Post-nationalistic Theology and Fictive Christian Ethnicity

There was recently a discussion at the Inhabitatio Dei blog about whether "postliberalism" was a defined and coherent school of thought.  Instead of searching for the commonality within one stream ("postliberalism"), I am interested in looking at a trajectory which holds together even a larger number of theologians (e.g., postliberalism and radical orthodoxy).  The trajectory linking many contemporary theologians can be called:  the production of Christian identity beyond nationalism, or to make it a little shorter, post-nationalistic Christianity.


E. Balibar, in "The Nation Form" (printed in __Race, Nation, Class__), clarifies the relationship between the rise of the modern nation state and religious identity.  Nationalism did not ultimately arise as an analogous form of religiosity, for despite whatever commonalities one can find between the two, the difference remains even greater.  The transfer of religious ideals--"the sense of the sacred and the affects of love, respect, sacrifice, and fear which have cemented religious communities" (95)--to the nation presupposes this difference.  Otherwise, "it would be impossible to understand why national identity, more or less completely integrating the forms of religious identity, ends up tending to replace it, and forcing it itself to become 'nationalized' (ibid).  To describe nationalism as simply a modern religion is to render oneself unable to account for the way nationalism absorbs, replaces, and modifies the very category of religion. 

Strangers Welcoming Strangers: reflections on Matthew 25:31-46

I spent this Thanksgiving with my uncle; we are the closest family he has (a four hour drive away), my aunt (his wife) having died a couple years ago and his son (my cousin) spending the holidays in jail. It's a long story, the details of which don't need to be divulged. For my uncle, what mattered was that he was still able to share the Thanksgiving meal with family. It also helps that he loves food and Skyler (my wife) is an amazing cook.

The holidays bring with them an increased awareness of family. However, for me, this focus on family began a couple months ago, in relation to my work with refugees. Familial relationships matter in working with refugees. Some refugees have left their families to flee; some have family members who are in "no contact," meaning, for instance, that a brother left the Bhutanese refugee work to find work in India and has not been heard from since he left, three years ago. The government regulates how we house families (how old children can be before they must be in "same gender" bedrooms...I'll withhold comments on this governmental investment in constructing "proper" familial structures).

A few months ago, I met with a refugee who has been in the U.S. for many years now and is working on an masters degree in refugee public health issues. He told me about how, when he came, he had a family member here to welcome him and help him navigate the complexities of adjusting to life in the U.S. We talked about how much harder it is for refugees who have no family, no one to welcome them, and how we both wished the church would become family to these refugees and welcome them.

I've started using this discussion, coupled with a few verses from Matthew 25 ("I was a stranger and you welcomed me"), to begin my orientation with new churches and volunteers. Every time I do it, though, I feel dishonest. I know the scripture is more complicated than I make it seem.

For instance, Jesus never tells us to seek him in the stranger (or sick, hungry, thirsty, naked, or imprisoned). Nor does Jesus ever promise that we will see him in these people. In fact, the story of judgment presupposes that those who served these people did not know they served Jesus, nor were they expecting to find Jesus there at all. Those who ignored these people likewise did not know who they were ignoring.

What bothers me the most, however, is that the story is not about generic individuals but about two peoples, "the nations" (v. 32) and the king's "family" (lit. "my brothers," v. 40), Gentiles and Jews.

The image of the shepherd separating the people comes from Ezekiel 34, where the prophet rages against the "shepherds" of Israel, who not only neglected the sheep (failing to strengthen, feed, heal, search, find, and guide the sheep) but actually fed on the sheep (v. 4-8). God will reject these shepherds (v. 10) and will come and be the shepherd (v. 11) of these scattered and abused people (Israel). In this process, Israel will "no longer suffer the insults of the nations. They shall know that I, the LORD their God, am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people" (29-30).

