The United Kingdom is composed of five (maybe more) identifiable ethnic groups: The English, the Scots, the Welsh, the Scots-Irish of Northern Ireland, and the Cornish of Cornwall. From all outward appearances they are all one people, but appearances can be deceiving. While their skins are the same, their hearts and minds are those of separate peoples, and the UK struggles to hold it all together with the Scots especially wanting to break away and form a separate nation.

I am slow to the table, but the events of the past year surrounding the ethnic uprising of Black Lives Matter and its echo chamber of People of Color (a loose confederation of anyone not of Western European ancestry and/or culture) have driven home to me that I am a member of a tribe and that the nation I had dedicated my life to defending was not, as I had supposed, One People but a mishmash of many different peoples with very different cultures, identities, and political aspirations who want to take this nation in many different directions.

There is not one American people all going in the same direction with a shared vision of a glorious future. Our Congress with its various caucuses demonstrates this well. Of course there are the party caucuses, Democrat and Republican. Then there are the ethnic caucuses promoting the interests of the minor tribes: The Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, the Asian Caucus, etc. And there are the interest caucuses: progressive (i.e. socialist), conservative, homosexual, and so forth. We are not one people. Nor shall we ever be! And, as reason dictates, a nation divided against itself cannot long stand.

The scripture says we must be born out of our ethnic, political, and social identities, and born into the family of God. It makes clear that a member of God’s family is something entirely new. My skin may declare, “European,” but my heart and mind say, “Christian.” May it ever be so.

I don’t know what your skin or your pocketbook say about you. But if you let those things define your being you are missing out on a better now and a glorious yet to be.