True Identity

In Ephesians 4, we find the charge to live at peace with each other as members of the body of Christ. We see in verse 3 that the apostle Paul desires for God's people to be...
3 endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

That comes with the recognition that:
4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling;
5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
6 one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

Oneness does not mean "sameness:" we are each uniquely created and called by God to love and serve Him and to serve one another.  Oneness doesn't mean we will agree with one another about every single thing.  But, we have to guard against polarization within the body of Christ; the Bible warns against us in Galatians 5: "But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!"  Unity comes as we recognize our identity in Him first and foremost, rather than to stake out positions that supersede our identities as children of God.

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We are given insight in 1st Peter chapter 2 about our individual and collective identity as the people
of God - one body, united in His Spirit. We can read:
9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;
10 who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

I am a Christian.  My identity is in Christ.

I am a Christian, who is also a man.  But, my most important identity is found as a child of God.

I am a Christian who believes God created male and female and that marriage is one man for one woman.  Ultimately, I belong to Him and Christ is my sufficiency.

I am a Christian, whose skin color is white.  My ultimate identity is found not in the color of my skin, but through Christ in me.

A Gospel Herald article quotes Tony Evans:

He said it is technically incorrect for someone to call themself [sic] a "black Christian," or a "white Christian," or a "Hispanic Christian."

"Then you make your color or culture an adjective. It's the job of the adjective to modify the noun. If you put Christianity in the noun position, and your color or culture in the adjective position, you have to keep shaping the noun so it looks like the adjective that describes it. So if your color stays in the adjectival position, you got to keep shaping Christianity to look black or to look white or to look red," he said.

Evans adds: "You must be Christian first. If we could get enough Christians to be Christian before white, Christian before black, Christian before Spanish, it doesn't take 240 years to fix this. It takes about two minutes and 40 seconds..."

We live in an age of identity politics, which separates people into gender, race, and class, and through the insidious structure of intersectionality, actually ranks people based on what perceived oppressed group they belong to.  In other words, a gay, black female is far more significant than a straight white male.  In fact, writing for Sovereign Nations, Thomas Bradstreet quotes from a piece at the Gospel Coalition website by someone named Rebecca McLaughlin.  She says:

Likewise, when it comes to other areas of cultural engagement, we need to let our most credible voices speak. In a world where Christians are seen as homophobic bigots, we need to get behind the biblically faithful, same-sex-attracted Christians God has raised up to speak for and to his church. In a world where Christianity is dismissed as a white man’s religion, we need to get behind biblically faithful men and women of color. And in a world where Christianity is thought to denigrate women, we need to get behind biblically faithful, rhetorically gifted women—particularly on issues like abortion, where being pro-life is often (falsely) equated with being anti-women.

McLaughlin refers to an "A-Team" in the public square; and it seems to be consistent with identity politics.  Bradstreet writes:

Only certain voices are “credible” and can “be heard.” Absent from the A-team in the public square is the straight white man—the identity that represents homophobia, racism, and misogyny. McLaughlin is not seeking to elevate marginalized voices so that all can equally speak truth in Christ to the world. Rather she is calling for a sort of reverse marginalization. McLaughlin’s strategy involves nothing less than the marginalization of the straight white man.

So, your worthiness to speak or to be heard is determined by your skin color or gender?  I thought that we all had specific, God-determined gifts and callings.

But, this Christianized version of identity politics is becoming more and more prevalent.  Bradstreet shared more examples:

Russell Moore, for example, declaring a “white church no more,” cast the “Mayberry of white Christian America” as a place of “murder.” And Tim Keller said that while he sees a role for “ethnic” churches in the future of American Christianity, he sees no role for “purely white” churches. Or, again, a vocal professor at King’s College has claimed that “white evangelicals have never had the gospel.”

But, these divisive mindsets, I believe, are being challenged and exposed.  Recently, there was a conference called the Sparrow Conference held in Dallas.  Some 1,500 people attended, and one of the speakers certainly got out of hand.  Her name is Ekemini Uwan.  A Religion News article stated:

“Because we have to understand something — whiteness is wicked,” Uwan said. “It is wicked. It’s rooted in violence, it’s rooted in theft, it’s rooted in plunder, it’s rooted in power, in privilege.”

She told the audience they should give up whiteness and “recover” the ethnic identities “your ancestors deliberately discarded.” Rather than thinking of themselves as white, they should try to rediscover their immigrant cultural ancestry: “Are you Italian, are you Irish, are you Polish, are you Turkish?”

“Celebrate that,” she said.

Some attendees chose to demonstrate their displeasure with these comments by walking out.  Initially, it appeared that the conference organizers had scrubbed evidence of Uwan's speech, later to apologize for their handling of the overall situation. The story quotes Sarah Humphries:

In a phone interview, Humphries said audience members near her seemed upset by Uwan’s remarks — especially when she said the word “whiteness.”

“I was really surprised at how angry the people in front of me and the people from my left were during Ekemini’s conversation,” Humphries said.

In an essay at The Witness, freelance writer Deedee Roe said that most conference attendees were white and that they were “angry and uncomfortable” during Uwan’s interview. She said that after Uwan told audience members to “divest from whiteness,” people began to leave.

Social media has erupted over the past few days over the incendiary comments, including some African-American commenters.  Samuel Sey, a black author and blogger, tweeted out: "If you respond to anti-Black racism with anti-White racism, it isn’t because you share different skin colours, it’s because you share the same sinful heart." He admitted the tweet was "largely prompted by many racist words against White people I've come across this week, including Ekemini Uwan's words from the Sparrow Conference and her recent tweets." He then, in another tweet, railed against this example of identity politics: "Judging a group of people because of their skin colour as she so unashamedly does is racist and ungodly."

Darrell Harrison with the ministry of Grace to You, who is also an insightful black man, tweeted:

The evangelical social justice movement has reduced the gospel to a message of aesthetics. Words like "melanin" are used more often than "Messiah" and "whiteness" more than "witness." This "gospel" does not foster the kind of unity Christ desires for His people (Jn. 17:21).

The Bible talks about pursuing peace; the Bible is clear in showing us that we are to be one in Christ.  If we are looking at each other through the lens of identity politics, dividing people into oppressors and oppressed, victimizers and victims, we are seemingly looking in the wrong direction.  But, if we're looking to the cross, we can see the love of Christ that unites us and can experience the forgiveness that can flow in order that we may step toward the concept of being part of one body - with one Lord, one faith, one baptism.   Taking potshots at each other behind racial bulwarks does not contribute to a healthy body.

We can also be encouraged to remember where your identity comes from and what identity is most important.  Now, we cannot ignore the history of race relations in our nation - the scourge of slavery negatively impacted our nation for hundreds of years, and only within the last fifty or so have we seen advances in the area of civil rights; we have seen positive change.  But, the Church does not lead the way in seeing greater progress in race relations when we are pointing fingers and talking at each other rather than with each other,

Perhaps God is exposing the wisdom of the world that has infiltrated the Church.  The truth about abortion, the fallacy of identity politics, the LGBT agenda's advance.  Perhaps it's time to say, "enough."  For instance, recently, there has been the exposure of a so-called ministry that caters to the "same-sex attracted" or "gay" Christian, who identifies more with his or her sin than with the Savior who died to bring power to overcome that sin.  We are seeing intense wrestling with racial issues that have apparently been bubbling beneath the surface and are now coming into full view. But, collectively, we have to make sure that we deal with these issues related to identity Biblically. And, individually, we can look at our own hearts and allow the Holy Spirit to expose areas where we have missed the mark, repent, and depend on the Spirit to get things right.