Identity After Inheritance

By Ryan McMillian

I. The Inherited Script

I heard the phrase "identity in Christ" early in my Christian walk. The concept was always there, even before I had language for it. Back then, it meant I was supposed to be like Jesus, that my personhood, my behavior, my way of interpreting the world should reflect Him. If I wanted to understand what a man was, I looked to Jesus. If I wanted to understand what a brother or a father was, I looked to Jesus. It was simple, almost formulaic: imitate Christ, and you will become who you're meant to be.

But now, years later, I find myself wondering if I missed something about what that phrase means. There are parts of me I never knew what to do with: the questioning, the introverted processing, the interior world I didn't have language for. I thought being "in Christ" meant I had to be different from what I was. I didn't know identity could include the parts of me that didn't fit the mold. I didn't know that "new creation" didn't mean "new personality." I didn't know that "your life is hidden with Christ in God" could mean that Christ holds even the parts of me I learned to hide.

Before Christ, I didn't have a working definition of identity at all. My life was predicated on my parents' words, mostly my mother's. "Listen to your mother. God gave you a mother for a reason." That was the framework. I didn't choose an identity; I inherited one. And like most inheritances, it came wrapped in both love and limitation.

My childhood gave me stability: a two-parent home, siblings to laugh with, a sense of work ethic, and a place to land when life got hard. It gave me safety in a world that was bigger than I understood. And it also shaped the way I interpreted myself, my worth, and my place in the world. It taught me how to survive, but not always how to be.

The spoken rules were clear: obey your parents. No cursing, no lying, no talking back. Speak when spoken to. Don't address elders unless they address you first. Behave in public and in private. Don't overconsume. Don't go back for seconds. Don't snack without permission. The overarching law was simple: behave yourself and obey.

The unspoken rules were even louder. Don't have emotions that make your parents uncomfortable. Don't have ideas that challenge their commands. Don't act in ways that might reflect poorly on them. Our identities outside of what was prescribed felt like threats to their sense of self. We learned early that our behavior was a mirror they watched closely.

Strength meant silence. Vulnerability meant weakness. "You're not a man" was a label thrown at my brother and me more than once. The disgust was not just in the words, but in the body language. Weakness wasn't discouraged; it was treated as something unacceptable.

I often wonder whether I was given room to explore my thoughts or emotions. I learned to suppress myself. I built an identity around stoicism and the projection of stability because I thought that was strength. I thought that was worthiness. And yet, despite all of that, my childhood also gave me a sense of belonging, a place to return to, a foundation to stand on. It was safety, and it was limiting. It was love, and it was constraint. Both are true.

II. The Muted Instrument

The same tension I felt inside my home met me again in the world, only now it had a racial shape. I learned early that being Black wasn't supposed to be a big deal, but it was. Not in a celebratory way, but in a cautionary one. Being Black meant you had to look a certain way, behave a certain way, and avoid confirming stereotypes. We had to overperform to be accepted. We had to not stand out.

In white spaces, which were almost every space, we were constantly warned. Don't act up in this white folks' store. Don't embarrass me in front of these white people. Don't make them think we're like "those" Black folks. White judgment became the standard. Black behavior became the liability.

The survival scripts were subtle but powerful. I learned to shapeshift, to mask, to suppress anything that might reveal my Blackness. I learned to mistrust Black expression. I learned that code-switching wasn't optional; it was necessary. Being Black wasn't going to help me, so I suppressed it.

This shaped my sense of self profoundly. I didn't trust my own voice. I became hypercritical. I became the tyrant in my own life. I punished myself for stepping outside the script. I learned not to like myself. I learned to second-guess everything.

Being Black was not gone, just muted. Like muting an instrument in a song, the melody remained, even if I couldn't hear it. And that muted part of me didn't stay quiet. It shaped how I reached for God, how I interpreted Scripture, and the kind of theology I gravitated toward.

Eventually, I realized that the faith I inherited was speaking to the same parts of me my childhood had taught me to silence.

The theology I inherited wasn't theology at all. It was a cult of personality, a deeply troubled woman projecting pain as divine authority. It wasn't doctrine; it was control. I learned to shrink under authority. I questioned myself constantly because I couldn't understand her sermons. I thought something was wrong with me.

The worldview I absorbed was a strange mix: colorblindness as holiness, free speech as biblical mandate, holiness as behavior. Being "set apart" meant performing purity, not receiving grace. Personal slights were justified as long as you were the pastor. Authority went unchecked.

I inherited assumptions I didn't know were assumptions. That holiness was behavioral. That I needed all the right answers. That self-expression was dangerous. That my upbringing was superior.

My early faith formed me into a person at war with himself. Vulnerability was weakness. Self-expression was rebellion.

When that framework merged with heavy-handed holiness teaching and later Reformed theology, it gave language to my questions but not space for my humanity. It gave clarity, but not wholeness. It helped, until it didn't.

It didn't have language for my internal wrestling. It didn't know what to do with my Blackness. When Black Reformed voices were resisted, something in me noticed. When every church felt the same, I recognized the pattern. When Christ and Blackness in the same sentence made people uneasy, I saw the limits.

And yet, even here, I don't blame my parents or my tradition. They gave what they knew. They offered what they had. But even sincere frameworks have blind spots. Even good gifts can wound when they are incomplete.

III. The Whole Creation

So let me be clear about what I'm not saying.

• I'm not saying my parents failed me.
• I'm not saying my childhood was only wounds.
• I'm not saying Blackness is ultimate.
• I'm not saying whiteness is the enemy.
• I'm not saying Reformed theology is harmful.
• I'm not saying Christ is secondary to culture.
• I'm not saying identity is self-created.
• I'm not saying my story is universal.
• I'm not saying I have all the answers.

What I am saying is this.

I am learning to hold tension without resolving it too quickly.

So when I talk about embracing Blackness without ideology, I mean acknowledging heritage and legacy as gifts, not threats. It means recognizing that my lineage carries resilience, strength, pain, and redemption. My Blackness doesn't need to be central, but it doesn't need to be erased. It can be acknowledged, challenged, and refined like everything else in life.

It belongs to God.

Seeing my embodiment as intentional means I am no longer passive. I am aware, informed, and choosing. I am no longer swept from one framework to another. I can care about my people without guilt. I can sit in tension without needing immediate resolution. I can believe that God made me this way on purpose.

And as I began to see that, something shifted internally. The parts of me I muted for years, my voice, my questions, my instincts, began to return.

Reclaiming my embodiment opened the door to reclaiming my interior world. These were never meant to be suppressed. They were meant to be formed. Self-reflection is not self-worship. It is the slow work of sanctification, the renewal of the mind.

As those muted parts returned, Christ took His rightful place at the center. Not as an idea to imitate, but as the One who holds the scattered pieces of me together.

Christ at the center means living for His kingdom, loving the people He has given me, and thanking Him for making me Black. It means seeing culture as a gift, not an idol. It means refusing to treat history as an enemy of God. It means believing that "every tribe and tongue" is not a threat to unity, but the fulfillment of it.

To reclaim this wholeness is to acknowledge that the wounds do not own me.

To no longer be owned by my wounds is liberation. It is curiosity without fear. It is reclaiming what was lost: relationship with God, deep faith, and healthy expression.

To be fully Christian and fully Black means recognizing that Christ is King, and He made me Black on purpose.

It means gratitude, not pride. It means design, not accident. It means believing that the God who formed me did not make a mistake, not in my story, not in my skin, not in my questions, not in who I am becoming.

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