Given this background, the strangers, hungry, sick, and imprisoned should be seen as specifically the scattered and abused people of Israel, Jesus' "brothers," or, as Paul puts it in Romans 9 (an important text to keep in the back of our minds here), "my brothers according to the flesh."

Matthew 25, then, retells a story about Israel's failed leaders, God's assumption of that leadership, and the people of Israel being rescued from these poor leaders and the abusive nations into which they were sent. If this is the case, then Jesus' retelling of Ezekiel's story of judgment implies that the most important thing we do is not taking care of our own people, or of all generic people, but of this particular people, the people of God, Israel. Our service to, or neglect of, the least of Israel determines our status before God. To neglect Israel is to neglect Israel's King, and hence to neglect God. Likewise, to serve Israel (the lowliest among them) is to serve Israel's King, and hence to serve God.

If this were all Jesus meant, then it would be surprising that, upon finishing this story, Jesus is compelled to talk about his crucifixion (26:2) and the leaders begin conspiring to kill him (26:3). What is so scandalous is Jesus' assertion that he is this Son of Man (a term he uses for himself throughout Matthew), and thus that Jesus is the embodiment of God's rule, the replacement of the false shepherds ("chief priests and elders" 26:3), and the one through whom Israel and the nations will be blessed. Those who serve him by serving the lost sheep of Israel will "inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (25:34). Jesus has the audacity to declare not just what will happen at the end of time but that he is the one who determines what will happen. Jesus does not just see what will happen; he is what will happen. He is the kingdom, the true ruler, the one who has authority to declare the truth of the end times.

Scripture often plays with the tension between the hidden and revealed, the present age and the age to come. This passage pushes that tension further: for it reveals the basis of judgment that was hidden until the time of judgment. Neither the sheep nor the goats thought that their salvation hinged on what they did with the least of Jesus' family. Both are surprised--the basis of judgment was hidden from them until the time of judgment. But in the story, in which the basis of judgment is only revealed at the time of judgement, the basis of judgment becomes unveiled before the time of judgment. Unlike the sheep or the goats in the story, we are explicitly told that our judgment depends on serving Jesus through the service to lowly Israel. Through Jesus, we now know what he teaches nobody knew until the time of judgment.

In the story, we are never told why the "righteous" served the lowly of Israel. By telling us--Gentiles!--the basis of judgment, Jesus provides us with a new way of seeing our action. We, the nations, are not left in the dark but are allowed to see the truth of our actions. In Jesus, we outsiders are welcomed into the family of God; in Jesus, we are given access to what has been promised to Israel, the blessings of God's kingdom. In Jesus, we see that we are in fact bound to Israel, and hence welcomed into the eternal life prepared by Jesus' Father.

We have no right to hear what Jesus says. We have no right to know about eternal life, or judgment. We have nothing of our own that would make us legitimate heirs. We are reminded at the beginning that we are the nations, those into whom Israel was scattered and by whom Israel was trampled. As these people, the sinful nations, we are now reordered and called into service. We are told to do what we did not know we ought to do--serve God's people, Israel. We are told to believe what was beyond our knowledge--that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, and hence the ruler of the whole world. We are welcomed, now, to do what was beyond our ability to do--to love (and not seek to destroy) the elect people of God. No longer are the scattered and rebuked people of Israel a sign of our rejection (even their judgment testifies to the fact that they are, and we are not, the people of God). In Jesus, we see that these people are a sign of our hope. In Jesus, we see that they are not a sign of our rejection but a sign of God's gracious presence to us. In Jesus, we who were "far off" see that we are no longer "foreigners to the covenants of the promise" (Eph 2). Jesus tells us what we had no right or ability to know--that we are bound to Israel, to Israel's King, and hence to the true God of all creation.

