While leading a training session on ethnicity, I spoke of how every ethnicity was created for good before it was damaged by sin and evil. We heard from Asian, black, and white staff who shared about how God had taken them on a journey of showing them what is beautiful and broken about their ethnicities.
Near the end of the session, we prayed for the white people in the room. Prompted by the Holy Spirit, several of the black leaders prayed for “our precious white brothers and sisters” that they would know they were created in God’s image, intended for good. After these words of kindness were uttered, I saw stunned silence and heard a combination of soft crying and gasps of surprise from our white brothers and sisters.
Later, several white women and men remarked with astonishment that they had never heard the words “white” and “precious” used together in one sentence. “Is that even allowed?” one asked. Given that much of the secular world engages in talking about race and ethnicity by talking about the damage done by European Americans, they were bewildered by this gracious pronouncement of goodness. It seemed undeserved. And yet it reflects the character of God, who looks upon all of us and calls us into the image we were made for.
Too often, we enter into the conversation about multiethnic community through the lens of what is wrong. But this is not how God starts his story. Genesis starts in an entirely different way—with a word of kindness and graciousness: “Let there be light.”
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1 describes in different thematic days how the earth was created by God. “And God saw that it was good” is a reverberation that repeats at the end of each day. It is repeated when Genesis describes the creation of the stars and moon, the lights in the sky. When God creates the birds, fish, land animals, and vegetation, you see a great diverse ecosystem emerge, according to all of their kinds. When humankind is made, the poetic narrative gets very particular about its details:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)
While all other elements of creation seem to have been from an ex nihilo (out of nothing) kind of formation, the birth of humankind is modeled after an existing image: God himself, who has community within the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The triune God can’t help but love because it’s in his nature, and creating more out of that perfect love is the only natural response.
Because man and woman are made in the image of God, they are made to receive that perfect love from God and to reflect that community to each other. And after a resounding echo of “it was good” that follows every day of creation, God’s delight is emphasized after his creation of man and woman in his own image: “it was very good.” In Genesis 1, humanity is the pinnacle of creation.
Have you ever had your ethnicity affirmed by another as good, without having to even describe why, but just because God made it so? I remember the first time I heard the words, “You are a gift to this room because of all the beauty and leadership you bring in a distinctly Korean American way—fiery, humorous, tenderly aware of who is in the room, and yet unwilling to back down from saying what needs to be said.” I was unaccustomed to hearing my ethnicity being described in a way that was not about being the “other.” I had wrestled to own the assertion that I too was American, despite not being white. Understanding that God made me good as a Korean American woman allowed me to face the brokenness that existed in my ethnic identity and community.
We hear God’s deep, fatherly voice of love in the beginning of Genesis and see that we were created for good in who we are as humans. A wise seminary professor once said to me with impatience, “I hate when Christians sigh and say, ‘Well, we’re only human.’ To be human is to be made in the image of God. Sin is the thing that makes us un-human; it undoes the image of God that was placed in our DNA. Only Jesus can restore us back to our intended humanity.” To be made human is to be made beautiful, in the image of God.
We reflect God’s image, the imago Dei, not because we stand on two legs or have higher intelligence than animals, but because we were created to have community with each other. We were made to model the hospitality of God to another as we have communion with God himself. Men and women are created to rule over the fish, birds, animals, and all the earth. We are God’s vice regents, appointed to have dominion over creation and reflect God’s character, values, and community.
We have a hard time understanding the word dominion without cringing because our experience of people with power sometimes includes corruption and abuse. But the way it was intended in Scripture is different. Genesis 2:15 reads, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”
Taking care of the garden, of creation, was how humans were meant to have dominion, to use power and leadership for the care and flourishing of all. Genesis 2, being specifically a story that celebrates the creation of man and woman, shows us how God created us for community, as it was “not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). A helper, a word in Scripture that means one who saves with strength and is used to describe God throughout the Old Testament, was created in the form of woman. And Adam delights in having a partner as he and Eve tend to the garden together. They are naked, and they feel no shame. This is not just a celebration of marriage. It’s a celebration of intimate human community, of loving trust and mutual respect that reflects the Trinity’s communion within itself. The imago Dei is reflected in how we practice hospitality and stewardship of who we are so that creation itself may benefit.
