We need each other

I just finished Donald Kraybills The Upside-Down Kingdom. I should have a generally very positive review up later today or maybe tomorrow. Anyway late in the book he was writing about how we form social boxes that we tend to stay in and how we can take steps to cross those. He makes a point that I think is unusual in stating that these boxes are inherently bad.

This doesn't mean people jump completely out of their boxes. It does mean that in the new kingdom social boxes should mesh in a complementary way. Fellow Christians need each other. The intellectuals need the charismatics. The fundamentalists need the social activists. The young need the old. The complementary nature of the different clusters builds up the whole community so the entire body matures in Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul's analogy of the body applies to subgroups as well as individuals. Social clusters need each other to keep things in balance. (Donald Kraybill, The Upside-Down Kingdom, pg. 214)

It drives me nutz when Christians try to change externals to be more relevant and hip and come across like a cheesy parody of themselves. Hey dude, some hair product and groovy glasses doesn't change that you are a middle-class college educated white guy who likes to read.So Kraybill seems to be saying that having a "birds of a feather flock together" mentality is inevitable and not inherently bad.

That seems to fly in the face of our talk of unity but I wonder. If we are trying to be homogenous and hide what makes us different, is that a real unity? Or is unity truly when we see the differences between us, understand and accept them and find unity in spite of them? Perhaps we even find that unity is richer when we enbrace our uniqueness and our differences?