It is through our call to welcome scattered Israel that we are also called to welcome the strangers among us, for me specifically, refugees. We approach the refugees, however, not as those on the inside who are gracious enough to welcome them in. We approach them through the knowledge that we ourselves are strangers bound to a people who are not our own, Israel. Our lives are not just open and receptive, capable of accommodating (and assimilating) the "aliens" in our midst. Our lives exceed our control, overflowing our own boundaries. In being bound to Israel, our existence is ecstatic, standing outside of itself. We do not need to guard our own identity; it is already mixed. By being bound to Israel, we are free to be all things to all people: we have nothing at stake in being a pure people, in having a distinct identity, in being peculiar or noteworthy. We have no ability to control or shape our identity; we are bound to another people and told that this binding is an act of grace. We believe, and thus we serve the lowly in Israel, and through this service, we find our lives flowing out into the lives of those around us, to those who are strangers among us, including refugees.

Serving refugees reminds us that our lives are not just supposed to be open but ecstatic, not just receptive but transgressive ("stepping across"). We are called to live in an uncomfortable exchange, a series of flows and leakages. Our lives are to be marked by seepage, by moments that escape our own confines, and we find our own lives strangely intermixed with those beyond our normal boundaries. We do not need to distinguish ourselves from anyone else, for we have already been marked as strangers welcomed into the household of God and therefore we know that nothing is alien to us. The most ungrateful and belligerent refugee is not our project but our brother or sister, another Gentile, a fellow foreigner, called by Jesus into the blessings of God's people, Israel. We welcome them as family, as one who like us has been called and bound to another people, the Israel of God. We welcome the stranger not just because we were strangers but because Jesus continually calls to become strange again, to recognize and rejoice in our status as foreigners blessed in Israel through Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of Man, the creator of heaven and earth.

with thanks to Micah D., for his friendly critiques.

Can I wear your clothes? (missions and alienation)

Portrait of Nicolas Trigault in Chinese Costume, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1617

The early Jesuit missionaries to China translated themselves into the native garb. As a religious order, they first wore buddhist robes, projecting an image as new, religious messengers. The first missionary, Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607) made the decision, saying, "Now the robes are being cut and soon we will be made into Chinese" (quoted in __Journey to the East__ by Liam Matthew Brockey, p. 33). The robes, however, were soon dropped, as the missionaries decided on a new image: as educated literati. The Buddhist monks were not as socially powerful as Ruggieri imagined; his first companion, Matteo Ricci, donned the outfit of a mandarin scholar (of Confucius), and even grew out his hair and beard so as to allay himself more closely with this educated and socially powerful class. When describing his new costume, Ricci declared that the robes were "very similar to what the Venetians use in Venice" (43).

The robes were habitable because familiar: the missionaries could see themselves in those clothes. The robes were habitable because the Chinese were habitable: soon we will be made into Chinese. Not so different. Literate. Educated. Hierarchically organized. A different experience from the Africans. Primitives. Without proper clothing, proper society, or proper religion. Not even the inverse, but the absence: a human void (quick, take the empty land!).

If I had time, I would love to investigate missionary fashion. Clothing as the marker of a habitable population. A people we think approximates us. Or is too far away. Whose outfits--or lack there of--suggest a human absence. The naked savage. Lacking civilization. A bad thing. Then a good thing. When people tired of civilization. The noble savage. We can now see ourselves in their naked bodies.

Our image of ourselves, standing in between. No encounter. We create the identities. Who do you say you are? No response. Or, every response, a translation. Who do I think you say you are? What? I can't understand you. What language are you speaking? (I was told earlier this week, by an Iraqi refugee, that I would soon learn to speak refugee....)

There is no point lamenting our inability to have a direct encounter. We can never move beyond ourselves. We must be thrust out of the way. From outside. Someone must take our place. If they dare.

Salvation means alienation, and "salvation is of the Jews" (Jn. 4.22). And because people will not be alienated even for their own salvation, they roll away the alienation on to the Jew (Barth, CD I/2, 511).

