When the Church finds herself in deepest need, it is not “identity politics” movements that will save her, it’s an identity with a political ruler that will. Only a Tribe that encompasses all earthly tribes can take needy people and supply her needs, whether emotional or financial. Only the Church with joint arms with her Ruler, Jesus, can find any hope.
If we tribalize our wants and believe that only our particular identities can provide refuge from our deepest longings, we will be left prodigal. We will quickly realize that our trust in groups and movements of ideas are only loyal insofar as we abide by their strict regulations. Identity politics is not an invitation to the weary and heavy laden, it’s an invitation for more weariness and heaviness. If our identities are not in Messiah Jesus, we are left with a twisted understanding of humanity.
The logic of identity politics is that your beliefs cannot be invalidated because your identity cannot be invalidated. The rhetoric goes that whatever I have to say you must listen to because of who I am and the color of my skin, and therefore no one should dare oppose my ideology. This form of tyranny built vicious movements throughout history that ended up oppressing others.
No one’s identity should go unchallenged; no one’s rationales should go unchallenged whether you grew up in the fenced-in suburb community, or ghetto or the slums of Guatemala, or Vietnamese villages. Our identities or experiences do not form the last word; they are one word in the conversation, but they do not exhaust the normativity of human experience.
Only Jesus has the last word! Only our identities wrapped up in Him give us any authority to speak into someone’s life and the closer we are to Him the more we will find relief from our own tribal identities and the more will we find rest in Him.
