*Nationality
*Ethnicity
*Identity
Once again, foundational issues both in world events and Australian politics in the lead-up to the federal election, seem to be intersecting with so much of what Africa has taught us about honour and shame….and as Christians, how we desperately need to develop a strong biblical theology of honour and shame. Without it, we not only fail to understand our world, but can then also fail to bring clear, appropriate solutions to our world.
Something which has emerged as a common thread in all the above settings is the issue of national or ethnic identity. We might call it national pride, or tribal identity, or tribal totem, or nationalism, or patriotism. Call it what we may, in essence it is all the same thing.
However, while glorying in, or having pride in, or fighting for, our national identity or ethnicity is often held up as noble and right….
…. it can become a problem when it is supreme and not held carefully and submissively under our identity in God our Father and Creator, and in Christ our Redeemer and Saviour.
When earthly identity or identities direct and determine our goals and choices or what we live for and uphold at any cost….we enter the zone of disappointment, of disillusionment, and ultimately of destruction. We lose perspective, and the very thing we aim to preserve - our personhood - (who we are), is what we will ultimately lose. Who we were created to be will be subsumed in cultural constraints, and we will succeed only in fulfilling 'less' of the humanity God intended for us, not more.
First We See This in Our Current World Events…..
What is it that drives a fight in which both sides believe they are fighting for nationalistic pride and identity, and which each side believes is at risk of being lost?….identity honour!
Russia (under its leader) is fighting for its 'glory'!
Ukrainians (under their leader) are seen shouting and affirming 'glory to Ukraine'!
While that current battle is seen on our screens night after night, it can seem a problem 'over there' , for 'those people'. But what about us?
But...This is not a 'their problem', but an 'our problem', and more than we might first realise.
It might not turn up in our lives in quite the same way, but it is lurking there none-the-less for every person on the planet. And sadly it makes us very vulnerable to Satan's schemes of 'attractive' ways to enhance, promote or protect our desire for identity and to seek it in earthly identity forms.
Also in the African Context
….time and again tribal identity issues are raised. Africans will often not even first identify by their country, but rather by their tribe. It is such fighting for tribal identity superiority that fuelled the Rwandan genocide and was said to be the cause of political issues in Kenya. It's what fuels arguments about national budget allocations and presidential candidates.
What About the Australian Context?
Here is another example of the same problem of finding our identity-honour in the form of our earthly cultural identity.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (an indigenous Australian who is a Senate candidate for the Northern Territory) explained in a recent interview with ACL, that while there is a desire by some Australians to see Aboriginals hang onto all traditional culture and keep their full Indigenous identity, it's not that simple….. She explained the clash between customary law (traditional culture) and Australian law, and was asked, in considering that clash, can the two systems work in one place?
Her short answer was no it can't!
While she considers herself a 'traditionalist' in some regards, she says she has seen how traditions also encourage some of the violence in the indigenous communities….she also talked about how she believes the Aboriginal culture has not had their 'enlightenment' like the West had.** She also sees that customary law flies in the face of Australian laws which desire to protect the rights of women and children.
She talked about neglect and abuse of children in traditional settings and gave examples, but how that sadly some in the cities try to say that instead of indigenous children being given opportunities in abuse-free settings that require them being out of their cultural settings, they should be kept in their cultural settings. But as Jacinta pointed out, it is these cultural settings that provide cultural 'permission' for the abuse of those children.
(she gave an example of a child who was literally wandering the streets, was mute, was discovered he had been sexually abused, and because his mother and father had got together outside the normal permitted 'kinship' bounds, he was considered cultural 'rubbish' and was thus abused and neglected. So the best thing for the boy, and the only option if he was going to grow and flourish was to be taken care of in a family totally outside the cultural context where instead of being treated as rubbish, he would be loved and cherished.)
She believes it's not about upholding culture but about upholding human rights, and that right now indigenous children are being failed because of a warped ideology. She believes Australia should be consistent across the country when it concerns the lives of Australian citizens. There shouldn't be unequal standards of care for one set of Australian citizens and another for other citizens. She believes there should be one law for all Australians because indigenous Australians are Australians and non-indigenous Australians are also Australians. She wants to fight for that from a parliamentary position.
I certainly stand with her in wanting more appropriate care for Australian indigenous people especially children.
But, it is interesting that the foundation from which she is fighting this, is the desire that above whether a person is white or black, indigenous or not, above all they are Australians. She is essentially fighting for dignity based on an identity 'above' indigenous.