Let us not lie to ourselves. Any "alienation" that comes easy is another form of donning chinese clothes. An easy move. I have already absorbed them. They can reflect me. I can see myself in them. They are habitable, so I will wear their clothes. No alienation, just absorption. In their clothes, I translate them. More so, I absorb them. Engulf them from within. I hypostasize their culture. It is I who hold up their lifeless clothes. It is I who animate. It is I who am....the Spirit.

Blasphemy. The dangerous edge of empathy, of seeing myself in others. A loving attack, all the more vicious because it is an empathy over which I am the master. The terms are under my control. I choose whose clothes I will wear.

No one will be alienated, not even for salvation. It is an offer we refuse, a gift we reject. But to refuse our own alienation, to reject salvation, is to...turn against the Jews. To roll off our alienation and place it on another, the Jews (how often "primitive" African religion was understood as a degraded form of Judaism...).

We cannot be saved "unless we are prepared to become Jews with the Jews." Barth penned this in the 1930s. "By being hostile to Jewish blood, the world simply proves that it is the world: blind and deaf and stupid to the ways of God" (511). "In the Jew, the non-Jew has to recognize himself...and in the Jew he has to recognize Christ, the Messiah of Israel" (511). The one we rejected, the one on whom we rolled off our alienation, the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth. Let us be clear: the one who comes to displace us is the one we want to kill. The one we do kill. But, by the grace of God, the one who lives again!

Christ's flesh, a space of alienation. A wound. The stigmata--an opening of the flesh, a making of space. A way of becoming habitable by what is foreign.

In Jesus, we are brought out of the dialectic of habitation. No longer are you the one who threatens to occupy me, to cut open my flesh. Nor I to you. A space exists between us, which neither of us can occupy, or, more properly, a space which already occupies us both: a shared wound.

For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.

To live for the one who died and was raised for us. It is a call to alienation; to salvation.

It's a call we know we will resist.

Not a matter of changing clothes then. Of entering "the other." Of celebrating difference. The offer of alienation is a devastating offer. A gift of becoming ill at ease. It makes us hesitate. We no longer know where we stand. Or, more precisely, we finally see that where we stand (and who we are) is never something we can possess. We cannot speak the truth of who we are. Someone stands in our way, blocking our vision, halting our speech. It is either a terrifying assault. Or a gift of joy. This one is the end of ourselves--hallelujah!

In the end, the clothes don't matter. You are never a space I can inhabit. Yet, we can never leave each other behind. We are bound to a space between us that neither of us can navigate. Which doesn't mean it is impassible. For it is a space that has already been traversed. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. (It is only from here that we can move beyond Rilke, who wrote, "love consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other").

Lord Jesus, help me love my neighbor, the stranger whom I despise (the samaritan!), the one who speaks to me of my own alienation, and who therefore, I want to reject. Help me see them as a reminder of your grace, as a testimony to your resurrection, and as a renewed invitation to live by your Spirit, with thanksgiving and joy.

Second Time Around, with the Help of Cixous

"Broken men, we dare to use unbroken language.  We must not forget that we are speaking in parables and after the manner of men [Rom 6:18]" Karl Barth, __Commentary on Romans__, 221.

"At a gallop, the snail!  We scribble while crawling in the wake of God" Helene Cixous, __Stigmata__, 39.

"We don't have the last word:  truth always has the word before, and we runt out of breath at its heals" Cixous, 37.

Perhaps Cixous is a better way to get at Barth.  Or, as Barth would prefer, to get past Barth, to move beyond the signpost to stay on the heals of...Truth.  

"Without End, No, State of Drawingness, No, Rather:  The Executioner's Taking Off" is an essay on writing essays.  Cixous writes to capture the creation, the moment of unfolding, or "the passing (of the) truth" (Stigmata, 28).  She does not seek the finished thought, the clean product or the polished idea.  She does not pretend to say the last word.  She writes essays.  Not probings, or musings, or ponderings.  No aimless wandering thought; nor first stabs at the truth.  But a wrestling, or, as she says, a combat:  "every drawing (is) combat(s) itself.  Drawing is the emblem of all our hidden, intestine combats.  There we see the soul's entrails" (36).  The essay is a drawing; it captures the combat.  

