Skip to main content

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.    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more