How Boring Would It Be...?

A couple of months back, my church invited a Senior Pastor from another State in the country to come minister to us. As we would be responsible for his hospitality (hotel & feeding), I was selected as the chosen one (**wink wink**) to handle that. OK, fine!… it was two of us. Well, on the first day, we served him chicken with sides of rice and plantain (general food). But on the second day, we decided to serve him one of his cultural foods. As I am from the same region as he is (South West- Yoruba), I was indisputably the right person to do that cooking. I decided to make him amala (made with plantain flour) and vegetable soup (Nigerians know what I’m talking about). Amala is native to the Yorubas (at least, some part), but vegetable soup is general to all Nigerians. What I didn’t know however, was that we (the Yorubas) prepared ours a bit differently from others. As I got set to cook the soup, my partner and her sister (who are not Yorubas) said they would like to watch how I cooked mine. As I cooked, I explained what I was doing, as a chef-in-the-making would (wink wink). I hadn’t gone past my second step when my partner’s sister got “disgusted” with how we cooked our soup, and she said, “Oh please, please, is this how you people cook your vegetable soup? It does not make sense. I don’t even want to know how you do it anymore. Oh oh, this is sth sth (can’t remember the words she used exactly).” 
At first, I was surprised she thought it was not good, or that it didn’t make sense. Seconds following my surprise, when she wouldn’t stop, I was disgusted by her disgust. One funny thing is she’s the only one who I know dislikes the way we cook that soup. She didn’t even care to taste it. John C. Maxwell in his book, Winning With People, said, “If Bob has a problem with everybody; Bob is usually the problem.” I guess my partner’s sister was the problem here. Second funny thing is that I have eaten the food she and her sister offered me several times, not because I thought it was delicious, but because they said it was their cultural food, and they were always very happy offering it to me. It didn’t matter to me that my taste buds noticed the unfamiliar taste and didn’t welcome it much, or that my eyes didn’t find the foods particularly appealing. I ate with the love of Christ. And lastly, the way they described how they cooked their own vegetable soup seemed weird to me too, but I never considered it worse than my people’s method. The thought didn’t even cross my mind.

You see, we live in a world where people think you’re “abnormal”, “weird”, “not-fitting-in”, “second-class citizens” if you are not like them? If we’re honest with ourselves and take a moment to consider it, we’ll come to realize that variety [differences] is what makes our world really beautiful. The Bible says that God made ALL THINGS beautiful in His time (Ecclesiastes 3:11); and that He made ALL these things for His own pleasure (Revelation 4:11). We act sometimes like God was clueless when He put variety in the world. 

Imagine how boring it would be if all the waters in the world were rivers – just rivers. That is, no seas or oceans, no fountains or waterfalls, no aquifers, no springs, no the-Grand-Canyon (gasp!) – Nothing more, just rivers.

Imagine how boring it would be if all the cars in the world were Mercedes; and that everyone was an Automobile Engineer by profession.

What fun is it if everyone spoke only English? No Mandarin, no Hindi, no Yoruba or Hausa or Igbo. French doesn’t exist, neither does Latin or Spanish or Afrikaans; the Kenyans don’t speak Swahili, and native speakers don’t speak Creole. Imagine if everyone spoke with a British accent. What fun would it be?

I weigh 72kg (most times), wear American Size 12, and I don’t think my weight is a problem at all; but there are a lot of people who think I should feel awful for seeing nothing wrong with my weight. So, what if I weighed 100kg and wore 22W or if I weighed 50kg and wore Size 2 or 4? Who determines the right weight - the weight that makes you a human being or less of a human being? Or who says the beautiful person is the skinny one and the fat person is just “OK” or not even good enough? 

Am I speaking out of place? I don’t think so. People fear to point it out, but we all know that in Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood, and all-other-woods the skinny actor/actress gets the good roles, while the overweight one gets mostly the crappy roles. 

I had a conversation with my friend few weeks ago, and he was telling me about a girl who wasn’t pretty before, but now he thinks she looks good. My reaction: Say what? She was ugly before and got pretty overnight? If you asked me, I’ll say something was wrong with his eyes when he looked at her the first time. By the way, who decides who’s pretty and who’s not? Who created the pretti-o-meter of the world? How do people determine the prettier one from the less pretty one? The Bible says God made ALL THINGS beautiful in His time (Ecclesiastes 3:11). If you’d ask our Manufacturer, I know He’ll say we are all good and beautiful, created in His image and likeness, just the way He planned it (Genesis 1:26-28, 31). 

A little over a month ago, I taught a lesson in my church on Forbearance (Colossians 3:9-17; Ephesians 4:1-3). I focused on the “tolerance” meaning of forbearance. People don’t have to be like us. The mistakes people make, the imperfection, incompleteness, and all the not-like-us things that we see in others are what spice up the world and make it beautiful, giving pleasure to our Creator. 

If everyone was like you – looked like you, talked like you, thought like you, ate the foods you ate, etc like you, I bet you wouldn’t want to stay in this world past your tenth birthday; because boring can be unbearable. I read in my devotional one morning that the only person who has the right to be proud and to think of himself better than others is a person who is entirely self-sufficient; and we all know there’s no such human alive on the earth. For starters, everyone breathes God’s air, so I need not explain to you how highly dependable-on-God we are as humans. Only God has the right to be proud, and even He isn’t (Psalm 8:4-5). He comes down to our lowly state and sees us as His friend, regardless of color, size, age, looks, our imperfection, etc. We, as God-carriers, should do same for others.