We combat--what?  Ourselves?  Not exactly.  We strive--because "truth strikes us.  Opens our heart.  Our lips" (29).  We are encountered--we catch a glimpse, an internal sight (in-sight), a momentary vision, and we stumble.  We struggle.  "Truth strikes us."  We cannot draw or write a crisp thought--"how then to draw a firm footing, when our soul is merely a staggering...We all go along at the same pace, with an uncertain foot" (38).  Our soul staggers along and so we fight within ourselves.  We struggle along after the truth:  "time, the body, are our slow vehicles, our chariots without wheels" (39).  

Theologians (including myself) are often "those who seek the finished.  Those who seek to portray cleanly, the most properly" (28).  Barth, like Cixous, reminds us of our place--we are broken, our vision is partial, limited, fragmented; it is--we are--a collection of glimpses and struggles of faltering steps, hesitations, and approximations.  We (our thoughts) are never ultimate, but perpetually penultimate, perpetually a step behind, and hence, never resting, never secure, always--questioning.  Advancing through and with and in questions, or as Cixous puts it, "We are advancing backwards" (38).  Advancing because struck...by Truth.  Backwards because the moment--the happening or event--occurs to us, creatures.  

We are encountered--and so we speak.  Cixous tries to write off repentance, but the idea circumscribes her essay.  The word 'repentance' "jumped on to my page, it spread everywhere, however much I denied it.  One says this word and that's it" (40).  Why the adamant refusal to repent--"we who draw are innocent" (28)?  Because the situation is impossible.  She is--and we are--compelled to speak, and yet we must speak what remains beyond us--we must speak the Truth.  We are struck by Truth.  We "don't have salvation:  it is dealt us like a blow, we faint.  We awake with a start, quick a pencil, and take down the ultimate glimmer of illumination, however much we say: 'what's the difference, we've seen our vision already,' we never resign ourselves" (39).  We never resign because we are compelled to speak, to write, to draw...furiously.  Quickly.  Boldly.  

Yet Cixous recognizes something problematic in writing essays.  The self is uncommitted.  It seeks to justify its hesitancy.  It knows it will encounter errors--how can it not--and wants to reassure itself:  "error is not lie:  it is approximation.  Sign that we are on track" (29).  That response should settle the question.  Yet 'repentance' keeps invading the text.  Repentance lurks because the defense might be only a justification.  What if our defense is...a lie?  Error is not lie, but what if we should repent of our errors?  What if we should write, or worse, should have written, something other than an essay?  What if we ought to dare to use an "unbroken language" (Barth)?

"When one is poorly informed, one hesitates to take a position.  And there was powerful official misinformation" (Gourevitch, 139).  The words of Bishop Misago, a man accused of supporting Hutu-power, of preventing Tutsis from reaching places of refuge, of calling Tutsi priests "cockroaches," and of promising police protection to ninety Tutsi schoolchildren who were slaughtered (by those police) three days later.  Hesitancy is not always a virtue.  Cixous agrees; and the theme of repentance haunts her essay.  

Barth, like Cixous, recognizes that we cannot comprehend the meaning of our existence.  Nevertheless, both Cixous and Barth agree that Truth encounters us in our "twilight" (Barth's phrase).  The "righteousness of God in Jesus Christ is a possession which breaks through this twilight, bringing the knowledge which sets even human existence ablaze.  The revelation and observation--of the Unknown God--whereby men know themselves to be known and begotten by Him whom they are not" (Barth, 226).  In Jesus, we see Truth as a person (I am the Truth; In the Beginning was the Word..and the Word became flesh), and not just any person, most certainly not an ambivalent person.  Jesus is a person for us.  In Jesus, we see God as a person for us; we see God bearing our sins for us.  We see--it hits us in a moment, like a flash.  The twilight is ripped apart by lightning--we see, and yet, the vision is lost.  So begins our stumbling.  