Later in Genesis, humans begin to multiply and fill the earth. Just like the biodiverse animals and plants of creation, people spread out according to different tribes with culturally distinct ways of living, such as those who live in tents and raise livestock (Genesis 4:20), those who play stringed instruments and pipes (Genesis 4:21), and those who make tools out of bronze and iron (Genesis 4:22). We read about maritime people who spread out into clan territories, as well as warriors who built kingdoms and cities (Genesis 10). They have multiplied and filled the earth according to their clans and languages, territories and nations. These details in the lineage of Adam’s descendants are important enough to be included in Scripture. Ethnicities, with distinct cultures and languages, are being created.
Each of us has an ethnicity that God made for good, an ethnicity that is beautiful in its distinctive particularities. Our ethnic identity is the backdrop in which God displays his goodness and creativity. We are made well in our specific and God-given ethnic backgrounds, not in spite of them. Someone is not beautiful though she is black or African American; she is beautiful in her blackness, in a way that can only be expressed in the shape and shade of her face, skin, and heart.
It is common to hear adages such as “beauty is only skin deep” or “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but this kind of beauty is not what we are talking about here. Beauty is not the world’s definition of sexual attractiveness or impossible-to-gain standards of thinness or fitness. Beauty is how we reflect the image of God. It is possible to say that black is beautiful and simultaneously affirm the beauty in our white or Native or Asian or Latino brothers and sisters. There is no one ideal standard of beauty in ethnicity in God’s eyes.
So many cultures prize a certain standard of physical beauty in men and women, and all suffer when they try to fit into such impossible and subjective standards. Human secular standards of beauty hailed in magazines and movie screens are often dehumanizing; they reject the way God made us. Instead of having our human subjective biases form our understanding of beauty, we should have the image of God form our lens for understanding beauty. It’s when we reflect the image of God and his intentions for us that we are most beautiful.
Each of us has an ethnicity that God made well, whether we are descended from a long line of Germans or Indians; or have pan-European, pan-Asian, pan-Latin, or pan-African ancestry; or are multiracial; or are adopted by a family whose ethnicity differs from our own. God made no mistakes in his creation. These are non-negligible parts of our identities, even if we have been told that they should be hidden, forgotten, assimilated, rejected, or disregarded. And there was no mistake in how God made us, though many of us bear the marks of the brokenness of the world in how we experience those ethnicities.
In the gospel story, we see an affirmation of our ethnic identities, no matter who we are. Whether we are Hmong, Trinidadian, Venezuelan, Polish, English, Sioux, or Egyptian in ancestry, God invites us to embrace who we are. An Indian American friend of mine, Ritu, found that embracing the right way to say her name (Rid-thoo) brought her deeper pride and willingness to share her culture and ethnic heritage instead of apologizing for her less “common” name. One young man, who identified as white and grew up in the South, told me about how his grandmother was Malaysian and that his family and even he himself would laughingly poke fun at it in passing. His Malaysian heritage was seen as inconvenient and even uncomfortable because of its assumed animistic spirituality. Once he realized that ethnicity was affirmed and valued in Scripture, he shared, “I realize now that God is saying that my Malay side is not negligible and that it is an important part of who I am. And he’s inviting me to relearn what I tried to forget.”
We often forget that Jesus himself was part Moabite and that Matthew takes great pains to show us that the story of Ruth was an important part of Jesus’ heritage and story. Matthew carefully includes the mention of Tamar and Bathsheba (Uriah’s wife) in his account of Jesus’ ancestors, reminding us that prostitution, adultery, and murder are also part of the Jesus’ family history. In addition, Timothy, Paul’s young protégé, is part Greek and part Jew, and it’s certainly not negligible as they both consider how to help Timothy navigate an ethnically complicated Roman empire.
