Walking away from an event with my Law Christian Fellowship group at the University of Virginia the other night, a t-shirt caught my eye.  At UVa it's common to wear a t-shirt with a big, orange V on the back and have your school or discipline written accross the V.  "Engineering."  "Law." "Medicine."  But this one had the word:  Diversity.

Diversity is good.  But it gave me pause to see it declared so singularly--as an absolute value.  As if to say, the one thing I want to declare is that I go to UVa and...DIVERSITY!  

I've been doing a lot of reading of Augustine for work this semester.  One of the things that Augustine is big on is the human tendency to settle on a lesser good.  The little goods in this world were provided by God to make us think of even greater goods, and ultimately to help lead us, drawn by the power of our love, to that Final Good--"that for the sake of which other things are to be desired, while it is itself to be desired for its own sake."  (City of God, 19.1). 

Is Diversity a final end, or just a stop along the way to something richer, fuller, more satisfying, more real?  Having achieved Diversity, would all thirst cease?  Would we then be satisfied?  I don't think so.

And then I thought, how do we, as Christians, participate in and even encourage the thirst for lesser goods in a way that opens up the possibility of greater goods, and finally the Greatest Good?

Augustine paints a picture of Adam and Eve in the gardens of Paradise prior to the original sin.  He writes, "The love of the pair for God and for one another was undistubed, and they lived in faithful and sincere fellowship which brought great gladness to them, for what they loved was always at hand for their enjoyment."  (City of God, 14.10).  What a picture of happiness!  That's what the Diversity t-shirt thirsts after.  Faithful and sincere society living in undistubed love.

But maybe there's a higher good even than that:
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many...If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
(1 Cor 12:13-14, 26-27)

Why settle for less?  Keep going.  Keep thirsting.  Keep longing.  The City of God is out there, and it is coming!