Striving for personal wellness is a healthy goal, but what does that entail? Is personal wellness about clean eating? Regular movement? Emotional health? I would say that it’s all of these things and more. In my own efforts to focus on personal wellness, I’ve found that my sense of personal identity is foundational to my wellness. If I am not feeling secure in my sense of self, my personal well-being suffers. But for the Christian, how important is Christian identity when considering a personal sense of self?
I’ve spent many hours over the past year thinking about identity – specifically the concept of Christian identity. I’d like to share here just a small piece of my thoughts.
WHAT OUR CONTEMPORARY CULTURE SAYS ABOUT IDENTITY
We live in a world that seeks to tell us who we are. Contemporary culture tells us that:
- we’re each free to be whoever we want to be
- each of us is unique
- our personal identity comes from within
- our sense of self is never wrong
THE ORIGINS OF THIS PERSPECTIVE
Contemporary culture today tells us that we have within us what it takes to discover our true potential and purpose in life. This idea of self-discovery or self-identification really didn’t appear in world history until the era known as the Romantic Period (1798-1837).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is known as the Father of Romanticism. With Rousseau, there is this mysterious “true self” that each individual must identify and define. Self-realization, for him, is the point of life.
Rousseau 
Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is a German philosopher whose work followed that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He is known to have said: “Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage – his name is self.” Nietzsche espouses that humans in history were forcibly conformed to the idea of a common creator. In denying a creator, he also then denies the concept of eternal life.
For Nietzsche, the ultimate freedom is that of self-creation. Life has no greater, eternal meaning than the present moment affords. The point of life, then, is to invent oneself by defining a voice and shaping oneself like a work of art. His teachings ground the modern concept of identity that we see today: “Be who you want to be and do what works for you.” There is no higher power or eternal life. There is no standardized measure of worth. There is only the joy you find in each moment and the beauty you create within yourself.
OTHER QUOTES THAT ILLUSTRATE THIS PERSPECTIVE
“A man is what he wills himself to be.” Jean-Paul Sartre
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” George Bernard Shaw
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” Carl Jung
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” Kurt Vonnegut
THE PROBLEM WITH THIS PERSPECTIVE
There is a problem with our culture’s view of identity. A look within ourselves will not enable us to find who we’re meant to be. The Bible says that, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Our own hearts will lead us astray. There is no goodness within us. Paul writes in Romans 7:19, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Herein lies a fundamental difference between Christian believers and contemporary culture. Where Christians would say that humanity is inherently evil at heart, contemporary culture says that, deep down, humans are mostly good and loving and in fact naturally pure of heart.
Our picture of self is not clear, but obscured by the nature of our heart.
THE TRUE ORIGIN OF IDENTITY
In truth, it is the creator who bestows identity upon us. The Bible tells us that humanity was made to be perfect like God. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.” There may have been a time, with hearts like God, that mankind could turn inward to find a true and pure inner self, but our hearts no longer rest in such a state. Generational, inherited sin infects us all. Isaiah 64:6 says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
God made us in his own image.
Our hearts cannot be trusted. Our choices are naturally driven by evil and selfish gain. Alone, we have nothing of value to offer the world. We have no merit by which to boast of our identity.
Christians like to focus on the grace and mercy that are spoken over us. Those words create warm, comfortable feelings. We like to know that we are loved, chosen, forgiven, and redeemed. We focus on that security, but those proclamations only bear weight in our lives because of the things we don’t like to dwell on. It’s our selfish, dishonest, rebellious, deceitful, and sinful nature that makes our need for grace and mercy come to light. No one likes to dwell on shortcomings, especially when they are so devastatingly different from the image of self we carry in our minds. “Surely I’m not that bad,” we think. Our heart’s failures intimately remind us that we need God to speak his love over us.
AN UNSHAKEABLE CHRISTIAN IDENTITY
As God’s children, we do not choose to be loved, chosen, forgiven, or redeemed. God’s word speaks these statements over us. Whether we recognize them as part of our perceived identity or not, they are true. They remain true because these pillars of Christian identity are spoken over us by a creator who made us to be his own.
You are his own.
I am his own.
He declares us to be what we are.
We don’t choose it. In fact, it can’t be chosen.
We are dead in our sin. Dead to choice.
He does the work.
He tells us who we are and whose we are.
Our identity is given to us by our creator and defended by the blood of his son.
As Christians, we see that God freely gives our true identity. We are what we are because he declares us to be so. I don’t have to “discover” my identity. That knowledge strengthens my sense of wellness. No one can take my Christian identity from me. God, my creator, who loves me more than I can ever comprehend, calls me his own. I cannot change my identity with doubt or insecurities. I cannot relinquish my identity with sin. What people think of me does not change who I am or whose I am. My sense of well-being is strengthened because my Christian Identity is secure and unshakable.
RESOURCES
To read more about your identity in Christ, reference the following articles.
https://www.1517.org/articles/identity-and-the-self-stories-we-tell
https://www.1517.org/articles/gospel-identity-is-passive-identity
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