pick and choose who your neighbors are. And you are called to love them as you love yourself. Which, probably isn’t a very difficult thing for you to do. It’s pretty easy to love our self.
If I am hungry, I eat something. If I’m thirsty, I drink something. If I’m dirty and stinky, I take a shower. If I want to drive to the beach, I drive to the beach.
Jesus calls us to apply that same care for those he has put into our lives around us. If I have a neighbor who needs something, I do what I can to help her or him because this person bears the same image that I do.
We are made in the image of our Creator. And this Creator loves creativity. He made you, he made me, and he made all of the diversity we see around us.
As one pastor of old once put it, “There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.”
So, praise God today for making each one of us different.
The Bible teaches us to love diversity.