Identity: What Defines You?

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“It’s hopeless.” 

“I have no choice.”

“My father is going to kill me.”

For a period of a couple weeks, I kept hearing these phrases verbalized by my then 3-year-old. She has quite the imagination. She is also quite the little sponge. These and other phrases did not sound consistent with the values we are raising her with. They definitely didn’t sound like things I was going around saying. Though I corrected or adapted these phrases when I heard them, I finally pressed in to see where they were coming from.

“Hon, where did you hear that?” I asked.

And as she tried to explain, I realized these were lines from a couple of the animated movies we let her watch. Animated movies I grew up with! 

This isn’t about any a conviction against entertainment or a commentary on parenting, by any means. 

It is about how so much of the seemingly innocuous entertainment that we consume is laced with ideas and concepts that run counter to Kingdom culture. It is about how, just like my “spongy” daughter, we pick up ideas over time that begin to define our thinking, without our so much as realizing it’s happening. It’s about how we define ourselves. It’s about identity.

I want to take you to John 5 and one of strangest questions recorded coming from Jesus. There, at a large pool that was associated with superstition, and surrounded by a significant number of diseased, disabled, and down-and-out people, Jesus zeroes in on one guy. We don’t know his specific ailment. But here are two words that describe his condition in the text: “invalid” and “sick.” By reading between the lines, here are some additional observations: he made excuse for the lack of change in his condition; he believed he was a victim to his circumstances and surroundings; he couldn’t walk; and he had lived with all of this for 38 years. 

The text explains that when he saw man, Jesus knew he had been there for a long time. I can’t help but imagine what might have given it away. Was he dirty? Lethargic? Did his anguish loom as a dark cloud overhead? Maybe he was too at ease?

And then for Jesus’s head-scratcher of a question: “do you want to be healed?” 

Duh. 

And yet…

For 38 years, this man had existed in this condition, in this identity. For 38 years he probably felt shame about his status, his condition, about being different, about needing so much help, about being dependent on others. Or maybe he expected help from others. For 38 years he likely grew a measure of comfort in the role that his life had handed him, resulting in feeling he had no choice, resulting in victimhood. I’m not saying his life was pleasant. I’m not saying he chose it. I’m saying he had accepted it.

Jesus wasn’t asking this man if he wanted to be healed. Jesus was asking this man was willing to trade in his identity for a new one. Jesus was asking this man if he was ready to accept the responsibility that would come with a change in identity. 

Ever heard of secondary gain? Secondary gain is the hidden benefit or reward that we find buried within a bad situation. Secondary gain is one factor that can keep us in a bad situation. However, this gain tends to be more or less illusory. A mere shadow of a much better way.

Though the man answered Jesus’s question from his victimhood – “I have no one to bring me to the pool when it is stirred up” – Jesus followed this excuse by the command to “get up, take up you mat, and walk. “

The man was healed instantly.

I’m curious about the fraction of time that existed between this man’s healing and his decision to obey. 

Think about it. This man’s choice had been restored. Two minutes prior, if someone had told him to get up and go, the man would have had no ability to comply. But with his healing, he now had a choice. He had a choice to leave behind victimhood, to leave behind an identity 38 years in the making. Healing meant a whole new lifestyle. Wholeness meant a brand-new identity.

I’ve got to ask, what defines you?

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, wrote:

The more we get what we now call “ourselves” out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become…In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to “be myself” without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires…What I call “My wishes” become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts or even suggested to me by devils. Eggs and alcohol and a good night’s sleep will be the real origins of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite to me in the railway carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideas. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call “me” can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

I wish I could read that to my 3-year-old, but I don’t think she would comprehend.

I see culture struggling with identity in severely significant ways. I could share so many theories on why this is. Our individualism strips us of the relationships that could define us. The high commodity of achievement tells us that we are what we can contribute, and that only the best counts for anything. Denying sanctity of life to others inadvertently causes us to strip our own lives of value. We define ourselves by comparison. We define ourselves by our inclinations, appetites, interests, or our “bellies,” as the apostle Paul would say. These are just some of the ways that we are struggling with identity.

And some of it is much more subtle. Consider the messages barraging you on a moment-by-moment basis. What is social media telling you about who you are? What you should be? What are advertisements telling you that you are missing? How are they shaping your understanding of yourself? What is entertainment conveying to you? These messages are usually so implicit that we hardly even register them on a conscious level. 

Romans 12:2 says, don’t be conformed to this world! And offers an alternate approach: be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Change the way you think. It will change the way you live. It will allow you to discern what is truth and what is false, what is real and what is counterfeit, what God says about who you are and what the world says about who you are. 

Culture will define us. Unless we change the way we think. 

We find this same idea in Philippians 3:17-21 (ESV, emphasis mine) as well:

17 Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. 18 For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

Paul lists how enemies of the cross define themselves: by their appetites, by elevating what is shameful, by their transient and temporal meditations. But when Paul contrasts enemies of the cross with those whose hope is in Christ, identity is defined by relationships:

• “Our citizenship”: suggestive of a group or community; belonging to, or relating to, a place
• Awaiting a Savior: the word savior suggests a relationship between the one being saved and the one who saves
• Transform: what we will be is yet to be seen; but Jesus is the prototype, by whose power we too will be transformed
• To subject all things to himself: we are subject to him, and our identity is based in the power of our relationship to him

Go back to John 5.

The healing of this man resulted in a bit of upheaval. Not only had Jesus healed on the Sabbath – something Jewish religious rulers tried to prevent him from doing – but he attributed this act to working with his Father, thereby defining his relationship, his identity. The religious leaders weren’t okay with this. But here we have another key to understanding our identity rightly, from a Kingdom culture, from a Biblical foundation: our relationship to God and how we think about it is the crux of our identity.

A.W. Tozer wrote in, The Knowledge of the Holy, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us…Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.” Tozer is addressing our understanding of our relationship to God. How we see Him, how we see ourselves in relationship to him will impact every facet of who we are.  

Healthy identity really has very little to do with us. If you’ve taken a psychology class, you might recall Erik Erikson’s psychosocial developmental stages. Each stage has a crisis. In each crisis is a conflict between two poles. These crises must be successfully negotiated before moving onto the next stage. When they are successfully negotiated, a virtue emerges. The adolescent stage and its crisis is “identity versus identity confusion.” Social relationships are vital in this stage because relationships define us and teach us how to be true to who we are, to be authentic. The virtue that accompanies success in this stage is fidelity. Fidelity is two-fold. It means the ability to be true to yourself, confident and sure in your values, beliefs, preferences, opinions. And it means that by this quality of self-fidelity, you have the ability to engage in relationships with people who are not identical to you. You can relate to others because you know who you are. 

Though I still let my daughter watch the animated classic not named above, we now have some scripts that we say often around here. Things like, “we can do hard things,” “nothing is impossible,” “we can ask for help” and “we will always love you.” We’re affecting the way she thinks. We’re setting the course for her relationships. What could that look like in your life?

Going Deeper

• A super concise Biblical theology on identity: 
  • Creation. You were created by God and called good. Before sin entered the world, the only “not good” element of creation was Adam’s aloneness (Gen 2:18). So God created Eve. And he called their relationship, “very good.” God existed in relational unity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), and from that he created us to engage in relationship as well (with Him, with others) (see Gen 1:26-27). 
  • Sin entered. Sin created relational separation between mankind (us) and God. We were born into a sin nature. And we too sin. Romans 3:23 tells us that all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. 
  • Perfect Sacrifice. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice to make us right with God and restore relationship between us and God. Where current culture will tell you, “you are enough,” the reality is, you will never be enough. But that’s okay! Because Jesus was and is enough. (See Hebrews 9.) God’s plan for the redemption and restoration of humanity has at its center his goodness and love for you.
  • Humility. You receive this perfect sacrifice by believing that Jesus is who he said he is, the Son of God. And by recognizing you are who he says you are: broken, sinful, human. Jesus’ sacrifice reconciles you to God, but you are still human and he is still God. He is the potter. You are clay in his hands. (See Jeremiah 18:1-11). 
• How have you identified yourself in the past? How would you like to identify yourself now? What barriers exist to embracing that new identity?
• Does any kind of secondary gain keep you stuck in a bad situation? Envision a life without this gain, without the bad situation, but also envision the best-case scenario, the ideal. Is the secondary gain enough to keep you from that ideal? 
• Examine the messages that you internalize. What are they? Where do they come from? Do they line up with Kingdom culture, with truth? If not, contradict them. Create new scripts, new mantras!