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.
Comments
Post a Comment