Episode 464 - Oletha Barnett - Diversity of a Different Kind

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James.

I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James, and I am so glad for all of you who are listening today. If you hear the word diversity If I say diversity, chances are you immediately think of race. But God's design diversity goes well beyond race. In her new book, Diversity of a Different Kind, theologian, lawyer, and conflict resolution specialist Oletha Barnett shares a new way of looking at diversity and how it leads to a new way of conflict resolution. She explains terms like diversity embrace, And Diversity Rub offers up a dozen differences common to man and explores how it all works together to grow us spiritually and find unity with other believers. Barnett offers a unique viewpoint to resolve conflict, heal wounds, restore relationships, address and correct sin, and unify the church in a world rife with the issues of division of every kind. I'm so glad that Oletha Barnett has stopped by for a visit today. Oletha, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Thank you so much. I am so honored that you chose to interview me today, and I'm looking forward to sharing, and we're just trusting God will be glorified in all.

Definitely. And the honor is mine for sure. I'm really looking forward to this conversation and have been. And I wanted to tell you right off the bat, my pastor is going to really be excited about this because he loves Dr. Tony Evans, and, and to have his endorsement of your book, I think a a week probably doesn't go by, very rarely, when he doesn't quote something from Tony Evans. So he'll be excited.

That's incredible. I know I've learned much from him over the 30-plus years that I've been a member of the church. So grateful that on my journey here, God has blessed me to have spiritual growth from his teachings and preaching.

Well, it's a good thing that we're able to talk together today, and I'm grateful for the time that we have. So let's not waste too much of it this morning. Let's get right into it. You've got this great new book, Diversity of a Different Kind. And in it, you talk about how we often think of race and gender when we talk about diversity, but you seem to look at diversity in a much broader scale. And so I wonder if you could help us define, by your definition, what diversity is.

In simple terms, it's just differences.

Okay.

We've heard it stated that God loves Diversity. All we have to do is look around. And I was reflecting, there are a number of things that brought me to this book, but the initial thing is one thing, but after I was reflecting, my thought was diversity is a source of much conflict. I like to always use the one that everybody easily recognizes, for example, personality conflicts. And I'm thinking, God is a God of peace. He tells us to be peacemakers. And I'm thinking, why did he create all of this diversity? Didn't he know it was gonna cause conflict? And of course the answer is, of course he did. And in my journey, one of the things that I believe he gave me is that God designed diversity more to make us holy than just because he loves diversity. And he does love, uh, diversity. And I was reading— when I was in seminary school, I had to read, um, Sacred Marriage, you know, by Gary Thomas, I believe it is. And he had a thesis, a theme, and a question: God made marriage more to make us holy than just to make us happy. And so one morning I woke up with the thought, and it had been some time since I've read the book, maybe it germinated in my subconscious, I don't know. But I literally woke up with the thought, God designed diversity to make us holy. I'm going like, well, where did that come from? So I unpacked it. In all honesty, I actually went to my pastor and said, is this theologically sound? And he said, yes, you're grappling with it at a high level. And when he said that, I knew that if I was grappling with it, I needed to ask God for clarity to make it clear to other people. If it wasn't clear, was not clear to me, I couldn't make it clear to others. And so out of that is the end result of this book, God Designed Diversity: More to Make Us Holy Than Just Because He Loves Diversity. His chief aim for us is holiness, for us to grow to be more Christ-like, which is of course what the sanctification process is about.

Yeah, that's beautiful. And you know, I'm so glad you brought that up because that was going to be one of the things I was interested in talking to you about today was this idea of holiness in diversity and what that means. Just last night I was leading a choir practice at our church and we're preparing some music for Easter Sunday already because it's getting here before we know it.

Yes.

And we're actually singing a song that comes out of 1 Samuel 2:2 that just talks about holy is the Lord, you know, and this whole idea of, of, of the otherness of God. And so when we think about, in the way that I think, if I'm hearing you correctly, you were talking about in the way that God is this holy other, that he is this one who is uniquely different from all of us, and yet we are created in that holy image that God looks at us and says, "It is good." You know, he looks at his creation.

Absolutely.

And so I think if I'm hearing you correctly this morning, that all of our relationships and the struggles we have, they stem from this holiness that God, God has in himself and that God bestows upon each of his creations in different ways together. So yeah, so am I hearing you somewhat correctly then?

