In my most recent Spiritually Speaking column, I wrote about the centrality of “identity.” Our identities matter—our political, national, ethnic, work-related, and role-related identities. How could it be otherwise? But, I also pointed to a grave danger lingering in our identities: they can trap us. As crucial as our identities are, when they harden and generate in-group vs. out-group tensions, they can engender conflict and even violence.
I argued that this danger is particularly acute under conditions of real or perceived scarcity. Such scarcity doesn’t have to be economic or material but could also be status-based. A community wrapped around a particular identity can feel threatened when marginalized groups begin to do well. Think, for example, of how those whose identities are wrapped up around whiteness are threatened when the marginalized begin to do better. The story of US politics and history can be told as a tale of blowback—when white Americans react aggressively to any marked improvement in the status of Black lives. The American election of Donald Trump after the rise of Barack Obama is one illustrative case among many.
For these reasons, I suggested in my piece that we can cherish our identities but not be attached to them. Moreover, religious traditions in their deepest spiritual dimensions seek to dissolve our attachment to worldly or conventional identities. Why? Because they hold there is something about us that goes deeper than all worldly identities, namely our relationship or identity with God or ultimate reality. Religious traditions teach us that each of us is a part of Holy Mystery and that Holy Mystery is undefinable. Because God or the Ultimate is not finite, it cannot be pinned down with a label. And, because we belong to God—in some traditions, we are the Infinite—we are more than any of our identities or the sum of them. We are ourselves mysterious and undefinable because we belong to the Mystery.
When we know this, when we know we belong to God or even are Divine, we can hold our identities loosely. Identities matter. How else can we get through the day? I am a father, so I try to fulfill the obligations of that role. It matters to me that I am a professor, so I prepare my lectures with care. But because I know I belong to the mystery of the Infinite, I try not to let such identities imprison me.
Let me add three further thoughts here. First, recognizing and honouring our spiritual selves as a part of the Holy Mystery is important, but we can do this without ignoring the significance of our everyday identities. I suspect that when we don’t cling to our identities, we can appreciate them all the more. Because I don’t cling to any single identity marker, I recognize that I am many things all at once. Father, brother, husband, son, author, priest, academic, Christian, Buddhist—I could go on like this for a long time! Every toxic identity attempts to claim a person entirely; it is a kind of possession. You know an identity is playing a troubling role in your life when it won’t permit you to recognize all that you are, all your many identities.
A simple example: if my attachment to my role-based identity as a professor leads me to ignore my obligations as a father and a husband—a real danger I struggle to navigate every day—that is a sign that this identity is claiming an outsized role in my life. But when I remember that my deepest identity is my belonging to Divine mystery, I am helped to remember that no other identity must be permitted to assume absolute status.
Second, nothing I have said implies that ordinary identities shouldn’t matter at all. Identities must be cherished, particularly when they have been marginalized by the culture at large. In Canada, powerful resurgence of Indigenous identities is under way, part of a magnificent global Indigenous resurgence. First Nations are reasserting the dignity, power, and worth of identities marginalized by Settler peoples. To recognize that some part of who we are drops off into mystery should not lead to a dismissal of those who are doing the hard work of reclaiming the dignity of their long-denigrated identities.
Third and finally, we must abandon some identities that are irreparable because they have become absolutized, idolatrous, and toxic. Whiteness is one of these. One might recognize oneself as of Irish, Italian or British origins or even a blend—these are all meaningful identities. But whiteness? What is it? This category is troubling because, from its very conception, whiteness is tangled up in exclusion and power. It is a category created to exclude.
Attachment to whiteness is troubling and appears inseparable from claims of white supremacy. It is one thing to wisely recognize the benefits of being accorded white privilege; it is quite another to cling to one’s “whiteness.” Tragically, whiteness erases the particularities of the European identities mentioned above. In fact, identities derived from Europe tend to be even more varied and beautiful in all their diversities: being Catalan or Sicilian or Liverpudlian is infinitely more interesting and important to many than national origins. Whiteness erases all this.
Navigating these identity questions takes work. Identities are both beautiful and burdensome. Thankfully, spiritual identities can remind us that we are ultimately nothing less than the beloved of God or even part of the divine life. These are mysterious identities because they can be claimed but not grasped; they are identities that belong to all equally or to none.
To say that we all share Buddha-Nature or that all are the Infinite Brahman is to be reminded that something within us binds us all together and transcends us without erasing particularities. We matter in all the complexity of our particular identities and beyond them. We are all part of an indefinable More!
John J. Thatamanil is Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He is also a Priest and Diocesan Theologian of the Diocese of Islands & Inlets (Anglican Diocese of British Columbia). He is, most recently, the author of Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity. He splits his time between living with his wife and son here in Victoria and living with his daughter in Manhattan. His research centers on how Christians can learn from the practices and insights of other religious traditions.
You can read more articles on our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking, at /blogs/spiritually-speaking
