This guide asks one question and turns it toward you: what is actually setting your worth? Your race and your people’s history may be doing it, or the approval of others, either people who look like you or people who do not. The answer Scripture gives is that God sets it. Your heritage is a real gift from him, worth learning and honoring, but it was never built to carry the weight of your worth. When it is asked to carry that weight, it turns from a gift into an idol.
The goal is not to win a debate about race and faith. It is to help you notice where your worth is anchored on an ordinary day and to practice moving it back to God without walking away from your roots. You can work through it alone over a week or with a group in two sittings. Bring paper and a pen. Some exercises ask you to write things you may not want to say out loud, and none of them require you to share.
Begin with an honest inventory
Before reading any Scripture, find out what you already lean on. Divide a page into three columns and label them My people and our history, Other people’s approval and God.
Under each heading, finish this sentence as many times as is true for you: I feel like I matter when… Write what you actually feel on an average Tuesday, not what you think a Christian ought to write. One person might write when someone from my family’s world says I haven’t forgotten where I came from. Another might write when white coworkers treat me as one of the competent ones, or when I know more Black history than the people around me. Leave a column empty if it is empty.
Then look at the page and answer two observation questions for yourself:
- Which column filled up fastest?
- Which column, if someone took it away tomorrow, would leave you feeling most exposed?
Keep this page. You will return to it at the end.
Read Paul’s record of his own heritage
Paul had more ethnic and religious pedigree than almost anyone in the early church, and in Philippians 3 he lists it. Read Philippians 3:3-8 slowly, twice.
He starts by saying believers “rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3). Then he admits he has more reason than most to boast: “If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more” (Philippians 3:4). Then comes the list. He was “Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee” (Philippians 3:5).
Read it in context before you apply it. Paul is writing against teachers who said Gentile believers needed circumcision and law-keeping to stand right with God. So the flesh he refuses to trust is a whole system of standing: lineage, ritual and personal achievement offered as the grounds of acceptance. His verdict is direct: “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (Philippians 3:7).
Now notice what Paul does not do. He does not pretend his heritage is fake. He states it with precision, down to the tribe. Elsewhere he still claims it with affection: “For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin” (Romans 11:1). He grieves so deeply for his people that he writes, “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3).
Hold both of those together. Paul still knows his people, names them and loves them. What he refuses is to let them be his confidence, the thing that makes him acceptable before God. His heritage moves from ground to gift.
Observation prompts, before you go on:
- Underline every word in Philippians 3:3-8 that describes trust, gain or loss. What exactly is being counted as loss: the facts of Paul’s birth, or something he was doing with them?
- Compare Philippians 3:5 with Romans 11:1. What stays the same in how Paul describes himself? What changes in how he uses that description?
Two more places where worth gets set
Your inventory had two columns besides God. Scripture speaks to both.
On origins, read Acts 17:26-27. Paul tells a Greek audience that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26). Your people, your place and your history are not accidents. Then look at the purpose clause that follows: “That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him” (Acts 17:27). The nations exist under God’s design, and that design points beyond themselves to him. Heritage is honored here because it comes from God, and it is aimed at God.
On approval, read John 5:44. Jesus asks his critics, “How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?” The issue is not that people’s opinions exist. It is that a person who lives on honor from people finds it hard to receive honor from God. Paul says something similar in Galatians 1:10: “for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”
Approval can come from either direction. Some believers are starved for acceptance from the majority culture. Others are ruled by the fear of being called a sellout by their own community. Both are forms of seeking honor “one of another.” Ask yourself which direction pulls on you harder.
What B.J. Thompson saw in people hungry for roots
In a conversation with Lisa Fields on the Jude 3 Project podcast, B.J. Thompson, who makes disciples on college campuses with the Navigators at Morehouse, described a movement he had watched grow, made up of groups like the Nation of Islam, Hebrew Israelites, Egyptology and the Five Percenters. He did not mock the people drawn to them. He named what they were reaching for:
it is a group of people who are grasping for a desire to be affirmed historically with real roots in spirituality.
That sentence describes a desire, not a foolish one. Thompson traces part of it to a real absence. He says many people “learn history for the sake of a test,” and he makes the loss specific by asking Lisa Fields where her last name came from. She answers that it came from the slave master. His response: “we’ve been so deprived of our ethnic origins that we can only refer historically to slavery.”
Thompson also says that when people see a truth and the church stays silent about it, “It is just like a bad breakup.” Trust gets scarred. He then gives the general principle behind all of it: “we all desire to be affirmed.”
Here is where his account changes how you read your inventory. If the hunger for affirmation is universal, the question is never whether you have it. The question is what you let answer it. A movement that offers you a glorious past in exchange for Christ is answering a real hunger with a false foundation. A church that tells you to forget your history is ignoring the hunger altogether, and Thompson’s point is that ignored hunger does not go away.
His alternative keeps both truths standing. Speaking about Christians of different races, he says:
You are not a white man. I’m not a black man. Even though God gave us ethnic origins, positionally, we are brothers.
