"God insists on diversity."

Okay, so I mentioned somewhere along the line that I have been reading a book by Bruce Feiler titled "Where God was Born" - A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion. I am not a very religious person by my own definition, but I believe myself to be spiritual. I find myself since 1998 reading all types of religious/spiritual books as I go down my spiritual path. I have read everything from Christian self help books to Buckland's Complete Book of Witch Craft. I have learned along the way that I share some Pagan beliefs, but I am not Wiccan or a witch. I have learned that I have a high respect for the man we all call Jesus and that we have so much to learn from him and have only scratched the surface. But mostly I have learned that I have to pay attention to what my heart "feels" about what I read and how I react to what I read.

In this book "Where God was Born" I have come across a passage that really speaks to me and I just felt a need to put it here and share it with others. I guess I need to give you just a little back story. The author of this book is a Jewish man that is a native of Savannah, GA that currently resides in New York. The part of the book that this passage comes from is where he has traveled to Iraq in the years after the invasion by the US so somewhere between 2003 and 2004. I have learned so much about the biblical history of Iraq from reading this book. I guess we don't study the geography enough to realize what is there...so, as he is finishing up this part of the book he is looking back on his visit and whether he found what he was looking for there. Here is what he said that really made me think and spoke to me like it was meant for me to hear for a reason.

"The message here is unexpected but powerfully relevant today. When humans try to create one language--when one group of people tries to impose an artificial order on teh world--God views this as a hubristic attempt to usurp his powers and slaps down the arrogation. God insists on diversity. He demands that humans accept their differences. In rejecting the Tower of Babel, God rejects fundamentalism, the idea that one way of speaking is the only way of speaking and can be imposed on others at will.
God's Solution is a cacophony of voices, living side by side"

Now, if you know me then you know I don't believe in a God that "demands" anything. I believe in a loving God that would never hurt his people in anyway, especially not intentionally as the bible indicates in so many stories. But what I get from this passage is that God "wants" us to all be different, that in being different that is when we are at our best and when we most resemble God. None of us has a right to impose our beliefs on each other...we must all be the unique person that we were created to be during this time on earth, until our next time when we will be something totally different again. Trying to "make" people see it our way, believe our way, goes completely against our reason for being here. We are here to "experience" life in a different way each visit to this awesome planet.

Isn't it awesome?? Well, I think so and I just loved what that passage had to say and felt a need to share it here...I hope it does something for you, but if not that is fine...because we are all different and I like knowing that...