Christians struggle with issues of identity and self-worth. Thankfully, there’s a three-step process for re-centering our identity on Christ.
As a lecturer for Houston Baptist University’s Honors
College, I have the privilege of shepherding each new freshman class through
the Iliad and Odyssey. In the former epic,
Achilles, the greatest soldier in the history of Western literature, suffers
something of an existential identity crisis as he questions who he is, what his
purpose is, and whether life has any meaning. In the end, he makes peace with
himself and his community, but only by returning to the narrow parameters that
define the good life, the good man, and the good society in the microcosm of
the epic.
Within the context of the Iliad, the resolution
is both powerful and satisfying, but it does not resolve the deeper question
that all people must answer: not “How do I know I have value as a Greek warrior
living in the Mycenaean Bronze Age?” but “How do I know I have intrinsic value
apart from my profession, my gifts, or my family relations?” After all, we can
lose our jobs, become physically incapable of using our gifts, and watch
helplessly as those we love are carried off by violence, disease, or
inescapable old age.
Surely, an identity that rests solely upon skills, awards,
or people that can be suddenly and irrevocably taken away is tenuous at best.
There must be a more stable foundation on which to build. Thankfully, the
Christian gospel provides just such an unshakable foundation: that the God who
created us thought us of such value that he not only sent his Son to die for us
but sent him at the very moment when we were the most rebellious and unlovable (Romans
5:8).
Given this great declaration of God’s unconditional love
and our inestimable value, one might think that Christians would not struggle
with issues of identity and self-worth. Yet struggle we do, particularly in the
face of an incessant media onslaught that tells us we cannot be happy,
successful, or even fully human unless we use a certain product, look a certain
way, or measure up to a certain standard. Rather than define ourselves by
Christ’s love for us, we allow society to define our identity in innumerable
ways, all of which run us ragged and leave us empty.
A Much-Needed Antidote
Enter Identity Theft: Reclaiming the Truth of Who
We Are in Christ, a simple but profound book that offers a much-needed
antidote to the angst and confusion of our times. Edited by Melissa Kruger, an
author, speaker, and editor for The Gospel Coalition, Identity Theftbrings
together ten incisive, accessible essays from evangelical women that combine
solid biblical exegesis with sound, common-sense advice. Though each of the
essays is free-standing, framed by the life experiences and particular
interests and emphases of its author, nine of the ten are structured around a
specific three-step process.
Kruger describes those steps as follows in her introduction:
Identity theft: Expose our false notions of identity.
Identity truth: Understand the biblical truth of our
identity in Christ.
Identity transformed: Reflect on what it looks like to live
in our new (and true) identity.
While most of us would like to jump ahead to the
transformation part, we cannot assume our true and full identity in Christ
before first seeing through the false identity thrust upon us by society and
then searching the Scriptures to determine what exactly it is that Christ
desires to do in and through us.
In order to set the stage for this threefold process by
which we can reclaim, and then strengthen and mature, our God-given identities
from a world that would steal, twist, and pervert them, Jen Wilkin offers an
opening essay built around a different triad. Wilkin, a popular Bible teacher
whose books include Women of the Word, reminds us that we do not
immediately become perfect Christians the moment we are saved. As she
succinctly phrases it, Christian growth proceeds through three stages:
salvation, which sets us free from the penalty of sin; sanctification, which
sets us free from the power of sin; and glorification, which sets us free from
the presence of sin. Only by understanding and working our way through this
process can we hope to avoid what she identifies as the false freedoms of
license, legalism, and escapism.
On the basis of this foundation, writer Hannah Anderson,
author of Made for More, takes up the key biblical doctrine that we
were created in the image of God and “are called to show forth the glory,
power, and might of our King.” Alas, she argues, we too often “confuse our
created identity with God’s identity as our Creator.” That is to say, we
succumb to the temptation of the serpent in Genesis 3, believing that we can
and should be like God rather than be his representative. When
we do that, we become easy prey to the media’s siren song of self-actualization
apart from obedience to our Creator.
How can we escape from this temptation? By understanding
that when “Jesus willingly took on the limits of our human identity, when he
became obedient to the Father, he restored our true identity as image bearers.”