Some of us might not know about our ancestors beyond a couple generations. Some of us might have complex, painful, or shameful parts of how our families came into being (especially those that have the legacy of slavery, war, or rape in the family story). Jesus doesn’t ignore this but instead is set on redeeming those hurtful stories.
People who were adopted by parents of a different ethnicity have the complex reality and task of recognizing and honoring the goodness of the culture they grew up in as well as their ethnic heritage. Examining Moses’ story, we learn that he was reared as a prince in the Egyptian courts for the first forty years of his life and then lived as a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian for the next forty years. Moses’ Hebrew heritage is important, but so is his Egyptian upbringing and culture as his story plays out when God chooses him to lead his people to the promised land.
I recently met Kaylyn, a young Korean American woman, at a mostly Asian gathering of ministers. We talked about what it was like to lead as Asian Americans. She was nervous as she said, “I’m adopted, and I grew up in a white family. I never feel like I belong at these things.” I looked at her and said, “Of course you belong here.” To me, her face and how she walked felt distinctly Korean, though she had not grown up connected to her ancestral culture. Though some Asian cultural expressions might not make sense to her, she was having distinctly Asian experiences of race, and such a space was important for her to experience so that she could lead in more fruitful ways. Her adoption didn’t erase her ethnic heritage. In owning her ethnic heritage along with her adoptive white family’s story (a journey that took much time and prayer), Kaylyn was able to also more fully own her adopted story and identify with adopted people.
We’re all at varying points of understanding our ethnic identities, especially from the perspective of the gospel. If you don’t know where to start your journey, say to Jesus, Show me how you want to write your story in this part of my life, in my ethnicity.
Eddy is Armenian American, and he came to the United States from Lebanon when he was ten years old. He is descended from a people that have been a diaspora community since the Ottoman Empire. In Lebanon, Eddy was the minority because he was not Muslim nor Arab. He knew he did not belong there. When he came to the United States, the feeling of not fitting in continued. Everything in him wanted to assimilate as quickly as possible, but he hated the summer months because his skin would become noticeably darker than that of neighbors and friends. He would vigorously scrub his skin in the shower, hoping that it would change his complexion. He was embarrassed of his parents’ accents and how loudly they talked and the fact that they drank and smoked (which was perfectly acceptable in Armenian culture but not in most white churches). Eddy attended a mostly white church, and he internalized that the way to be clean and right before God was to be white.
He thought college was his chance to become free from his family and to fully be white. He went on a summer missions project to Asia where his small group leader, a white woman, asked him about race and ethnicity. Eddy answered, “Ethnicity doesn’t matter to me because Jesus matters more.” She replied, “That makes me really sad.” Her response shocked him, because he thought he had given her the “right” answer. It led him on a journey of figuring out what was wrong with his theology.
The following year, Eddy was mentoring a young Latina leader who had recently become a Christian. She asked him, “How do I figure out what it means to be Latina and Christian?” He had no answer, no framework to even begin to understand her question. He realized that she was asking, “How do I hear God in my own heart language?” But he did not even know how to answer that question for himself. His answer had been to become white and to reject his culture.
God led Eddy on a journey of reaching out to more Latino students. He began to understand how to develop contextualized tools so that Latino students could hear Jesus’ invitation for them without having to reject their Latino-ness. This meant that Eddy had to know more of who he was, to understand how God spoke to him in his “heart language,” and to see himself as wonderfully and beautifully made in his Armenian heritage, not in spite of it.
As Eddy continued his leadership in campus ministry, he began to reach even more communities with the gospel, including the black community. Now a forty-year-old man, Eddy often gets asked, “What’s the secret to your success in reaching young black men and women, people who are a completely different ethnic and racial group than you?” His response is simple: “Know and love who you are. The key is not becoming an expert at black culture. I don’t listen to most of the music or get the jokes and movie references. I build trust, but not because I know the latest hip hop artist. I build trust because I know who I am, and my black students respect that authenticity. They know I’m not trying to act a part—people in general can sniff out imposters quite quickly.” Eddy’s work in leading men and women of every ethnicity isn’t to get them to be like him culturally—it’s instead helping them be fully who they are.
