“If the whole body were an eye where would the sense of hearing be?” (1Corinthians 12:17)
The story is told of a doctor who came out of the delivery room and told an expectant father, “I have some grave news for you my son. Your wife has given birth to a 7-pound eyeball. And that’s not all. It’s blind!” If you came home one night in the dark and found a 185 pound eyeball in the corner of your front porch, would that give you a rush of anxiety?
In this verse from the writings of the Apostle Paul he is using an illustration as grotesque as the illustrations I have just used. He does this in his inspired letter to the Corinthians because he wants to make a point: his point is the beauty of diversity.
One of the fingerprints of the Church of Jesus Christ is that in the Church we celebrate diversity. Diversity in the body of Christ is to be celebrated rather than resolved. If two of us are exactly alike one of us is unnecessary. Some of the members of the First Church of Corinth were telling others they were not authentically spiritual unless they had the same spiritual gifts that they had.
The remedy of Paul for that kind of thinking was the hideous metaphor of a body being just one member and not a body with the beauty of many diverse parts. Other members of the body of Christ have what you do not have and you have what they do not have. That means you need them and they need you.
The body of Christ is a team sport. Are you willing to be a team player?
Step up and play your part.
I think this can also be applied to church and para church ministry organizations, etc…I don’t think it is a matter of “no one else does what we do”…so much as “no one else does what we do, but we don’t do what they do either”. I recall a well known and beloved evangelistic outreach leader saying about the need for cooperation and unity among outreach team members who came from some different sub cultures or theological persuasions that “God is doing different things through different groups of people”. I have to be reminded of that from time to time when it comes to making comparisons or being critical. I think there is some Scripture that might speak to this but I don’t have it at hand. I am not talking about serious doctrinal matters but rather about preferences. I think.