Only as we realize, accept, and embody this truth can God shatter our false
identity and replace it with a transformed identity modeled on that of his Son.
Which leads naturally to the essay by Courtney Doctor,
author of From Garden to Glory. What we truly long for, writes
Doctor, is to know that we are God’s beloved child, “to know, and I mean really
know, that [we’re] loved with a love that is so steadfast, so safe, so pure, so
good, and so abundant that [we] can rest deeply in it.” While the devil seeks
to convince us that we are slaves who must “work, and work hard, to secure and
sustain the Lord’s love,” or orphans who are abandoned and alone, or
illegitimate children who don’t belong, Christ promises that he has
irreversibly adopted us into his family and that we can rest safe and secure in
our new identity.
Children we are, but also saints, argues Kruger, highlighting
a biblical truth that should inspire humility rather than pride. Contrary to
popular perception among believers and non-believers alike, the fact that we
continue to struggle with sin offers proof that we are saints rather than
sinners. “As a saint, we’re uncomfortable with sin,” writes Kruger. “There’s a
fight going on within us. While we may conclude the battle waging in our hearts
points to the fact we’re sinners, it actually points to the fact we’re saints.
The Spirit awakens our heart to do battle.”
Jasmine Holmes, who teaches humanities at a classical
school, cautions us not to confuse being a saint with having a Type-A
personality. While “our culture pretends to loathe, but secretly loves ... the
control freak,” the Bible makes it clear that “true fruitfulness is found only
by abiding in Christ” as the branch abides in the vine. Meditating on the good
wife described in Proverbs 31, a portrait that too often makes Christian women
feel pressure to exhibit Type-A traits, Holmes offers this sage advice: “It’s
not a point-by-point guide to wifehood, but a picture of obedience expressed in
all different aspects and seasons of life. ... It’s not a picture of a specific
woman, but a passage meant to draw us into deeper reliance on Christ as we
strive to be faithful in all of our duties at home and abroad.”
Pressing Forward
As I hope this passage suggests, Identity Theft is
a book that, though written by and targeted for women, has just as much to
teach men who have ears to hear. Indeed, most male readers will, if they let
themselves, be especially challenged by the three chapters that call us to be
active members of the church body, worshipers of God rather than self, and
citizens who long for their true home.
“Though the world would tell us that church is an option,
an irrelevance, or even an obstacle,” explains Megan Hill, author of Praying
Together, “the church is essential to who we are.” Yes, our identity rests
in Christ, but that does not mean we were made to be autonomous individuals cut
off from community. Indeed, when we do cut ourselves off from our place in the
Body of Christ, we are more likely to fall prey to a subtle temptation that
Lindsey Carlson, who teaches and disciples women through her writing and public
speaking, exposes in her chapter on worship.
We may claim our compulsion to perform is done only for the
name of Christ, but as Carlson observes, we “also want to be recognized for
these accomplishments for our own sake. We want to be praised for
our unique insight, brilliant creativity, selfless sacrifice, and dogged
persistence. Sought out for our excellence or expertise. We
may not want to admit it, but we want to be worshiped. To that end,
we’ve become public-relations managers tirelessly crafting our own lives into
personal ad-campaigns to sell the product of ourselves.”
Needless to say, this temptation, though it has been with
us since Eden, has been greatly magnified by a social-media world that pushes
and prods us to define our own identities as we see fit, without giving thought
either to our essential natures or our familial and communal commitments. I
hope we will see more books like Identity Theft over the next
decade. We need them if we are to stay the course, forsaking the false
identities that lie behind and pressing forward to the transformed identity
that awaits us.
Louis Markos is professor of English and
scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University, where he holds the Robert
H. Ray Chair in Humanities. His books include Atheism
on Trial: Refuting the Modern Arguments Against God(Harvest House), From
Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics (IVP
Academic), and On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with
Tolkien and Lewis (Moody).
BOOK TITLE
Identity Theft:
Reclaiming the Truth of our Identity in Christ
AUTHOR
Melissa Kruger
PUBLISHER
The Gospel Coalition
RELEASE DATE
June 1, 2018
PAGES 151
PRICE $14.39
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