Who are we?
Two recent news stories offer a fascinating window into our modern confusion over human identity: just who are we? In the first story, former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner has a sex change and then re-introduces himself (herself?) as Caitlyn Jenner. Having struggled for years with his/her gender identity, (s)he is greeted as a hero for facing the world and at last “living her truth”. In the second story, Rachel Dolezal, who posed for years as a black woman and even had a position in the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured people, was recently ‘outed’ by her own parents – who are both white – as a Caucasian. Unsurprisingly, she is seen as a villain rather than a hero.
These stories raise some very interesting questions, but perhaps the most obvious is this: why is it all right for Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner to self-identify as a woman, but not all right for Rachel Donezal to self-identify as black? To what extent are we free to choose whom we want to be, and to what extent are these things ‘given’? And who says anyway? Why should race be a ‘given’ and gender be a ‘choice’?
All this looks even more interesting when we turn to the Bible. On gender: “God created man in his own image … male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26). On race: “From one man he [God] made every nation of men” (Acts 17:26). Could it be that gender is actually more fundamental than race to who we are?