Oh yeah, that is absolutely right. It's simply differences, and there's so many Differences, we talk, as you mentioned, 12, at least 12 different ones in the book. And when you say we're made in his image, that makes us valuable. And that's one of the things as to how we should interact with others, treat them as valuables. And you treat valuables, uh, with care. Uh, in terms of all these differences, we talk about, for example, there are unchangeable differences and there are changeable differences. A few of the unchangeable difference would be your spiritual gifts, your personalities. There are no bad personalities, even though we differ. All of these personalities just need to be brought under submission, uh, to God's way. And of course, generational differences, racial differences, political differences, you name it. As we say, the world is one diverse place and much of that diversity can lead to conflict if we don't submit to biblical principles.

That's a powerful thought, and it's kind of revolutionary in our day and time that you're stating it that way too, I think, because you just named a lot of differences that tend to divide us, and I think what we have tended to do in our culture, and maybe it's just part of our sin nature coming out in some ways, we have looked at those diversities of things that you're different than me, and because of that you're evil, instead of looking at it and saying, you're different from me, what a beautiful God we have that has created us so differently, you know. And created us in different ways.

You're absolutely, absolutely right. I agree wholeheartedly, uh, with all of that. And going back to the chief aim is to make us holy. And, and you may remember, of course, Jesus, uh, the scripture that says that he prayed that we may be one like he and the Father are one.

Yes.

And that's why we're undergirding all of the diversity instead of, as you said, making them evil or making them the enemy. If people differ from us— and you also hit on the fact that the sin nature— people differ from us, we automatically want to make them the enemy. That's because of the sin nature in us when we are supposed to be holy. And one, which is God's desire for us. You'll know his disciples by the one love we have one from another. And this conflict disinvites God from our circles. It's about unity. It's about love.

Yeah. Well, you know, you're, you're one that you don't just write about these things. You told me just before we started recording today, you were up late into the night last night, um, with a session talking through reconciliation and helping others in this way. And As I think about it today, at the time of our recording, this week has been an example. There was, there was an event in the news that happened at the Academy Awards where— oh yeah, yeah, Will Smith walks up and he slaps Chris Rock for—

yeah.

And in thinking about this conversation today, I was thinking everybody has an opinion on this, you know, one way or another. You know, this person was wrong, he was going to do that. But what caught me, and I haven't heard a lot of people talking about this afterwards, When Smith got up to give his acceptance speech later, after this incident had happened, everybody was uncomfortable. And then at some point he invoked God in the midst of it too, and saying, I'm all about giving love and what that means. And it just hit me in an interesting way. Even those of us who are believers We have moments where we are weak, and these, these things stretch through. And I'm, I'm not really taking a side on anybody. I'm, I'm more interested in the work that you do with— you have two personalities, or maybe even what I saw in that situation was a person probably in some deep pain we're not seeing that is coming out in a very unhealthy way.

Yes.

You know, and then it's in front of the world, and now it makes it even worse.

Yes.

I'm wondering when we look about as believers specifically, and if we made it our goal to rush into peaceful relationships with others, as you write about in your book, with every other believers, how different do you think our culture would look if even just the believers adopted that attitude of looking for peaceful reconciliation of those?

Wow, that would certainly be something. Yeah. Absolutely incredible. I'm mindful of one of the early church leaders, Tertullian, said that the early church had such love amongst themselves that even the pagans says, "See how they love one another." Yeah. That would be what the culture would see. "See how they love one another," which would possibly lead people to say, "What can I do?" to be saved. Christians are in a position that no others are in. Without us, the world won't see, because Christ is in us. He created us for good works. We are his handiwork, created for good works, the, the word of God says. And so if they saw good works in us, if we were authentic about it, and not going along with the culture and judging, but showing love instead, it would change the world.

All right.

Absolutely.

Definitely. We are his handiwork. Or one translation says we are his workmanship created for good works in Christ. Yes, for sure.

Yes. Yes.

That'll preach, as they say. That's good.

That will preach.

That will definitely preach.

And peacemaking is a good work.

And peacemaking is a good work. That is sure. And, you know, we're seeing in the world there's a lot of peace that needs to be made.

