Identity Politics on the Right

In my circles, we decry the identity politics of the Left.

It is right to denounce those obsessed with race and ethnicity.  It means too much to them.  Or they see themselves as victims from generations ago.  Or they are insisting on some intersectional social preference based on it.  Or they insist on equality of outcome by race in every way.

 

But on the right, we have our own style of unhelpful identity politics.

Ibram X Kendi focuses on his blackness, or my whiteness.  But I am prone to focus on my maleness, or your feminine identity when I interact with you.  This can be an equally unhelpful problem.

 

There is no inherent virtue or vice in being a certain race.  Or in being a certain sex.

It is not an absolute good to be a man, post-fall.  Granted, it is part of our “given-ness” by God, every trait of which is good in that He gave it.  But any man can use his greater strength as a man to intimidate or abuse those weaker.  Any woman can use her words and wiles to manipulate others.  Even before the fall, God Himself said being a man, alone, was not good.  No, rather, we have to use well the various, specific identities that God has given us.  Let us not glory in masculinity in itself, just because leftists decry toxic masculinity.  We boast in the cross of Christ alone.

 

(I see the same thing happening regarding ethnicity and nationalism.  "Black Pride" has its rejoinder on the Right with, "Proud Boys" or just "It's good to be white!"  The leftists push globalism, so in knee-jerk reaction, the right pushes nationalism.  Why are we focusing so much on physical traits, when Scripture points us to spiritual ones?)

 

Part of my concern is this.  I compare my Christian, conservative upbringing with the conservative world today.  When I was young, in the families and churches around me, the roles of men and women were background assumptions.  They were truths, used to do life.  Now, they are rejected on the left, and obsessed over in themselves on the right.  Neither is good.  As CS Lewis said somewhere, a society that obsesses over politics is a sick society.  To say that the husband is the head of the home is like saying that your knees should bend when they walk.  Out for a stroll, do you think every half-second, “My knee is bending!  My knee is bending!  It SHOULD be bending!  It’s good to have a knee!”

 

I don’t want to be uncharitable to my brethren who are reclaiming biblical truth regarding sex, though.  To continue the analogy, Christians have had their knees broken for decades, and are in physical therapy learning to walk again, training their knees to bend.  We don’t know how to do basic things, so we have to focus on the dance steps, instead of on our partners (another Lewis reference – don’t know where).

 

I’m just afraid that this stage of healing is assumed by many to be the end goal.  It is not.  God calls us to DO something with that biblically shaped (reformed!) home, not just focus on the shape all the time.

 

We are overly focused on our sexual identity today.  Not just on the left (“I’m gender fluid”), but also on the right (“I’m a man!”).  For the right, it may be a needed time of realignment.  By all means, keep teaching on the different roles of men and women.  But let’s also focus on the many virtues and spiritual temptations common to all people, regardless of physical traits.