I can choose to describe myself as a Christian, Anglican, liberal evangelical, socialist, heterosexual privileged Anglo-Saxon male Australian New Zealander with hazel eyes and a proclivity for Land Rovers and Dungeons and Dragons. There is truth in all of this, and many people may take me to task for some of my political or theological thinking because it is different from their own…and that is ok.
I do not, however, find my identity in these terms. These things describe what I believe, how I worship, my political leanings, my sexual-orientation, my heritage and my hopeless hobbies, but they will never be my identity.
I am who I am.
I am a child of God who is loved without limit by a God who takes delight in the diversity of creation.
I am who I am.
I am a member of the Christ mystery (1 Cor 12:12-30) that permeates through all of creation, that binds it together in unity and love (Acts 17:28) and offers us a share of its nature (2 Peter 1:3-4). I choose this and not a label.
The greatest of human follies is that unity equates to uniformity. Wars have started for less. So I also refuse to identify the people around me as anything other than that same: children of God who are loved without limit. The diversity of human thinking, belief, sexual orientation, colour, creed, gender and eye-colour only serves to strengthen the whole, not weaken it. We would do well to welcome and encourage diversity, not root it out and force it into homogeneity.
Accepting our own uniqueness, and the uniqueness of others, is to recognise the divine dwelling within.
I am who I am.