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Who Are You?

      Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation. (Galatians 6:15)

 

Who are you? What are you? There are so many words that seek to pin this down. Are you female, male, or some term that 90% of the population won’t understand but it makes you feel special to claim it? Are you black/a POC/African American, or white/European American, or something else? Are you a Democrat or a Liberal or a Leftist, or a Republican or a Conservative, or a Libertarian? Are you a parent, a child, a sibling, a cousin, or another relative? Are you a Karen, or are you identified by any other name? Because, of course, if you have any other name, you’re OK, but if you’re a Karen, you’re a monster even if you’ve never done anything monstrous. Or, maybe it’s that because you’re a Karen, anything you do is monstrous even if someone else doing it would be fine. Are you a high school dropout, a high school graduate? A college graduate? A master? A Ph.D.?  Are you an Aries? An ESTJ? The list by which we can identify ourselves is endless.

The identity game reminds me of juggling. The person who can keep the most identities in the air for the longest wins. Or maybe it’s closer to plate spinning. The person who can keep the most plates spinning on dowel rods for the longest wins. The contestants scurry up and down the line, repositioning and re-spinning plate after plate. And they pray that only one plate will need to be re-spun at any given moment because if they’re required to re-spin more than one at a time, plates are likely to shatter. One cannot truly be two or more different people at a time without damage to one or more. be both this and that at the same time, both are likely to crash to the ground and shatter. If that happens, others may follow and the spinner will be seen as a failure.

This is difficult. Identity tends to equal value. Whatever the currently declared winning identity, if you’re not that, there’s part of a larger identity that deserves special treatment: a victim.

Scripture doesn’t use the term identity, but God made it clear through Moses that the Jews were not to identify with the people who lived in the land before them. And He makes it clear through Paul that Christians are not to identify with the world. The question is not what color your skin is, or what color your politics are, or what excites your lusts. The primary and central question of identity is Christian or not Christian. Everything you add just muddies the waters.    

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