Human nature naturally encourages people to inquire about their identity and ask “Where do I belong?” For many the search lasts a lifetime, and is certainly more pervasive in youth. As young people age and grow, this question becomes more important to their choices and actions they take. In contemprary culture, with the pervasiveness of the nuclear family diminishing, people will identify themselves by race, ethnic group, nation, gender and many more biological, human or social concepts. Corroborating this point is the increasing phenomenon of tattooing among millennials in Western Culture. The search for identity and the construction of self-idenity is found in the copius increase in tattoos among youth the past ten years. People want to discover who they are and if they cannot find the answer, they create their own. For those interested in becoming a Christian, God will offer eternal salvation and identity for you as well: “for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3: 27-28). Therefore, the contemporary discourse on gender, race and social status is resolved when you are adopted into the family of Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of God is a spiritual realm whereby earthly distinctions are made subservient to the demands of the Kingdom: “As an evangelizer, Christ first of all proclaims a kingdom, the kingdom of God; and this is so important that, by comparison, everything else becomes “the rest,” which is “given in addition.” Only the kingdom therefore is absolute and it makes everything else relative. The Lord will delight in describing in many ways the happiness of belonging to this kingdom (a paradoxical happiness which is made up of things that the world rejects), the demands of the kingdom and its Magna Charta, the heralds of the kingdom, its mysteries, its children, the vigilance and fidelity demanded of whoever awaits its definitive coming” (Evangeli Nuntiandi (8) Pope Paul VI).
Where Do You Belong?
