You’ll have to take my word for this. There was a time not long ago when one’s cultural identity was hardly worth remarking on. Nobody was much impressed to know that you were part of a social group whose members had once done something important. It was fine to admire those ancestors who had actually accomplished it, but their glory didn’t reflect on you. Similarly, if the lot of your ancestors was a hard one, it was fine to feel sorry for them, but their sufferings didn’t have much to do with you in the here and now. If your forefathers had managed to pass on their admirable qualities or traditions as an inheritance to you, you would be envied—but for your admirable qualities or traditions, not for your ancestors.
Times are different now, of course. Now your cultural identity is a valuable asset, always an opportunity for self-obsession, often a source of self-esteem, occasionally a route to material benefits. No matter if you are a poor schlub who has never worked to accomplish anything; if you are connected by ancestry or social group to someone somewhere who did, then you are encouraged to share in his pride.
And there’s no need to stop with your self-esteem. If someone in your background was oppressed, then don’t hesitate to start talking reparations with the descendants of the oppressors. And if someone in your social group once engaged some other group in a blood feud, then feel free to seek out the descendants of those villains and get it on.
My own lineage provides rich territory for this kind of exploration. My dad’s family is best described as Mexican; although they have lived on the American side of the border since there was a border, his home town isn’t much different from towns on the other side. His dad was of Spanish ancestry, while his mom was Indian. He married a Canadian girl, whose father came over from Scotland and whose mother grew up in England .
None of this interested me—or anyone else—in the slightest when I was growing up. True, I loved that my dad’s dad was a farmer and a machinist, and I treasured the summers I spent roaming the dusty streets of that tiny New Mexico town, in large part because life there was so different than my everyday life. The difference, of course, was that for three months a year I was surrounded by Mexicans, but that’s not how I thought of it; to me they were family, people who loved me enough to help train me up properly.
Visits to my mom’s folks on the Canadian prairie were less frequent but just as special, and there was a flavor to them that I would probably now call British. But back then I wasn’t thinking in nationalistic or racial terms; these folks were family as well. They had worked to refine the good traditions while discarding the bad, they had diligently passed them on to my mother, and I was grateful for all the good things I had inherited from them through her.
I was oblivious to my cultural identity because, in that time and place, everyone was. My dad was an Army sergeant, and during the Fifties and Sixties the highest good was to fit in. Which we did; he lost most of his accent, he never spoke Spanish to us, and we learned to mispronounce our last name just like the Anglos did. I doubt that one person in ten thought of my dad as a Mexican, because an Army base is populated by folks of every possible ancestry; many of those men saw military life as a path out of an ethnic ghetto, while others would meet and marry women from very different backgrounds while stationed overseas. Advocates of racial separatism would have said that disaster was unavoidable in such circumstances. But it worked just fine, because everyone checked their ethnicity at the door, picking up a new set of values on the way in. Everyone fit in, because they wanted to fit in—it was what they had come for.
We citizens of the kingdom of heaven are guests at the wedding feast of the Lamb. (Matt. 22:1-14. It does not matter on which particular highway or byway the King’s servant found us, what matters is that we heeded His call—that among those who were called, we were the ones chosen. And as we present our invitation at the door, we are commanded to set aside our own filthy rags and to don the wedding garment that our King has provided for us. There is nothing we could have brought to the party aside from our presence, we’re all dressed alike now, and so there is precious little left to distinguish us from the other guests.
Except for that one fellow who had what he thought was a better idea:
But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, "Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, "Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matt. 22:11-13)
Take heed, those of you who are lingering in the foyer, dismayed by the prospect of casting off that cultural identity you have treasured and cultivated over the years, worried about how you will stand out in the crowd without it, baffled that your less worthy companions are being issued a garment that is just as nice as the one being offered to you. Recognize that your identity is no longer to be found in your tongue, tribe, people, or nation; you have been redeemed to God by His blood out of such (Rev. 5:9). Your identity is now in Christ, and you can now rejoice that when God looks at you, He sees neither a Jew nor a Greek; He sees His Son, and He loves you as He loves His Son.