Imagine an alien invasion. I mean the kind with green skin and arriving in spaceships. I would expect earthlings to unite on the basis of our sameness and resist them just like in the movies. Even if the aliens say, “We come in peace,” I think we would be suspicious of them because it would be obvious that they are not like us.

Perceptions of differentness are relative and evolve in our consciousness. I was attracted to my wife because of her appealing differentness from me. But now we have so much in common. Our neighbors are different from us until there’s a referendum we agree on. Then they’re just like us. Less than two centuries ago, black people were auctioned off like livestock because some white people focused on their different skin color and dehumanized them. A couple of centuries ago, Native Americans were treated like other wild things settlers had a right to remove from the landscape. You would think our history would cause us to be more enlightened in our views of each other. But too many earthlings still want to emphasize the differences among people for their own advantage.

What if we celebrate our sameness first and go from there? God said, “I made the earth and created humans on it” (Isaiah 45:12 GW). There’s only one origin of all species—God. There’s no natural selection that makes some humans more valuable to him than others.