Identity, Spirit, and the Thing Beneath It All

We’re living in a time when every word feels weaponized.
It seems like everywhere you look it’s this team vs. that team.
Every disagreement is more than a disagreement, it’s a full on betrayal.
Every attempt at nuance sounds more like treason and should be opposed.

We have all been handed war paint and told:
“Pick a side. Or else.”

And if you dare to say,
“I think there’s some truth here… but some truth is over there, too…”
someone’s ready to burn you at the digital stake.

It feels lately like the sickness is taking sides and digging heels in.
But the cure isn’t more lines in the sand, it’s seeing beyond them.

It’s time we remember something truer than every label we’ve been told to wear.
Something deeper.
Something ancient.

We’ve mistaken our identity with allegiance.
We’ve made these labels and communities into armor.

Conservative. Progressive.
Right. Left.
Christian. Atheist.
Red hat. Blue flag.
Pronouns in bio. Flag in yard.

We wrap ourselves in these identity markers like chainmail, thinking they keep us safe.
But armor doesn’t just protect you, it also restricts.

What once gave us definition, now gives us division. What once gave us belonging and community, now gives us separation and an enemy.

We no longer wear the armor of identity.
The armor now wears us.

So now, when someone brushes up against it with a challenge, a question, or even a loving critique, we react like they’ve attacked us.
Because somewhere in our internal wiring, we’ve fused “what I am” with “who I am.”
And that fusion is slowly suffocating us.

This is why Paul’s words to the Early Christian communities in Galatia about 1,975 years ago still cuts like a blade today:

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Galatians 3:28

Notice what he’s not doing.
He’s not erasing culture or identity.
He’s not erasing difference.
He’s not saying, “Stop being Jewish.”
He’s not saying, “Stop being male or female.”
He’s not asking anyone to forget their skin, their story, their sacred traditions.

Even if you’ve got no interest in Paul or Christianity, hear this as a radical human claim: your true self is so much more than any label a society can stick on you.

He’s saying:
That’s never been the deepest part of you.

Your Jewishness? Real.
Your maleness or femaleness? Real.
Your position in society? Real.

But it’s not ultimate.

Because your true name…
the one that came before the world tried to name you….
is Beloved.
And your family name? Human. Earthling. אדם.

Everything else is just middle names.
Some beautiful, some painful
But none of them are the ground floor of who we are.

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The Courage to Hold Identity Lightly

Imagine living from that perspective.
Imagine holding your identity with open hands instead of clenched fists.

You’d still be exactly who you are.
Still straight. Still gay. Still trans.
Still Black, white, conservative, liberal.
Still Christian, Atheist, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Agnostic.

But you’d stop treating those labels like prison walls.
No longer trapped in the fear that to be wrong is to be rejected.
No longer scared that critiquing your “side” makes you a traitor.
No longer needing someone else to lose for you to belong or be safe.

Because your belonging wouldn’t come from being “right” or winning the culture war any longer.
It would come from being rooted in human-ness.

Rooted in an identity deeper than ideology, older than theology, truer than tribalism and the distinctions we use to separate ourselves.

How do we heal polarization?
How do we repair what’s been torn?

Not by pretending we’re all the same.
Not by erasing difference.
And not by building bigger echo chambers.

We heal when we remember that beneath every outward identity marker, every label, every allegiance, every algorithm-driven division…
there is a core that cannot be erased or bought or sold.

We heal when we trust that:

• Critique is not betrayal.
• Difference is not threat.
• Belonging doesn’t mean conformity.
• Our “opponent” is not our enemy.

Our generation’s task isn’t to build stronger walls around our identities and labels. Instead, we should let the Spirit whisper to our souls what Paul was trying to tell us all along:

Whatever you think you are, it’s not the truest thing about you.

The truest thing is:

You are Beloved.
You are Human.
You are One with the Source of life.

So act like it.
Live like it.
Let the armor fall.