I just read a book by Amin Maalouf called "In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong." Maalouf says that identity is constructed via a series of allegiances or associations with others, forming groups. (e.g. American, white, male, Southern Baptist, UNC Alumnae, Durham Residents, etc.) Often, society demands that you reduce your identity to a single allegiance, e.g. race, nationality, religion, etc. This depends on the historical context, but when that identity relationship that you have is persecuted, you tend to either resist violently, or to hide that aspect of your identity and do harm to yourself. Think Muslim terrorists and homosexuals in America, respectively. As a result, the compartmentalized notions of identity can be shown to have influence in everything from Apartheid to genocide, with all of its ugliness.
I have been pondering this, wondering what it means for our primary identities to be found in Christ. Does this truth reject Maalouf's claim, in that we are all one in Christ Jesus? Or is our oneness a unity that accepts diversity, such that, though there is no male and female, Jew and Greek, slave and free (Gal. 3:8), the Jew is embraced in his Jewness and the female in her femininity? What would that look like played out in the way that we understand the Church and the world? Do we allow for diversity within the Church, or are we conforming to a cookie-cutter model of Church, which could arguably result in either violent resistance or sublimation and hiding of identity such that true unity is prevented and undermined?
It has definitely been food for thought.