Who Are You?
One
The Quest for Identity
Everybody in this culture is trying to figure out who they are. Identity is the big issue, gender identity, identity politics, the expression of identity, the formation of identity. How do you identify? Who or what do you identify as? Everybody is hyperfocused on their own unique identity, how to find it, how to cultivate it. But do you know where this crisis in identity has come from?
It’s actually come from a crisis in community. Because without a community, you really don’t have an identity.
Two
Twins at College
There was a university theology professor I know who began his class one year to find out that he had two identical twins taking his class. And of course, neither the teacher nor anyone else in the class could tell them apart.
So the teacher asked them, “So can your family members tell you apart?” And the twins answered, “Oh, of course. They don’t even think we look alike.” And the teacher said, “Exactly! That’s the relationship between identity and community. When you have no community, no one can appreciate your distinctive, unique, God-given identity. It’s only in community that what is special about each of us is able to emerge.”
And that means that if you try to live as an isolated individual, you are squelching, not cultivating, the unique identity that makes you you.
Three
Trinity – Identity in Relation
Our unique identity only emerges in relationship to others. This is not an accident or some fluke of nature. It’s because we’re made in God’s image and God is a Trinity.
Maybe you didn’t know this, but it’s a remarkable truth that the only thing that makes the Father a distinct person in God is His relationship with the Son and the Spirit. And the same goes for the Son and the Spirit. It’s not like the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit have some divine perfection, or some faculty, or some private resource that the other divine Persons don’t have. Their difference, one from the other, can only be understood in terms of their relationships with the other two persons. And we’re like them. Our difference, our character, our identity, can only be understood in terms of our relationship with other persons.
Which means when you cut off relationships, you’re losing your identity. And you’re resembling less the God who made you to be in His Trinitarian image.
Four
You lose your Identity outside of community
Maybe you’ve had the experience of being in an airport when you were traveling alone. You’re surrounded by waves and waves of people, of all kinds, going in all different directions. And none of them know you. None of them see anything about you except the most superficial characteristics. It can be a very destabilizing experience. You can feel ungrounded. And for most people, it’s not a pleasant experience.
Our communities, the close relationships we have, help define us. And when we’re separated from those relationships, even if we’re surrounded by a mob of people, we start to lose a sense of who we actually are. The way it feels to be traveling alone in a big airport – that’s the way increasing numbers of people feel every day: alone, adrift, with no sense of who they are.
That’s why there’s a crisis of identity today. That crisis can only be solved by community
Five
In which community will you find your identity?
We’ve said that people are desperate to find their identity but that because we are made in the image of the Trinitarian God, our identity can only be found in community. And so many people are trying to find their identities in community. But the “communities” in which they're looking for identity are often very superficial, truncated, or even dysfunctional: the LGBT community, online communities. They tie their identity to their ethnic community. Or to the community of fans for a given sports team or a given pop star. They identify as “Chiefs fans” or as “Swifties”
These communities are trivial at best. The only way to find a deep, meaningful community, a place where the person God made you to be, is in a community of faithful people striving for virtue. A community of people that care about what actually matters. A community of people that delight in what is actually beautiful. A community of people that think about what’s actually profound. That is where, by God’s grace, you can find yourself. Until then, you will remain lost.