Christians have often hoped for a time when our racial and economic differences would cease, when in Christ we would all be indistinguishable. Such impulses are earnest but fundamentally misguided.
Many such interpretations emerge from a fervent hope that the specters of racism, sexism, and myriad other destructive “isms” would no longer bind us to cycles of violence and hate. Many such interpretations emerge from a misreading of texts like Galatians 3:28. Such readings imagine that becoming Christians means becoming all the same in all ways. There are no ethnic differences between us (“no longer Jew or Greek”), no differences of class and status between us (“no longer slave or free”), no gendered differences between us (“no longer male and female”).
Nothing could be further from the truth.