We all share a common lineage. Our first earthly father, Adam, thought too highly of his status and overlooked his neighbor, Eve. He neglected the one he was called to love when he failed to protect her. Adam chose selfish ambition over his beloved, and biblical history followed that trajectory closely.
After Babel, God scattered the peoples and gave us tribes and tongues with its cultural norms and values. But this scattered humanity, composed of various expressions, did not have intrinsic goodness in them; therefore, they were not entitled to receive special blessings because they are distinct or superior or unique in any way. Every tribe and tongue must submit to the One who speaks a thousand tongues and for whom the nations sing with a thousand tongues.
A Tale of Two Israels
In the end, the descendants of such cultural milieu must ultimately come under the covenant with Old Israel or the New Israel. Old Israel is filled with ethnic superiority by priding themselves in their lineage as Adam prided himself in his status. They cherished their special relationship with Abraham, and the history of such hubris is the perpetuation of a continual wall of hostility. The religious leaders of the first century chose to be with old Israel because old Israel offered security and heritage and glory. It was familiar and common. But we, like the first-century Jews, can also be comfortable with our familiarity and our ways that we end up despising our brother or sister for whom Christ died who may be from another tribe or tongue.
We can be grateful for where we came from, but once pride becomes the central motif of our heritage, we are no better than the Pharisees. We will tend to belittle or bemoan other tribes and tongues. When we make our central identity our skin color, we fall into the adamic pride which bears no godly fruit. It will cause us to end up looking upon our brother like Cain viewed Abel, angrily and greedily.
It is essential that we then acknowledge that we are part of a new Israel, not the old one with its titles and prizes for the best teacher and most outstanding representative of the Abrahamic religion. In the New Israel, we are all formed into one people, and every tribe and tongue enter into the one narrow gate that leads to Father Abraham and the One to whom Abraham sought, Jesus Christ (Jn. 8). He is the mediator of the New Covenant, and highly exalted as the Alpha and Omega of our faith. Every time we look down on another tribe or tongue, we are behaving as citizens of the Old Creation.
In our day, some parade their heritage—on all sides of the debate, by the way– by lording over others, committing violence upon others, and mistreating others with their speech. The solution to this prideful way of life, which mimics the ethics of the Old Creation, is not to borrow the logic of pagans who offer us diversity classes in gender studies. Diversity, according to unbelieving thought, means we forget all our religious commitment and sing kumbaya to whatever tune those in power demand of us. But the New Creation does not function like that. Diversity for the Christian is not open-handedly accepting every cultural nuance and norm but challenging every philosophy that dare disobey the authority of King Jesus.
The Way Forward
We do not make our communities a better place by accepting the demands of Hollywood Instagram stars; we make our communities a better place when we seek the peace of the city, correcting someone who speaks poorly of another, and not tolerating anger towards another tribe to prevail.
Let’s be honest: we all fail at some time in this respect. We all view ourselves much too highly like the Pharisees of old. We are in an identity crisis in this country because we treasure too much tribal identities and put too little interest in our New Covenant identity. If the Spirit abides with New Covenant believers, then any form of ethnic pride needs to die because in the New Covenant every knee shall bow and every tongue must confess that He is Lord to the glory of the Father, and we can be certain that earthly strategies to reconcile humanity will all fail unless they look first to the second Adam, the new and righteous human who broke down the walls of partition and grafted us into a new creation.