God breathes his Holy Spirit into our ethnic stories for the sake of mission. We must open ourselves up to his words of kindness, to his greeting and affirmation of who we are in our ethnicities. One of my colleagues, John, was a forty-five-year-old Irish American man when he started his ethnic identity journey. As he was praying, he was startled to hear Jesus speak to him in a Gaelic accent. “Did you not think that I would speak to you in the heart language of your people?” he heard Jesus ask. Many American people hear Jesus speak to them in their heart languages, be it Spanish or Chinese, affirming that God is not the God of the Western world but of the whole world.
Once we become open to seeing our ethnic identities as intentionally and beautifully made, we can ask the question of how God shows us his image in the values and expressions of those cultural backgrounds. Each of our ethnicities has distinctives, cultural particular expressions, of how we live out the imago Dei in our hospitality toward others and our stewardship of who we are.
It’s important to note the difference between uniqueness and distinctiveness. Hospitality, for instance, isn’t a unique trait of one culture. However, every culture has distinct ways of expressing hospitality. Some do it by giving lots of hugs and kisses, some do it by respecting personal space and privacy. Some say, “make yourself at home” and do away with decorum, while others go to great lengths to honor you as a guest. Hospitality bears different flavors in different cultural vessels.
I met my high school friend Felicia, a fun and friendly Puerto Rican American, in art class. In my school, you didn’t have too many in-depth friendships beyond your own ethnicity. I wasn’t quite sure how to take either her questions that showed a genuine interest in me or her insistence on sharing who she was. I learned the proper Latina way to say her name (Fel-lee-cee-a instead of Fel-lee-sha), and she taught me how to salsa and merengue, much to my chagrin and the bemusement of the art teacher. Felicia didn’t see me as an “other”; I was becoming part of her family. She didn’t even think twice when asking me to New York’s Puerto Rican Day parade. (My bewildered Korean parents refused. Why would a Korean American go to such a parade?)
When I met other Latinos and Latinas later on in life, I realized that there was a beautiful common thread, a cultural distinctive about Latinos: familia. I’ve experienced the common phenomenon and gift that Latinos bring in their willingness to adopt anyone that is not blood-relations into their family. The warmth, celebration, and willingness to fully include a stranger is very distinct from my Korean understanding of family, which is also hospitable but more reserved in welcoming others (and where honoring elders and relationship with elders plays a much more prominent role). Felicia flung wide open the doors of hospitality and modeled loving the stranger in a whole new way, full of passionate living and fun. Yet Felicia was often rejected by her peers for not being “Latina enough”—meaning, she didn’t have only Latino friends, she did well at school, and she spoke Spanish with a Puerto Rican accent. Felicia remarkably cast off all those false assumptions of what it meant to be Latina, and she shared the best of her culture with me. I am forever grateful.
My friend Stacy, a Mexican American and gifted ministry leader, shared about going to college after growing up in a part of Los Angeles that was 97 percent Mexican American. She was used to being part of a larger group and rarely saw herself individually in terms of her gifts or what she had to offer the kingdom, especially as a woman. Elizabeth, her white campus minister, helped her see her gifts when it came to hosting and leading a flourishing Bible study. Stacy said, “The gift Elizabeth gave to me was her understanding of the stewardship of the individual: leadership, voice, discipleship, and mission.” For Stacy, being taught to value her individual self and voice allowed her to bless her familia even more.
Thinking of individualism as a gift is surprising to some. There are scores of sociology, anthropology, and race books that talk about the damage Western individualism has done in multiethnic settings. But it’s one of many ways that God expresses his imago Dei. Soong-Chan Rah writes, “One of Western Christianity’s greatest contributions is the possibility of experiencing the grace of God on a personal and individual level.”1 There is something beautiful about the Good Shepherd who values the life of a single sheep in the flock of ninety-nine. Individual stewardship is a gift and cultural distinctive of many white Americans. Used for kingdom purposes, it draws us deeper into prayerful individual intimacy with God and to obedience and faithfulness in mission.
