Chapter 3: Identity Crisis
What gives your life worth and importance?
Is it a job or a chosen career path? Could it be found in a relationship, hobby, or righteous cause?
Our experiences and environment certainly shape and influence us, but do they ultimately define who we are and give us meaning?
There may be no more provocative topic in the modern marketplace of ideas than that of personal identity. We are in fact, living in an era that champions the belief that humanity’s deepest virtues lie in the unfettered expression of one’s identity and that authenticity in the form of individually lived-out “truth” is its highest ideal.
Theologian Carl Trueman explores this cultural phenomenon in his insightful book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. According to Trueman, expressive individualism describes the notion that “each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.”
Author and pastor Tim Challies adds, “[Expressive individualism] leads to a world in which authenticity is achieved when a person’s inward feelings are fully acted out publicly while receiving the unanimous praise and affirmation of society.”i
In some ways, this quest for authentic expression might seem to uphold a commendable model of personal integrity as summed up in Shakespeare’s oft-quoted line from Hamlet,
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. ii
Though many may agree that authenticity is indeed preferable to hypocrisy, the deeper and more underlying issue at stake is the question of authority.
Who ultimately decides what is right and wrong?
Who rightfully determines how one should think, live, and speak?
Who holds authority over a person’s soul?
Jesus himself was not the least bit shy on this issue. In Matthew 28:18 he told his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”.
Again, in his high priestly prayer in John 17:2-3, Jesus acknowledged that the Father had given him “authority over all flesh, to give eternal life” that men would know “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Christians readily affirm that Jesus is God and that as such, he is not only the one who holds full authority over their mind body, and spirit (Acts 17:28, Mark 12:30), but he also determines their identity.
This sits at sharp odds with the prevailing culture and every major religion of our day because to know God is not just to believe that he is who he says he is. To know God is to ultimately come and die.
Just listen to Jesus’ own words to his disciples:
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Matthew 16:24
The stark pain of self-denial may lack the soft appeal of self-actualization, but what can we honestly say about a culture that has increasingly fixed its collective gaze upon the pool of Narcissus?
Has our love of self increased our love for others?
Do we see a growth of grace, charity, and mutual understanding across social and political divides or are we drowning and slipping ever further into the abyss of our own self-importance?
Where then do we look if all our inner pursuits for meaning are ultimately proven toxic?
Perhaps no instructions are more fitting than those delivered by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians:
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
Colossians 3:1-4
i Tim Challies, “Strange New World | Tim Challies,” www.challies.Com March 25, 2022, https://www.challies.com/book-reviews/strange-new-world/.
ii William Shakespeare, “Hamlet - Entire Play | Folger Shakespeare Library,” www.folger.Edu n.d., accessed November 10, 2023, https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/.