Finding Identity (Part 1)
What is the first thing you might say about yourself when being introduced with a stranger? After a firm handshake and an exchange of names, what would you say if the person in question stated, “Well, tell me about yourself!” Would you lead with your career? Your hobbies? Maybe where you live or what local church or organization you belong to? Whatever your response would be, it would likely offer a small clue to one of the most important questions we face as human beings,
Who Am I?
This is not a new question, people of all cultures, races, and ethnicities have been attempting to answer this question for as long as people have walked the earth. Perhaps a better examination of this question might beckon, “What do I find my identity in?” The truth of the matter is we could place our identities in almost anything imaginable. However, I would like to examine three specific areas that I believe we might most often be tempted to find our identities in, namely our careers, our relationships, and even our sexuality.
As Americans, finding identity in our careers might be a most commonplace answer and understanding. America is a capitalist country, after all, built on the ideals of hard work and loyalty. As such, for several generations, the question of who we are was most often answered by what we did. I am a doctor, I am a teacher, I am a stay-at-home mother, etc. While career may be one component of who we are, let us ask ourselves, am I more than my job? Does being a teacher define every intricate and complex aspect of who I am as a person? Does being a stay-at-home mother fully capture the complete essence of your personhood? While careers and life decisions may be things we are proud of, they fall short of providing our identity. Many individuals who wrestle with this concept may find themselves lost, deprived, and empty when they are laid off, fired, or otherwise have their career identity taken away. Allow me to make a suggestion here; if the thing you find your identity in can be taken away from you, it isn’t a safe place to place or find your identity. This is the first truth I would like to expose here, that our identities are far too precious to be placed in something which can be removed or taken from us.
Another popular but also misleading place where we might like to find our identity is in our relationships. Oftentimes, well-intentioned people fall in love and enter into the covenant of marriage thinking, “This person is my whole world.” Now mind you, this is not always a conscious stream of thought, but if we are honest enough, we can admit that we may have thought that our spouse was the person who was supposed to fulfill us, and make us happy and content. But the truth is relationships, while beautiful, are also not a safe source in which to find our identity. Your significant other might seem like the most exciting person on earth when you’ve been dating for a couple of months, but what happens in year eight of marriage? Is your life completely fulfilled and without need? What about your relationship with your children? I wonder how many of us, perhaps not consciously, entered into parenting thinking or believing that our children would be the very thing that brings completion and fulfillment to our lives. That is until they lie, cheat, steal, blame others for their actions, defend their wrongdoing, and accuse us of not treating them properly. The script is flipped around quite quickly, it seems, when our identity is found in our relationships. A second truth must be spoken here; if we look to others to bring a sense of identity in our lives, we must face the reality that we cannot control other people, or how they will treat us. To place our identity in something so unpredictable as a relationship, will almost always lead to disappointment.
A third, and perhaps most commonplace area for adolescents today to search for and claim their identity, is in their sexuality. This is not to suggest that varying sexual identities are new to society today and did not exist long before then, but it is a very different thing for one to claim their entire identity, the very essence of who they are and how they define themselves, as somehow rooted in their sexuality. Regardless of one’s view on this topic, whether in support for or against, we must examine the difficulties that this idea presents. For those that suggest and believe that gender is fluid, we must understand that the implication of this is to suggest that one’s identity is inconsistent. In other words, who I believe I am can now change based on how I feel. This type of dangerous thinking is known as Emotional Reasoning, and it is a form of cognitive distortion. How I feel should not be the evidence of truth in my life, and on a deeper level here, it should not be the evidence of who I am as a person. Therefore, claiming my identity in my sexuality creates a recipe for disaster that leaves an individual stuck in a perpetual state of claiming, “This gender/sexuality/sex IS my identity,” all of the while feeling disjointed and disconnected from the reality that is my created sex. We must remember here, we are embodied beings; that is to say that we are creatures that possess both a physical body and a soul. Therefore, to attach my identity to something which one would potentially view as fluidly as one’s emotional status, all the while facing the reality of one’s physically created body, is madness. To choose to find my identity in my sexuality is to choose to place incredible value on something that wasn't designed to uphold that purpose. It would be like asking a small child to assume an important leadership role: the truth is they were not designed for that role, they cannot fulfill that role, and they will inevitably fail to provide stability in that role. A third truth, therefore, presents itself here, to find your identity in something as abused and misused as one’s sexuality, is to build a house on a foundation of sand. This house will ultimately fall, and likely will even fail to complete its construction as the continually added weight causes every inch of it to crumble…minute…by…minute.
The very question of identity, who we are, and how we define ourselves, is one which has been at the forefront of American culture for generations and currently creates daily strife in social media circles. Perhaps a portion of the reason this problem has lingered on for so long is due to the postmodern view known as relativism. Put simply, relativism suggests that all truth is relative, that is to say, it is a belief that there exists no ultimate truth, and that truth is relative to the individual. Under the umbrella of relativism, I can claim to be anyone or anything and no one can “prove me wrong” because my truth is, well, my truth. This insanity has opened the doors for all sorts of confusion, misinformation, and ultimately an emptiness that fails to provide adequate answers to one of the most innately human questions of all. Every person who has ever lived has asked the question, “Who Am I?” How we answer that question might ultimately be one of the most important decisions we make.
