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Children of God


Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (John 1:12-13)

          Identity politics is all the rage right now. Our experience as a human being doesn’t matter. What matters is our experience as a Black, a White, a Latin, an Asian, a Native American, a Neuro-normal, a Neuro-Diverse, a Cis-gender, a Heterosexual, a member of the LGBTQI spectrum.[1] I’m listening to White Fragility, and it’s a little more interesting than I thought it would be, but it ultimately follows a slight variation on the path made popular by Marx. Instead of the poor, oppressed whatever (who are identified by the fact that they don’t feel like they’re in charge) rising up to dominate, the nasty Bourgeoisie are being called to grovel in the dirt and cede the power in question.
          What the author seems to be discussing is worldviews. Every person in the world has a view of reality based on their education and experience. Even if you and I think alike about 99% of things, there’s always that 1% bit of difference. But where I think this author goes wrong is in her solution – which is to forsake objectivity and individualism, and seek to understand ourselves even more as the “us” or the “them” that can never understand or fully accept the other.
          From her perspective, I’m sure it all makes perfect sense. She sounds good talking about it. Her book is wildly popular among some and hated by others. But as I listen, I find myself facing Scripture and myself and the answer I get is not what the author or public media are telling me.
The first answer is Scripture is that I am to love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength and that I am to love my neighbor as myself. That means that what God tells me to believe – what Scripture teaches – trumps all else. The answer in Scripture is very simple. Those who are in Christ as not Black, White, Asian, Latin, LGBTQI, Neuro-normal, Neuro-diverse, Cis-gender, Heterosexual, Native American or any of the other identity groups we are told to accommodate. Paraphrasing Priscilla Shirer, I am a Christian who happens to be a White and a Woman. I may be wrong, but I submit that the following might be a better breakdown than current identity politics maintain: Christian, Human, perspectives/philosophies/personality factors (such things as introversion/extroversion, conservative/liberal, culture, etc.),  genetic sex, and only after all of those, race, gender and all the other stuff if it has to be included at all. Some would say that I am denying those identity groups their dignity or dehumanizing them, but I am only doing so (if I am) to the extent that they place their identity in those factors but if you and I have both become children of God, then our treatment of one another is based on that status, not the color of your skin or what cultural background you grew up in.

[1] I apologize if I’ve gotten any of the labels wrong. They change so often that I can’t keep up. Terms I mean as neutral and believe acceptable have probably been deemed pejorative in the last thirty seconds, as, indeed, every term ever spoken by a person outside the identity group must the moment the person outside of the identity group uses it.

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