For sure. Absolutely.

So, so let's, let's draw it even a little bit closer to home. We've talked about, like I just mentioned, the, the celebrity arena where we're seeing conflict happen.

We know that was painful to watch.

It was painful. Yes. When we're seeing around the world, um, wars that are happening, we're seeing all kinds of, you know, it's, it's on a broad scale, but then it's also down to our very even family relationships. It comes right down to— so it's, it's, it's cosmic almost, this whole battle of, you know, fighting these things in peaceful ways. So I wonder, how do we allow for differences with each other in personalities and with people? What are some good ways that, that we can look to this and stop, I guess, demonizing people who are different from us and start looking for ways that can draw us closer to them because of it?

Yes, I, I think the foundational principle, whether it's a believer or not, is to recognize that the person is made in God's image. That in and of itself makes the person valuable. And one of the things that I mentioned in the book is allow for the differences of others. And that means that you respect the person and respect a differing opinion. Now I'm distinguishing opinion from sin because our opinions are usually based from— on the lenses from which we look. Sometimes personalities even impact what we see. Experiences impact what we see. Upbringing experiences what we may see and how we may, um, perceive various matters. So if we treat the people with respect and dignity, allow for differences— because when we disallow for differences, let's use the one that's real common that's not as controversial as many, let's just use the personality, uh, personalities, uh, that I mentioned. There are some people who are direct. There are some people who are supportive, more inclined toward peacemaking. The DISC personalities, we talk a little bit about that in the, in the book. If you are a bottom line person, you may tend to offend. But if you're S, kind of like a supportive personality, that's different. And so if you don't allow for the differences, you disallow what God naturally created. He wired us differently for a reason. For example, if you're in pain, you would need that S, supportive personality. If you are perhaps Sinned, the critical personality, except you have to give constructive criticism and speak the truth in love, as the Bible says. So the basic principle would be treat them with respect and dignity, and the two greatest commandments cover it all. There's some more, but for the sake of time, I'll just mention the two greatest commandments. I like to say, love God with everything within you, and then love your neighbor as yourself. And if you love, all of this works by love. If we love, it captures it all. So allowing for the differences of others means respecting them, respecting differences that would not be sin. And then, of course, couching it all in love.

And I, I love how you just phrased it there— respect and dignity for other people. Even, even when you're in the midst of a place, it doesn't mean you necessarily have to agree with them.

Absolutely.

But, but there's a difference. And this is so hard in our, in our social media world, especially where you can attack somebody and be almost anonymous about it.

Um, oh yeah.

And it's, it's very difficult. But I think if we were to learn, it's— it almost has to be a new form of spiritual discipline for us to learn not so much to attack the person, but to treat them with respect and dignity. And it's okay to have a disagreement, but to— but where we fumble, I think, and where we stop the conversation is exactly what you're saying here. It makes so much sense, is when we stop treating that other person with respect and with dignity. And it can be so hard sometimes because that other person is not necessarily treating us with respect and dignity. And I think maybe that's where Jesus again is so wise. But I say, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, because these conflicts will not resolve in any other way.

Absolutely.

I, I love the way that you stated that. Thank you so much. Respect and dignity, even with those we disagree with.

Yes, you hit the nail on the head in that comment in reference to respect and dignity. The other thing to remember is respect and love the person and then hate the sin. You can separate those. Love the person, hate the sinful action.

Yeah, and that's— and that again, that's so important that we can distinguish those things, because in fact the sin is the action. The sin is not necessarily the person, you know.

There you go.

Underneath that, underneath that sin is a person who Jesus loves deeply and absolutely and wants to redeem and bring home. And so this is— I'm loving everything you're saying this morning. This is such a powerful—

thank you. So grateful to share.

Well, you know, I wanted to get back to a place you started us from. You started, and I love the beginning of the conversation today, you started right out with the holiness of God being the drivenness for all of this, for who God is. And I wonder if you have any helps for us today on how we can better draw on the Holy Spirit in our lives when we're working through conflicts. But, but I think even beyond that, I don't know that we're always so good in our culture that we listen to everything but the Holy Spirit sometimes, I think. There's something about learning to be still and wait upon the Lord in these moments, and I would just love to hear from you some good ways maybe that you have found along the way to help us draw on the Holy Spirit when we're listening in these— in matters like these, or really in any matter.

