The first time I was called the n-word—by a little white girl barely 5 years old—I faced a remarkable choice. Listen to hate? Or listen to God? But who does God say that I am?
I’d heard this question my entire life, especially as a follower of Christ. But I heard it in a new way while watching the blockbuster movie “Black Panther.”
Watching that story, and seeing so many black characters of consequence on the big screen, I was mesmerized. There I was. Up there with them. Finally. Not a slave. Not a mammy. Not a thug. Not a misfit. Not somebody else’s put-down, wrong assumption, distorted image or bad joke.
After the movie, while eating dinner with friends who saw the film with us—and after talking with them about the power of seeing oneself as you are made—the question remained:
Who does God say that I am? And why is it so hard to hear Him? Especially regarding one’s deepest identity?
The question is vital for every single one of us. Nobody wants to be wrongly known.
But the question is life changing for people like me—born black into a world where, as literary icon James Baldwin put it, “all you are ever told about being black is that it is a terrible, terrible thing to be.”
How to survive this? As Baldwin reflected in his heart-wrenching final interview, “you have to really dig down into yourself and re-create yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to impose, in fact—this may sound very strange—you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.”
This is hard, tough, rock-busting work. It consumed this literary artist’s entire creative career. Yet here we are still in 2018 (and now in 2020) with too many of us facing the same challenge—trying to convince a hostile world who we actually are, that our black lives matter, even depending on a Hollywood movie to help us make the case.
But wait.
As Scripture tells us, Jesus himself faced the same dilemma.
“Who do people say that I am?” he asked of His disciples (Mark 8: 27) during His ministry.
He had just healed a blind man (Mark 8: 22-25). He’d fed a crowd of 4,000 with just seven loaves of bread (Mark 8:1-8). He’d endured testy questioning from a huddle of doubting Pharisees (Mark 8: 11-12).
Sighing in His spirit, He then got in a boat and sailed away from it all—only to hear his own disciples complaining about lacking food. Yes, complaining to the One who just fed a crowd with a few crumbs of bread.
Seeing their ridiculous misunderstanding, Jesus finally asks them, “Who do people say that I am?”
The question resonates, first, because Jesus Himself is asking it. Second, His question affirms that identity matters.
For certain, He absolutely knows who He is. He is Bread, Light, Door, Good Shepherd, Resurrection, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the True Vine. All of those “I Am Statements” of Jesus aren’t just idle talk. They declare in particular who He is, and that He knows it. No doubt.
He is God, indeed. (John 1: 17-18).
Even His own disciples forgot that. But they weren’t the only ones confused.
“Well,” they told Him,”some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah and others say you are one of the prophets” (Mark 8:28). And, true, such folks aren’t too shabby if you’re going to be mistaken for the wrong person.
In our own lives, however, we can be seen wrongly—but stay burdened—especially in a hostile, polarized, racialized world.
Therefore, Jesus himself brings up the issue, calling us into a divine knowledge of Him, but equally importantly, into a divine knowledge of ourselves.
Watching “Black Panther,” I finally understood why. Wrongly identified, we miss our destiny. But also our authenticity. Thus, one of the best things about director Ryan Coogler‘s new “Black Panther” film is the authentic music (recorded in Senegal by Ludwig Göransson, a Swedish-born composer, using Sengalese musicians). But there’s also authentic language (featuring the clicking sounds of isiXhosa, one of South Africa’s 11 official languages), and African-inspired costumes and hairstyles.
I loved it all.
When the movie stopped, however, and after celebrating all of this blackness, my question still remained: Who does GOD say that I am?
For answers, of course, we go back to the Bible. I close this post, therefore, with four destiny points to hold tight to our colonized souls:
I Am God’s Own! Valuable! And Priceless!
Because God Himself created us in His own image—“male and female he created,” says Genesis 1:27. We are, indeed, His beautiful “image bearers”—or in Latin, his Imago Dei.
We’re no shabby, second-hand, half-baked, worthless imitations. You and I, in Christ, are the exquisite creation of The Creator Himself, shaped by God and known by God—by even the numbers of hairs on our heads (Matthew 10:30)–kinky hair or not.
So our lives matter. Thus, we can stop trying to be acceptable. Or enough. Or known. Especially in a world telling us to shut up and dribble! (Yep, that’s yet another story.)
So say this with me:
I Am Loved! First by God!
Other people don’t know this, says 1 John 3:1, because “the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.”
Good and right stuff. But it gets better.
I Am Chosen by God! Royal, Too!
Unlike the days of Hosea, said Peter, when the Lord God said “I will no longer show love to the people of Israel or forgive them” (Hosea 1:6), look how things have changed!
Now “we are a chosen people”—yes, “royal priests” (1 Peter 2:9).
“Once you had no identity as a people;
now you are God’s people.
Once you received no mercy;
now you have received God’s mercy.” (1 Peter 2: 10)
Even better?
I Am Victorious! My Future is Bright!
“You are the light of the world, a city set on a hill” (Matthew 5:14). And we are victorious (1 Corinthians 15:57), more than conquerors (Romans 8:37 NIV), and citizens of Heaven (Philippians 3:20) with a glorious future (Romans 8:18).
So when people don’t see us for who we are, that is their problem—and their biggest deficit is a lack of knowing God.
Reading the news, we see the urgency of this. If only others knew God, then they also would know us.
Until then, we must know Him for ourselves. Hearing Him sing over us. Calling us by His own name. His people. His creation. His beloved. His own.
And knowing that? We know it all.
Patricia Raybon is an award-winning, best-selling author of books and essays on faith, race and grace — including I Told the Mountain to Move, My First White Friend, and her best-selling One Year devotional, God’s Great Blessings. She’s a regular contributor to Our Daily Bread Ministries and DaySpring’s (in)courage blog, and contributes often to Compassionate Christianity and to In Touch Ministries’ In Touch Magazine.
To travel along on Patricia’s Faith Journey — and receive her free download — “The Busy Person’s Guide to Hearing God” — just click here.
Any Scriptures quoted, unless noted otherwise, are the New Living Translation of the Holy Bible.
Photo Credit: Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures