Musing 39

One of the starkest realities of my generation is that the whole “go find yourself” thing exposes how slippery the notion of identity can be for people.

As Americans, we often tie our identity to our profession (for better or worse) and when we meet friends of friends, we identify ourselves by how we are connected to the group (ie, “I’m X’s Husband”, or “I’m Y’s cousin”, etc).

But because this era has done everything it can to embrace secularism and throw off the larger story of creation, we have seen the consequences- by detaching ourselves from the big picture, we lose ourselves to the void that is created. There is no orienting of our lives, and so we now have to find that anchoring.

But we were not created to make our own anchor. And outside of God, whatever we make our ultimate authority of life will fail at some point. Creaturely things were not intended to bear the weight of all our soul’s burdens.

Yes, we should well use the material blessings we have, and we should be active in society (even before the Fall, God said that it was NOT good for man to be alone!), but as good as those things are (and even a means of comfort in difficult times) they are insufficient to root our identity in.

And we see the consequences of it all over our society. People giving in into nihilism, buying into delusional thinking, the acceleration of the idolatry of politics. The rise of so many niche groups that, despite not being overtly religious, take on religious elements because of how ferociously people cling to the identity they find in these groups, as evidenced by the extreme offense taken when even genuine criticism is leveled at those groups. And these groups can be as (relatively) innocuous as Disney Adults, but it quickly gets dark.

John Calvin right said our hearts are idol factories. And in a world where society, both at large and in much of the professing church, does not give a cohesive picture of why we’re here, it’s understandable that the idol factories are doing overtime and causing havoc across society. Especially with the rise of the internet where people can easily find an idol they resonate with and let that resonance encourage their own sin and idolatry.

And so, how do we come back from that.

First is to acknowledge where we ourselves have unintentionally let the secular world unduly impact our thinking and replace the void with God. God is who we root ourselves in.

Second, as part of that reorienting, we think through how our theology impacts all areas of life and our understanding of purpose that God has given us. The neo-Calvinists of the late 19th/early 20th centuries were phenomenal at bringing theology out of the ivory tower and bringing it to the streets and homes.

Third, we meditate on the person of Jesus and what Scripture tells us about who He is and what that means for us to be grounded as humans. Jesus was the only truly perfect man and the perfect image of the invisible God. And so He models the ideal human in all aspects because He shows us what sinless humanity looks like.

Fourth, we remember that it is ok to lose ourselves for Christ’s sake. If we “find ourselves” apart from Christ, it is our loss, because that discovery will not stand the test of eternity. But losing ourselves for Christ’s sake is nothing but gain.