I think in the hustle and bustle of the world, our businessness, sometimes we shut out. You've gotta be quiet in order to hear, uh, God. You can't hear in the noise of all the world and all of your, um, business. And so it's important to spend time with God. That's critical. It's important to spend time with God, you've got the Holy Spirit in you. Acts 1:8 says that when the Holy Spirit comes on us, we'll have power to be his witnesses. And so the Holy Spirit is given to each believer at the time of salvation, but we're babes in Christ and we have to grow. That's why it's so important to love and not attack, because you don't know where that person is spiritually, how mature they are. And it's clear that we are supposed to bear the infirmities of the weak, uh, to come alongside, to help, to encourage, to show the way, because we've all fallen, uh, and we sin from time to time. That's why he's given us the provision: if we confess our sins He's faithful and just to forgive us, um, of our sins. And so part of it is about the progressive growth. Uh, the more you, um, learn to lean and depend on the Holy Spirit, the more you will follow. But you can also grieve and quench the Holy Spirit by our bad behavior. So a part of it is spending time with God, listening to the Holy Spirit that's in you. Don't quench it and just continue your spiritual growth process.

Definitely. And you know, as I was listening to you talk about that too and waiting upon the Lord, I grabbed my Bible. I won't find the passage probably right away, but In, in the Gospel of Luke and then into the— into Acts, um, we see that Jesus tells the disciples to wait. And you just mentioned the Holy Spirit being given, and it's interesting to me that here are the disciples who have been journeying with Jesus for, for 3 years, and they're still not quite ready. Um, and he tells them, tells them, go wait in Jerusalem, keep meeting together, keep praying, and wait. And and then I will come, you know, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. And one thing that it keeps emphasizing in Luke and in Acts is the way that the believers kept meeting together, and they just kept meeting together, and they would pray and they would wait and they would spend time together and they shared meals together.

Yeah.

And it was in that that, that the Lord put them in a place where they could receive And then as they received, they were able to give. And I think what I'm hearing from you this morning is really, this is where it all comes from. I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's again, we start with the holiness of God. We avail ourselves to God's holiness and wait upon him. We wait with other believers. We allow ourselves to be worked through. And then it's from there that the Holy Spirit can help us to accomplish these things together, to bring peace and reconciliation.

So yes, absolutely. And piggybacking off of that, uh, we'll get to the point that you're talking about, then we walk in the spirit. And the scripture says if we walk in the spirit, then we won't fulfill the deeds of the flesh. We've got this struggle between, uh, the spirit and the flesh. If we've got the spirit in us, and so we are controlled by the spirit and led by the spirit then we will walk in the way of God and not fulfill those sinful actions.

Yes, and, and I love that too, especially in the Gospel of Luke. We keep seeing Jesus, it says he was led by the Spirit and he went here, he went there, and he went into the temple and he spoke words. And it's, it's wonderful. Even, you know, we, we see that best by example in the scriptures. Um, so this is great. Well, I, I feel like I'm jumping all over the place, but I'm really enjoying the conversation with you this morning.

I'm enjoying your questions. Thank you.

Well, getting back to your book specifically, in our time together here that we have this morning, you write about something called Resolution Land, a place to get to. And I was fascinated by this concept, and I wonder if you could help us this morning understand a little bit from what you're talking about when you talk about living in Resolution Land.

Living in Resolution Land is a mindset. In essence, you've got a made-up mind, you've purposed in your heart, and you're determined to live a peaceful, reconciled life. So it's about pursuing peace, but it starts in the mind, of course, uh, coming from the heart. Um, it's not, um, you can't do it without a heart for it. So living in resolution land is in essence saying living a life of reconciliation. And that would include obviously salvation, reconciled to God, living a peacemaking life for yourself personally, and also helping other people be at peace and helping them resolve their conflicts. In 2 Corinthians 5:17-20, it talks about, um, we have been given, um, ministry of reconciliation. And a lot of people look at that and they think that's preachers and pastors and teachers, etc. That's every believer. We've been given a ministry of reconciliation. It doesn't just mean bringing people to Christ. That's of course important, and primary, but it also means living a reconciled life. You're being at peace with God, peace with others, yourself, and also helping other people resolve their conflicts.

