One of my friends used to call me a 40 year old black woman (I was 25) because I wore big hoop earrings and drove around in my Mitsubishi Galant grooving to Al Green and Johnny Taylor and Curtis Mayfield (sorry, just reminiscing here). I loved the music. I still do but I mostly listen to Christian music now because sad love songs put me in a weird headspace. I grew up loving black culture. For a while in my teens I wore FUBU and affected an accent out of nowhere that caused my parents to nickname me “Queen Angetifah.” Ok, I’m kidding about the FUBU part.

You know what’s wrong with the picture above?

Nothing.

Alright, trying to talk with an New Yorkish/Rosie Perez accent was weird. But there are some great things to appreciate in black culture, and I appreciate them. I’m still white, though, last time I checked. And that’s ok, too!

It is wonderful and enriching for us to be exposed to the diverse array of beautiful people, music, food, experience, and culture the globe has to offer. The world would be a boring, grey, meh kind of place if we were all the same.

That being said, I want to share a video of a British influencer who is taking his love of all things Korean to a whole ’nother level. I would go so far as to say I wouldn’t recommend it.

This makes me really sad. I think he is desperate to belong. Or for attention. Not sure which. But it’s probably at least partially the first one, because we all have struggled with wanting to belong.

This man’s identity crisis brought him to a place of such desperation he was willing to undergo surgery to try to feel more at home in his body. The problem is, though, he still isn’t Korean. He never will be. He is a Brit who loves Korean culture. I doubt his efforts to mask his true self will leave him better off than where he started.

He is not searching for his identity in the right place.

God has already given us our identity. He makes each of us exactly who we are supposed to be. He makes some men and he makes some women. He makes some of us Africans, some Greeks, some Irish, some Korean. He makes no mistakes.

He makes no mistakes.

Our true identity is “Imago Dei”. Human beings of every skin color and both genders are made in the image of God. We are created to be in relationship with him; to worship him alone and to find our worth and purpose and identity as his children, who will live forever with him in heaven. It is there and only there we find truth. It is the only place we are secure.

When people throw God out of their lives (or schools, or countries), there is a void. And we all know nature hates a vacuum. I also hate vaccuums, but for a different reason.

People try to fill that void with all sorts of things. They search for identity; a sense of love, acceptance, and belonging. What they turn to for a sense of wholeness may be as crazy as plastic surgery to create the illusion they are someone else. Or they could try to find satisfaction in status or relationships or careers or drugs or pornography, or politics, or social causes, or whatever.

Some of these things have more obvious consequences than others, but what is painfully clear is that people are lost, broken, and searching for something, anything, to answer the questions “Who am I” and “Where do I belong?”

The answer to those questions is found only in the hope we have in Jesus Christ: the gospel. The truth that God, the one who created us, has a good plan to make us whole again. He has done it for me. He will do it for you.

Your true identity is not found in anything this world has to offer. Even good things. All else is secondary to who we are in Christ, and that must inform everything else we identify with here on earth.

Genesis 1:27 ~ “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Psalm 139: 13-14 ~ “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”

Ephesians 2:10~ “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

John 1:12~ “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,”

Jeremiah 31:3 ~ “…I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.”

You can stop searching now. Here is wholeness. Here is purpose. Here is peace.

You are here- perfectly imperfect YOU!- because God created you. You are one of a kind . You are loved, and you are known.

We will either be found in Christ or we will wander aimlessly the rest of our lives trying to find the missing piece anywhere else.

Many people will choose the latter. Don’t be one of them.

Angela