Many white Americans, especially those who are distant from when their families first immigrated to the United States, grow up being encouraged to speak up about ideas, politics, and policies, and to use their individual voice particularly in the world of ideas. Stewarding their individual voice, ideas, money, and work is emphasized as part of being a responsible member of society. Particularly if they are from middle class to affluent means, white American children are told to hope and dream with abandon, and that they can be whatever they dream if they work hard and apply themselves. White American parents sacrifice so that their children can be independent, autonomous, and self-reliant. Independence combined with hope leads to individual contributions to society (as parent, neighbor, teacher, doctor, etc.). Stephen, a white American man who works with Latino and Native communities, said, “A distinctive of white people is that we dare to hope and to go to places we have never been to before.”
White friends have shared with me and other Asian American friends how we challenge their understanding of what it means to honor their parents. While the independence emphasized in white culture helped them transition more easily into adulthood, our white friends saw in us a commitment to honoring our elders and parents despite generational cultural clashes. Asian immigrants often sacrifice so that their children don’t have to suffer and can be safe and secure, which is in contrast to white parents, who want individual freedom and autonomy for their children even if there is some risk of failure.
Honoring the other is one of the highest values in Asian communities, be it a parent, family member, friend, or guest. It is the most important part of being hospitable to the other. Asian Americans often complain that it takes half an hour for a big group to figure out where they want to go eat because they want everyone to be happy with the choice. It took me many years before I would believe friends who said it was okay to show up empty handed at their house because I was taught that it’s imperative to honor your host. This kind of group-think and group-honoring-mentality can be incredibly hospitable and loving, especially if you’re entering a new environment or exploring faith for the first time. I’ve seen several white and black friends join an Asian community because they were deeply struck by the hospitality and inclusion of the other that they experienced in such a context.
One of the most powerful gifts given to me by another culture was from the black community. I’m Korean American and the granddaughter of a military general. My ancestors, who had been invaded and conquered, raped and pillaged, were seen as an inferior race by the Japanese government in centuries past. Anger is a common reality for the Korean people. There is also a fatalism, a cyclical form of thinking that can give way to despair, bitterness, and a passive acceptance of suffering. Instead of fighting for change, there can be a defeatist attitude of “this is the way it will always be.”
It is in my black churched friends that I started to hear a different way of engaging with suffering. The black church in America rose out of the legacy of slavery, but instead of accepting sorrow and injustice, a different refrain came out of the people: Jesus is coming, and in his kingdom, suffering will one day end. In the black community, there is a willingness to acknowledge suffering but also a prayerful and prophetic refusal to believe that this is the way it will always be. As a young woman, I saw the way black women in the church are respected and honored and the way that voices can be used to pronounce powerful and prophetic change. Leadership is encouraged in folks at a young age. I saw a vision of who I could be as a woman of God that was compelling and beautiful because I heard a different refrain and answer to the question and dilemma of sorrow. Joy and perseverance in suffering is a powerful cultural distinctive that I have witnessed in the black church over and over again.
My friend Josh, a black pastor, shared honestly that it’s hard for him to name how black Americans with slave ancestry were created for good because the “creation” of black Americans who descended from enslaved peoples is inextricably tied to the kidnapping, violence, and rape that were crucial to their formation. Josh added that there are many beautiful ways black people have redeemed that experience of suffering; however, it doesn’t make the genesis of the black American story any easier to hear. Indeed, even with such broken beginnings, we see God’s originally intended goodness and creativity shine through the cracks of our nation’s history. While black Americans don’t have a monopoly on creativity, their contributions to artistry have brought incredible depth to music, the visual arts, dance, and more in American culture, history, and theology.
My friend Alysia is a nationally respected black spoken word artist. For our wedding, my husband and I asked her to perform a blessing comparing marriage to the faithfulness of Ruth to Naomi. There was not a dry eye in the house by the end of her performance, and there was a proclamation of the gospel that was powerfully heard in her poetry in ways that could not be reproduced by a sermon.