Yeah. You know, I'm listening to you again, and one of my favorite things when I think of conflict resolution, sometimes it seems like there's no way to reconcile. Um, and, and the interesting thing about it, once again, when we turn to Jesus, I think of Jesus in the garden when they come to get him for the crucifixion, and Peter grabs a sword and he cuts off Malchus's ear.

Yes.

And Jesus's wonderful words, put away your sword, you know. And then in one of the gospels, he, he picks the ear up and he heals— or he touches his ear and he heals him. And I've often wondered To us, we would think, well, the damage is done, that ear's gone, it's really bad. And yet Jesus sees it, he says, no, put away the sword.

Absolutely.

Let's heal this, you know. And, uh, and he goes to the cross to heal it, you know. I mean, it's a, it's a powerful thing. And I— and so to bring all this back around to you and your experiences and the work that you do as, as a person of reconciliation, teaching us to be people of reconciliation, How has your own spiritual growth helped you to resolve conflict and to live at peace with others? Because I have a feeling in your own life you've had to deal with a lot of this as well.

Oh, absolutely. We all have. I can remember once saying, it was conflict in my life, I'm like, God, what is all of this? You know I like peace. What's going on? Here. And, you know, it's just a part of the progressive growth. One of the things that conflict teaches you, in essence, everything works together for good. If you never had a conflict, you wouldn't know how to solve a conflict. Not only that, conflict, if we are open to God and willing to grow, Conflict can show us our sin. It can teach us how to interact with others better. It can teach us, give us a better relationship with others. It can help us grow, which is the theme of the book. Yeah, in essence, there's that. Uh, it's a part of our spiritual growth. So yes, uh, we've had, um, I've had conflict and we'll periodically even have it now. But the whole key is how we handle conflict. I can remember, oh, 30, 40 years ago, you know, when I was starting in this peacemaking journey, I had said quite— this goes back to growth— I'd said quite sanctimoniously to one of the associate pastors at the church, "You would think that in the church you wouldn't have conflict." And he immediately corrected me. We have the same conflicts. The issue is we're called to handle them differently from the way the world handles conflict. So I'm so grateful for my growth. And for your listeners, I encourage those who may be in conflict to know that now I'm considered a conflict resolution specialist, but it didn't start here. Yeah, it's a growth process. And so I'm so grateful to God For the growth.

Well, and I tell you, we're grateful for you too and the good work that you're doing. And I want to, in our time that we have left, I want to let everybody know, first of all, I want to remind them of the title of your book, Diversity of a Different Kind, and it's by my guest Aletha Barnett, who has been wonderful today. Thank you for this visit. But I also want to point people to your website and the services that offer, which we're gonna have a link to it in our show notes of our podcast, but it's conciliationsservices.com. And I know that people were going to be interested and want to go to that site to find out more about the work that you do and how they can become people of reconciliation as well. And I also wanted to note, and I'll give you a moment to talk about the site and the work you do there, but I also wanted to make a note to everybody listening, there is also a workbook workbook that goes along with Diversity of a Different Kind that you may find very helpful in your local context, whether it be in your churches or small groups or even with a group of friends when you want to get together and you're trying to study these things. I think Aletha has provided quite a resource for us in that. So in our time left then, Aletha, would you mind just talking to us a bit about Conciliation Services and what people will find when they, when they go to your website and, and the work you do there?

Yes, what they'll find is the services I do, conciliationsservices.com, help people mediate conflicts, conflict resolution training, racial reconciliation, even employment-related disputes. And so it's all there in different, different stages in the the website. It's about— even from the name of the business, Conciliation Services. Yeah, it's training, um, investigations, civil rights investigations, uh, and more. And, um, it's of course from a biblical perspective. All of it is biblical training and mediation.

Very good. Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed our visit today. Thank you so much for taking some time to share about your new book, insights that you have gleaned along the way, and especially taking us back to the holiness of God where all of this stems from. I, I've really appreciated your emphasis on all that throughout our conversation today. Um, well, I say this to my guests every week, and I'm going to say it to you right now. Aletha Barnett, thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week.

Thank you so very much. I greatly appreciate sharing and your inviting me.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.