Monday, 12 May 2008

• identity

  When things are going well in life, it's easy for a person to define him/herself by the good things that are happening.  Whether it is having an Ivy League education, a respectable career, an awesome apartment, a new marriage, beautiful and clever children, or heck, being a Mac user - these are the things that some of us might want included in our biographies (or Wikipedia pages) someday.

  But how do we define ourselves in light of failures? Or just other circumstances that don't fit in with the aforementioned picture?  What if a person didn't graduate from college? Or isn't considered professionally "successful?" How about if someone is single? Or "worse" yet, a single mom? with a special-needs child?  Is that person's identity confined to those circumstances?

  Last week, I came up against a bit of a bump in my future plans and it really threw me for a loop.  I was looking at my future and thinking, "Who am I if I'm not a career woman? Or an aspiring graduate student?  What am I doing with my life if I'm not increasing my salary or adding letters and titles to the end of my name on business cards?"  This may sound silly or overly dramatic, but I think a lot of us have similar thoughts and questions from time to time.  I happen to have them more often than not, and sometimes fear that my entire life will be defined by the "bad" things of my past; that I'll just be a girl who almost failed college, hasn't married, is working a temp job, and still has daddy-issues.

  But I realized that even if I were a perfect student who went to medical school, married a goregous surgeon, had beautiful kids, and came from a wealthy, loving, and Christian family, I'd still never find my true identity in these circumstances.

  Tim Keller makes a great point in his book, The Reason for God, that we all worship something, whether it's God or not.  He expands on this further, but what I took away from this point is that we all find our identity in that which we worship - career, family, money, sex, charitable works, etc.  And it's not that all these things are "evil" but they will all eventually change or fail us somehow.  When we worship God and place our entire identity in him, there is no way he will fail us.  He doesn't change himself or his mind about us.   He is constant and true and tells us right off the bat that we were created in his image (Gen 1:27), modeled after him - and that is who we are.  Everything else is just what we do or what's been done to us; our circumstances don't make up our identity.

  I have a feeling that the question of "Who am I?" will arise repeatedly as I continue to live out my life.  But no matter how I try to answer this question myself, God's answer will always be true and constant: Beloved, you are mine.

  • 11:17 PM
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