Nevertheless, our stumbling is not the final answer.  Though broken, we dare to speak an unbroken language.  We dare--and can dare--because we know that what we say is a parable.  We are free to make an error--to stumble forward along the heels of Truth--because we see that Truth is a person, and this person is for us.  We repent because we know, in Jesus, we are forgiven.  We are free to act, to speak boldly, to draw cleanly because we know that neither our finished products nor our struggling attempts can bear the stamp of Truth; we know this, and yet, we know that, Truth has condescended to come into our terms, to speak our language--to come in the flesh, in the form of a slave, under the conditions of our sin.  We can repent for our errors and our sins because we know that our best efforts fall short--the unbroken language is beyond us--and yet, the one from outside, the Eternal Truth, has been drawn into (on the pages of) our stuttering.  We stutter without shame not because we live without the need of forgiveness, but because we are forgiven.  Because we are forgiven, we can live...without knowing who we are.  "As soon as we draw (as soon as, following the pen, we advance into the unknown, hearts beating, mad with desire) we are little, we do know know, we start out avidly, we're going to lose ourselves" (Cixous, 26).  In Jesus, we see that this loss of ourselves is our judgement-as-forgiveness, and thus, a joyful retrieval of our (still necessary) stumbling.  "I advance error by error, with erring steps, by the force of error.  It's suffering, but it's joy" (Cixous, 29).  

*I am trying to let Cixous help me rethink my last post on "Pragmatic Identity."  I'm hoping to think through a bit more clearly what it means to live from beyond ourselves, as well as to open up the possibility of this ecstatic existence being, well, joyful.*

Pragmatic Identity

"The Gospel of Christ is a shattering disturbance, an assault which brings everything into question"  Karl Barth, __The Epistle to the Romans__, 225.

"We are under grace, and we are ourselves the objective of its attack" Karl Barth, 216.  

"May God never relieve us of this questioning!  May God enclose us with questions on every side!  May God defend us from any answer which is not itself a question!  May God bar every exit and cut us off from all simplifications!" Karl Barth, 254.

"Broken men, we dare to use unbroken language.  We must not forget that we are speaking in parables and after the manner of men [Rom 6:18]" Karl Barth, 221.

A major theme in the Commentary on Romans is that grace produces something in us beyond our possession.  Grace is the dissolution of our selves, of every human possibility, even and especially the most religious and pious of human endeavors.  But the "new self" is not the object of empirical observation; it is not equivalent to a certain mystical experience or ethical standpoint.  The person that I was has died in Christ.  I now live in Christ, or Christ lives in me.  Yet this new person that I am eludes my own understanding.  I know who I am...by faith.  But faith is faith in the unseen.  Therefore, the life I live now is one that is beyond my own understanding.  We live by faith, not by sight. 

In discussion about the future of Rwanda, I frequently hear two ways of "moving beyond" Tutsi and Hutu differences.  The first option places our hope in a new national identity:  a person is neither Hutu nor Tutsi, one is simply Rwandan.  The other option eschews the language of national identity in favor of religious identity:  one is not Hutu, Tutsi, or Rwandan, one is Christian.  The problem with these attempts are numerous.  First, everyone still knows who is Tutsi and who is Hutu and everyone knows that these distinctions continue to carry weight:  one cannot speak of of one's place in or after the genocide without recourse to these identities.  Secondly, one cannot dissolve and restructure identity by changing the words.  Thirdly, the national option still operates on a structure of inclusion/exclusion and cannot cope with hybrid or unclear national identity (e.g., what about Tutsis who were born to Rwandan parents outside of Rwanda and only came to Rwanda 5 years ago, and thus after the genocide?).  Fourthly, the religious option also generally follows a pattern of exclusion (what about Rwandan Muslims, a small group of people but one that generally didn't participate in the genocide).  Fifthly, and more problematically, the religious option fails to question how Tutsi and Hutu were constructed as racial identities as part of the process of Christianizing Rwanda.  While it may be true that colonial missionaries and later Rwandan priests converted people to "the church" instead of to "Jesus," one can say that about every Christian failing and thus it is a fairly unhelpful thing to say.  Further, every preceding generation that creates a "Christian" culture has been reminded by the following generation just how worldly that "Christian" identity was.  Finally, both the religious and the national responses presuppose that the only way forward is to construct a new form of identity.  They are both committed to providing a new story through which I (we) can clearly articulate my (our) sense of myself (ourselves).  

