The last couple years, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday has made me squirm. While I love listening to King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, it’s the other dream that bothers me, God’s dream, the one in Revelation 5, that salad bowl in heaven where people of every skin tone are tossed in together and worshipping side by side. It unsettles me, because my life and church look more like a bowl of Breyer’s Cookies and Cream, light on the cookies. 

Photo courtesy of Pumpkins via unsplash.com

When I listen to King’s dream, I can feel good about the fact that two of my best friends have been an African American and Korean American. I can feel proud of my great grandmother from Canada who told me how her town, one of the final stops on the underground railway, helped runaway slaves integrate into society. 

When I listen to God’s dream, though, I find myself asking some hard questions, like whether my mostly white church should be mostly white. Or, whether it’s enough to enjoy diversity without taking any steps to heal the racial issues in my country.

Just asking those question feels like stepping into quicksand. I get afraid that, like Prince Henry from Ever After, “If I started caring about anything, I would have to care about everything, and I’d go stark raving mad.” There’s just so many things to do and so little time…just how high on God’s priority list is diversity, after all? 

At this point, the culinary arts help me bypass all the sticky questions and social quagmires and give me backstage access to what God cares about. In his design for eating, one of the most basic and daily realities of our lives, God showcases his love for diversity. 

Why else would God invest so much creativity to make celery crisp, but mangoes soft? To weave sweetness into cinnamon, but sharpness into vinegar? To built saltiness into sodium chloride, but bitterness into grapefruit? To make milk slosh, but almonds crunch? To inject beets with redness, but blueberries with indigo?

Eating is a multi-sensory and multi-flavored experience. Just think about beef. A filet mignon and a chuck roast, butchered from the same cow, carry different flavors. But, even that’s not enough variety for us. We want to add a little pepper, charr the edges, throw some rosemary into the pan, and smear some garlic butter on top. 

When we add onions to a skillet, nuts to a salad, or maple syrup to our oatmeal, we participate in God’s love of diversity, and when God loves something, our job is to love it too. The culinary arts remind us that it’s not enough to tolerate diversity, God meant us to pursue and celebrate it, both in our lives and in our churches.

Question: How have you celebrated God’s love for diversity in your life or church? Leave a comment below.