He adds right after, “I don’t have a lesser value than you.” God gave the origins. They are not erased. But the word positionally places worth where Paul placed it, in standing before God and in his family, not in lineage. Jude 3 holds the same order: before we are Black, or any other adjective, we are Christian. And because Christianity has deep and ancient African roots, Jude 3 holds that African and African-descended believers do not have to choose between their heritage and their faith.
Honoring your roots also has a boundary. Jude 3 affirms memory and honor of heritage and of those who came before, and does not affirm veneration of the dead or spiritual contact with them. Learning your great-grandmother’s name and story honors her. Praying to her asks her to be something God never made her.
The test: gift or ground?
Go back to your inventory. Take each line you wrote under the first two columns and put it through these four questions. Write a short answer beside each line.
- If this were insulted, what would happen? A gift that is insulted makes you grieve or push back. A ground that is insulted makes you feel your whole worth is under attack.
- Does it make me rank people? Notice whether this item ever leads you to feel above someone, or below them.
- Does it lead me to thank God, or to prove something? Paul’s heritage in Romans 9 moves him to love. His heritage in his old life moved him to confidence in himself.
- Could I lose it and still be secure before God? Answer this slowly. It is the question Philippians 3:7 answers.
Most people find that the same item can work both ways depending on the day. Your family’s history can make you thankful on Sunday and defensive on Monday. That is not failure. It is information. The aim is to catch the moment a gift starts to bear weight it cannot hold.
A practice for the coming week
Thompson’s counsel to listeners included this: “study history for yourself. Don’t put the onus of knowing all of these things on one individual.” He also told people to “come as a learner.” This week’s practice puts both into action, aimed at honoring your roots without letting them become your ground.
First, learn one piece of your own history as an adult. Pick something specific: where your family lived three generations ago, the history of your surname, the story of a church your family attended, or the early African church in Ethiopia, Egypt or North Africa. Read from a source you can check. Spend at least an hour on it across the week.
Second, notice your response as you read. After each session, write one sentence about what the history did inside you. Did it lead you toward pride, toward bitterness, toward gratitude, or toward grief? None of these is forbidden. Grief over what was stolen from a family line is honest. Watch for the moment the history starts sounding like proof that you matter more than someone else, or that you can only matter if you know enough of it.
Third, close each session by handing it back. Name what you learned to God as something he gave, using your own words. Some people will want to pray. Others may simply write one line: This is part of what you gave me, and you are where my worth comes from.
Fourth, have one conversation as a learner. Ask someone whose ethnic history differs from yours a real question about their family or people, and listen without correcting. Lisa Fields said in the same conversation, “Stereotypes are broken by just conversation.” She also said “you have to have grace for the conversation,” because people trying to learn will sometimes say something clumsy. Give that grace, and ask for it.
If you are leading a group
Split this into two sittings. Use the first for the inventory, Philippians 3 and the other passages. Use the second, a week later, for Thompson’s contribution, the gift-or-ground test and reports from the practice.
Do not ask anyone to read their inventory aloud. Invite people to share one observation about it if they choose, such as which column filled fastest, without the details. Some people in the room may have been told their Blackness was unwelcome in church. Others may have been called traitors to their people for following Jesus. Both experiences belong in the room, and neither should be fixed in a sentence.
Watch for two easy errors in discussion. One is treating any interest in heritage as suspicious. The other is treating any critique of ethnic-roots movements as an attack on Black history. Philippians 3 and Romans 9 together rule out both. If grief or anger over racial harm surfaces, give it room. If someone is carrying more than the group can hold, encourage them toward a pastor or a trained counselor.
Questions for discussion
- In Philippians 3, Paul counts his pedigree as loss but still names it precisely. What would it look like for you to name your heritage precisely without leaning your worth on it?
- Which kind of approval pulls harder on you: acceptance from the majority culture, or loyalty from your own community? How does John 5:44 read differently depending on your answer?
- Thompson says people drawn to ethnic-roots movements are grasping to be “affirmed historically with real roots in spirituality.” Where have you seen that hunger answered well, and where have you seen it answered badly?
- What did your church, school or family teach you about your history, and what did they leave out? How has that silence or teaching shaped where you look for worth?
- Acts 17:26-27 says God set the nations and their places so that people would seek him. How does that purpose change the way you think about your own origins?
- When you ran the gift-or-ground test, which item surprised you? What would change in your week if that item became a gift again?
Return to your first page
At the end of the week, take out the inventory you wrote at the start. Do not rewrite it. Read it as if a friend had written it, and ask one question: what has moved? Perhaps nothing has, and you can see more clearly why. Perhaps a line from the first column now belongs in a different place, still yours and still precious, but no longer holding you up.
Then, under the column marked God, write one sentence that you could say on a day when your people are disrespected and the approval you wanted does not come. Carry that sentence with you. It is what Paul had when he counted gain as loss, and still called himself a son of Benjamin.