It is on this final point that I find Barth confusing, but helpful.  To be helpful Barth has to be confusing, for he is trying to undermine our attempts to use Christianity to disclose the truth of who we are.  Barth is struggling to make us uneasy about who we are.  The Gospel shatters our sense of ourselves, as Americans or Rwandans, men or women, Hutu or Tutsi.  It is a shattering disturbance of who we are as Christians!  No identity, whether national, racial, ethnic, communal, local, individual, gender, sexual or religious (including Christian!) can withstand the judgment of Jesus.  All forms of identity are brought into Jesus' body and there, in his body, brought to death.  All forms of identity now live in--and only in--Jesus' body.  They have all been questioned and judged.  

But what comes after?  A new, superior, and holy form of identity?  By no means!  The same ones, only, not the same.  We are who we are...but also not.  We are dead to those old forms, yet, still living in them, or perhaps, Christ is now living in them through us.  It's hard to say.  We are undoubtedly new creations, dead to sin, alive in Christ, filled with the Spirit.  Yet, this new "I" seems distinct from my conscious self.  Who, then, am I?  

The key, I am beginning to suspect, for sorting through the problem of identity in post-genocidal Rwanda is the same as sorting through the problem of identity in the late-modern or post-modern global era.  The question is not about creating a new self or new national (religious, racial, etc) identity.  The question is about how to live without one.  

But that is still too easy.  The struggle is how to live with various, competing, and ambiguous identities without making these ambiguous forms operate as new solid or self-possessed forms (e.g., hybridity or ambiguity as the new "authentic" cultural form).  We cannot place our hope in a new national or even religious identity for Rwanda, or for the U.S.A.  We cannot do so because we know that any idea of ourselves that we can articulate, grasp, and represent is a merely human form of life.  If so--if the "new" form of identity stands as one human possibility related to others--then it must fall under the judgment of Christ.  

Nevertheless, we cannot abandon this process.  We are committed to speaking the truth about ourselves.  Those who profess faith in Jesus must bring every aspect of who they are--gender, race, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, weight, etc--to Jesus and let Jesus have his way with it.  The end result is not a brand new, "untainted" or "pure" form of existence--it is a relative human form, reworked, altered, and now much more questionable and unclear than before!  We never know who we are but must always receive who we are again, anew, from God.  Who are we, then?  May God enclose us with this question on every side!

*I don't think this is the clearest post.  My basic point is that one cannot erase Hutu or Tutsi identity anymore than I can cease being a white guy.  Nevertheless, in Jesus, I find my whiteness drawn into question, not in a way that makes me more confident (that my being is the "universal" mode of human existence or that my being is a perfectly fine particular mode of being) but that makes me less confident, more uneasy (who do I identify with and why?  whose lives help me understand my own life, and why them?).  It is not that this tentative form of existence is now the new, superior form.  However, being enclosed with questions on every side reminds us that we are always asking and answering these questions as humans, as God's finite and broken creatures.  It opens us up to more pragmatic answers to questions about identity--we can only give limited, partial, stuttering answers to the question, and only in response to particular questions in particular spaces asked for particular reasons and in hopes of a particular result.  We never know if we got it right but place all of our confidence in God's judgment and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.*