Identities That Blind Us

August 17, 2025

In today’s first reading we have a snippet from the life of Jeremiah, the ‘weeping prophet’ as he is sometimes known, for in many of his utterances he laments what he prophesies is going to befall Israel. In the story before today’s excerpt, Jeremiah warns the Jews that because they have  been unfaithful to Yahweh, it is inevitable that they would be conquered. Of course the king’s army is displeased with this morale-destroying prophecy, and after complaining to the king, has Jeremiah  lowered into a cistern and left to die.

Jeremiah’s story is set in a different time, but somehow to me it seems very much like a story from today. In a world where speaking about the horrors in Gaza makes us anti-semitic or challenging the government in power makes us anti-national, Jeremiah’s story doesn’t seem completely archaic.  

It would seem that,  increasingly today, as we get more and more polarized, we have somehow built identities that have become so much a part of us,  almost as if we are embedded in them, that any criticism of these identities are perceived as attacks against our very selves.  And such chosen identities could be political, religious, national, or built ,around gender, colour, economic ideology or whatever. And for most of us the deep internalization of such identities means that, like the people of Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s story, we are unable to see any truth if it contradicts the often limited view of our own identity group.  

These ties to our identities have become so strong that political powers have naturally tried to use them to stay in power.   So in India, the current government has come into power playing on the majority’s identity of being Hindu, claiming that their religion has been devalued; while Trump in the USA has used both the identities of race and religion to create a fear around the devaluing of ‘American’ or Christian values. Similarly, any criticism of capitalist ideology is seen as that made by a hidden commie, and any criticism of the LGBTQ community as seen as transphobic or homophobic.  

But it is not only at a larger societal level that these identities control us. In our personal lives, for instance, our own blind commitment to our religious identity seems to prevent many of us from accepting our children marrying those from other religious identities, or as in some parts of India, from accepting people of other religious identities buying homes near us or in the apartment buildings in which we live.  Our national identity prevents us from supporting immigrants who are not ‘like us’ from coming and settling in our own country, even though many of us have been immigrants ourselves.  On social media we dismiss the truths of other identities without even reading or listening to them. So atheists dismiss religious discussions as puerile, those from the right dismiss truths from the left and vice versa, traditionalists dismiss truths about patriarchy, and feminists dismiss truths about other criteria that shape the world beyond gender, and so on.  This is made worse by the fact that computer algorithms offer us our own specific identity-feeding news items, - and thus help us keep our identities ‘protected’, whether it is protected by truths or half-truths or complete falsehoods. In short, truth and our common human identity is no more something we try to foster. Only that data which helps us bolster the identity we have become so attached to are allowed into the closed-in world of our chosen identities.  

This struggle - and often failure - of human beings to focus on our shared humanity rather than on the identities that divide or distinguish us, is perhaps the root cause of so much evil and suffering in our world. And it is a problem that we, as a human race, have been dealing with again and again through history, in the eternally created struggle between US and THEM. Jesus himself, in his parable of the Good Samaritan  (Luke 10; 25-37), consciously chose as the ’hero’ of the story a person who is a Samaritan, and therefore one whose religious beliefs were clearly at odds with that of the Jews, and were considered enemies of the Jews.  Additionally, there were many instances in his teaching where Jesus spoke of  those who would come from east and west and enter the kingdom of heaven while the children of Abraham would be left out, gnashing their teeth  (Mathew 8:11-12). And based on Jesus’ teachings, Paul taught that there is to be no  more any distinction between Jew or Gentile, male or female, and so on (Galatians 3;28).  Finally, as we know from his Parable of the Last Judgement  (Mathew 25;31-46), Jesus is clear that it is not religious beliefs or identities that grants us acceptance into heaven, but whether we love our human neighbour.

So it seems that the lesson to look beyond our identities has been articulated often enough over the ages, and yet we seem to be making the same mistakes. But if we truly want to call ourselves Christians we need to ensure that our chosen identities do not become so overpowering that we are unable to see the human identity that we all share. Perhaps then, we should ask ourselves if we have, by any chance, even unknowingly, allowed ourselves to become entrenched in such  identities? 

First Reading: Jeremiah 38: 4-6, 8-10

 

Then the officials said to the king, “This man ought to be put to death, because he is discouraging the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such words to them. For this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm.” King Zedekiah said, “Here he is; he is in your hands; for the king is powerless against you.”  So they took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. Now there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.

 

Ebed-melech the Cushite, a eunuch in the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah into the cistern. The king happened to be sitting at the Benjamin Gate. So Ebed-melech left the king’s house and spoke to the king,  “My lord king, these men have acted wickedly in all they did to the prophet Jeremiah by throwing him into the cistern to die there of hunger, for there is no bread left in the city.”  Then the king commanded Ebed-melech the Ethiopian “Take three men with you from here, and pull the prophet Jeremiah up from the cistern before he dies.”

 

Second Reading: Hebrews 12: 1-4

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,  looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners,so that you may not grow weary or lose heart.  In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

 

Gospel: Luke 12: 49-53

 

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!  Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!  From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three;  they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”