The African diaspora is very diverse, and as we start to understand the culture of black African and Caribbean brothers and sisters, we see even greater depth and beauty. The same is true of the Latino experience, the Asian diaspora, the European diaspora, the Middle Eastern diaspora, and the multitude of Native American tribal backgrounds.
Many of us may not know Americans that identify as Native American (or you might know that you have Native blood but know very little about what it means). In Native American culture, there is a deep appreciation and respect for nature. Their stewardship and regard for creation permeates many of their customs, rituals, and celebrations. In Native time, you are done when the event has run its due course. Time slows down from the busy industrialized, mechanized lives we are accustomed to. There is a peace and holism that exists in this kind of attention to each other.
Rashawn, a Navajo friend, led a group of us on how to better cross cultures to reach out to Native people. He spent almost an hour having us introduce ourselves and our families on both our mothers’ and fathers’ sides. You could feel our confusion at how long it went. He later explained, “You just learned how to enter Native culture, to be aware of people and their stories, to not be pressed by time. This is what it means to enter into Native people’s stories and Native people’s time. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, it might have felt like a waste. But for Native people, this is everything.” Rashawn was modeling for us how to steward time and also host Native people well.
It’s also in Native theology that we find a distinctive place of affirmation for our multiracial persons. Richard Twiss, a Lakota Christian theologian, shared the pithy response of a tribal woman who was told by a young man that he was part Native. “Which part,” she asked, “your leg? You either are or you aren’t.”2 There is no compartmentalization of self into disparate parts in Native consciousness. In a world where multiracial people are often told that they are broken halves or parts of an incomplete whole, this kind of cultural perspective is a gift and a challenge to a society that often defines individuals by what they are “mostly made up of” or by which ethnic community accepts them as their own.
If we were to try to describe the differences between all of the ethnicities listed and (not listed) here, this chapter would have to be its own book. It would need to be updated every couple of years because culture is ever changing and responding to its environment and context. The stories are like still-shots from an incredibly long movie reel that is playing, with historic turns and moments that shape the past, present, and future. We live in a rainbow of ethnic backgrounds that we can try to ignore in an attempt to affirm our “sameness.” But in doing so, we deny the chance to embrace who God has made us to be, and we cut ourselves off from understanding the beauty of how God made the other. We become inhospitable guests and hosts in a multiethnic world that needs to hear the gospel in a culturally relevant, not colorblind, way.
Your invitation is to embrace your ethnic identity and to hear God’s voice of kindness and affirmation of how he made you. When you know who you are, you will be able to learn about the distinctive values, expressions, and characteristics of your culture that reflect his image. Then you will be better prepared to help others know who they are as beautifully created, ethnically diverse women and men of God.
1.What are some common things you grew up hearing in your family about what it means to be your ethnicity regarding family, money, time, perseverance, sacrifice, education, and so on?
2.What are some beautiful things you have appreciated about your culture? Where have you seen hospitality, love, care for the other, and powerful expressions of worship emerge among your people?
3.What are some beautiful things you have appreciated about other cultures? Where have you seen hospitality, love, care for the other, and powerful expressions of worship emerge among different ethnic communities you have been a part of (not just seen on TV)? How has it affected how you view your own culture or values?
4.Take a moment to thank God for making you in your ethnic background. Ask him to show you more of the beauty and story of your people. Listen to see if he gives you a verse or image of hope. End with a Scripture reflection on Psalm 139:13-16:
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
Being Latino in Christ: Finding Wholeness in Your Ethnic Identity by Orlando Crespo
Being White: Finding Our Place in a Multiethnic World by Paula Harris and Doug Schaupp
Black Man’s Religion: Can Christianity Be Afrocentric? by Glenn Usry and Craig S. Keener
Living in Color: Embracing God’s Passion for Ethnic Diversity by Randy Woodley
More Than Serving Tea: Asian American Women on Expectations, Relationships, Leadership and Faith edited by Nikki A. Toyama and Tracey Gee
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has a Beyond Colorblind video series about ethnic identity. For a video about the beauty in our ethnic identities, go here: http://2100.intervarsity.org/resources/beyond-colorblind-beauty.