Reflections: Unity and Ticky-Tacky

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the village
All go to the university,
And they all sit in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers
And business executives,
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

~ Original by Malvina Reynolds. Not sure who did this version, but it’s the one I remember.

Does God value variety?

One of the oddest statements I’ve ever heard by an evolutionist was: “If there was a God, I would imagine that there would be more variety.” I find this to be a pretty odd statement. After all, the one thing that evolution only partially addresses is why there is such variety in nature. After all, it takes thousands, even millions, of years for even one survivable mutation to take hold, right?

I could go on and on about why a lot of what you see really doesn’t fit the survival of the fittest mode. That’s not the main point, but it does point to a wide variety of life, including “unnecessary” differences. Beauty, for example, hardly allows a particular species to survive better.

And then, there is such a variety that some things defy categorization. You ever notice how there’s always an exception to the norm? The duck billed platypus is such a strange creature. Is it a bird with that snout? Is it a mammal because it’s warm blooded? Is it a reptile because it lays eggs? There are other examples, of course, but it’s one of my favorites because it really strains the bounds of classification.

Did you know that even “identical twins” aren’t really identical? Have you considered, then, that even if we became able to clone a human, they would not wind up exactly the same? We are more even than the sum of all of our genes, even on just a physical level.

So, what does it mean to be “one”? God instituted marriage and said a man and a woman would become “one flesh”. Jesus prayed for us to be “one” even as He and the Father are “one”.

Some treat unity like ticky-tacky. Some insist that unity means being exactly the same. I don’t see where the evidence suggests that.