However, while her cause is noble, I believe it's going to take more than that to enable a change at indigenous community level to let go of traditional culture. Not because of issues of how it affects children, but because any effect on children is culturally secondary to that of the cultural imperatives that require a preserving of culture in order to maintain cultural identity. There is no category on an earthly level to enable a person to be able to let go of culture, yet still have an identity.
To say one should let go of indigenous culture in order to be 'an Australian', might sound and feel a 'higher' identity for Jacinta and be a terrific goal to aim for, but it will most likely feel to her people like she is asking them to forsake their own culture for just another alternative earthly culture on the same 'level'.
In fact it may not even be seen as on the 'same level'….because the indigenous Australian believes they have an ancestral connection to the land and the need to maintain honour of those ancestors is paramount - no amount of earthly reasoning will make it seem worthwhile to give that up in order to supposedly be fully and 'equally' 'Australian'. I think she is missing how spiritually deep-rooted the cultural beliefs are held and thus determine identity.
The belief isn't just about logical treatment of children. The belief is about ancestral honour. It's a spiritual belief. Jacinta believes that traditional beliefs can still be upheld at one level while trying to achieve letting go of traditional beliefs (like forced marriage, beating of wives, or kinship honour that results in neglect of children etc) at another level.
Some would say she feels justified to pick and choose which traditions go and which stay….based on how she sees Western culture of the recent past. But that Western culture came about through its own changes brought about by Judeo-Christian ethics in Biblical Christian revival. But those changes didn't occur as simple cultural evolution which she seems to assume, but because of Christ's transformation in hearts which we were privileged to live in the light of, for several following generations in the West.
The Only True Solution
Yes, whatever can be done to help care for the helpless and vulnerable indigenous children is to be applauded and hopefully Jacinta can have great impact if she is elected.
But….
The only 'cultural identity' sufficiently above both European and Indigenous
so as to enable cultural change,
is not simply 'Australian', but 'Christ-ian'.
Once we are in Christ where there is no Jew or Greek (Gal 3:28), ironically we are then free to be either Jew or Greek or both (like Paul becoming all things to all men - 1 Cor 9:19-20) without fearing cultural identity loss, to the degree that our cultural ways don't usurp our new identity in Christ. While there is no 'Jew' or 'Greek' nationality, Christ's body still will include people that can be identified as coming from every nation/ethnicity. We don't lose our earthly categories alltogether, but they cease to be our primary identity source and authority. As Christians, only then can we let go of being English, or African or German or Japanese or Indigenous (of whichever tribe), and just all be Australian….because then we don't have to have a foot in two cultures, or hang onto our earthly culture in order to have identity, so we are free to take up whichever 'lesser' identity is needed on an earthly level as we submit it all to our greater 'Christ-ian' identity.
Alister, the co-host of the ACL interview with Jacinta, rightly explained that every culture on this earth has sin issues, and problems lurking within them, and they all have aspects that need godly correction. That is so true…because without that acknowledgement, and thus a willingness to let go of those things and submit to whatever God defines as our ultimate identity and honour, we will fight to keep hanging onto the threads of what we believe holds together who we 'are'.
Otherwise, to loosen or lose those threads means losing identity, which means losing 'human-ness', which means losing one's foundation and reason for living….and no-one willingly does that unless they take on what they believe to be a 'greater' or 'higher' or 'more honourable' supreme identity both now and in the future.
We can easily ridicule the 'woke' world for fighting about identity politics all the time, but its not a meaningless fight for those in it…and they are fighting for it because they have 'banked' all their identity in it, in their efforts to find who they are apart from God their Creator or any religious view of God or a 'god' at all.
It's only in Christ that we become willing to 'give up' who we think we 'are', to discover in Him who we really are meant 'to be'. It's only in Christ that we don't have to feel we must fight to the bitter end for our earthly identities and try to eliminate others who oppose us.
Let us be examples of what it means to live with our identity rooted in Christ above any earthly culture or tradition or law.
And let us strive to more clearly understand and share how the gospel brings a new identity, which both keeps our earthly identities to some degree, but also at the same time frees us from them, ...and enables us to love one another honouring the dignity of other human beings, and most of all to honour God through our identity in Christ.
**the enlightenment that Jacinta refers to and influenced the West to change and move forward to greater respect for human dignity etc, was spawned not just by some abstract movement but was preceded by Luther and the Protestant Reformation. It was a returning to God and his Word and seeking to live according to His Will for human beings above all (even above church politics and systems), that provided the freedom for people to live as God created them to live with their first and highest identity in Christ not belonging to or 'in' anything else this earth offers.
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