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Our Identities

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” Colossians 3:12.

As a child, I pretended to be various superheroes. I didn’t mimic any specific one, but pretended I was someone who could save lives and become adored by all who knew me. Moving into adolescence my ideas of what I wanted to be changed into the idea of how I could be accepted by those in my school and church. I was a lonely child who had few friends and was the subject of everyone’s jokes, and an easy target for bullies who did not waste many opportunities to torment me. At home, it was pretty much required that my sisters and I were perfect, and any mistakes we made were open to be used as instrument of humiliation, some of them public. I had a poor sense of who I was, and wanting to be accepted, would do just about anything to make it happen.

Many go through tough childhoods, often as hard or harder than my own. However, the experiences I had helped me understand that many people create false identities in order to obtain some degree of acceptance. The problem is these identities are not real. They may satisfy for a season, sometimes a lengthy season, but in the end will cause us to waste our lives in useless activities and the fulfillment of vain ambitions. We end up living in a fantasy world of our own making, which allows us to escape the pain of real life for a time. However, all that we do is put on a mask in hopes everyone will see the person we want to project instead of who we really are. And the real person, no matter how hard we try, will eventually reveal itself at a time most unwanted, and shatter the illusions we tried so hard to make real.

So, who are we really? Many would say we are a product of chance + time. From an evolutionary process that over millions of years produced all life there is today, from a simple protein formed when lightening hit a pool of goo causing everything to align perfectly for a simple spark of life to come into existence. Wow, that’s a mouthful. However, what does this say about life here as we know it?  Mainly that it is meaningless. For what meaning can we derive from chance?  And let us assume that we did come into existence by chance. Then our meaning comes from what we or other chance creatures decide our meaning is. Meaning then becomes, at its core, a product of chance. And if a product of chance, then is it really meaningful?  I say no!

I could go on with how the theory of evolution has many fallacious arguments that cannot stand the test of logic, but I only want to bring up several points. First, it defies Newton’s second Law of Thermodynamics which states anything left to itself tends toward decay. It also requires a universe that has always existed. This would also defy Newton’s second Law, which says motion causes a loss of energy, in essence entropy, which ultimately results in a loss of all energy ending with a dead system in decay. If the universe has always existed and has always  been in motion, loss of all energy would already have resulted in a dead universe. As far as I can tell, this universe still has a lot of energy. But as stated above, this is not the main purpose of this post.

So, if everything could not have come into existence by chance, then we had to come into existence by design. And this designer had to exist prior to the universe, Who created everything that is in this universe, including us. It would require a being who can create something out of nothing and design extremely intricate systems as large as the universe and as small as a single atom. And if He created us, then there must be a reason, which would be the meaning for our existence. And this meaning is what gives us our identity.

Now, after all that, what is our Identity?  As Christians, we see the following verse as the answer. 

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” 1 John 3:2. 

The answer is we are children of God. It is that simple. However, understanding this is another thing altogether. If God is our Father, which He is, then let’s see who God is. The following is a brief description of God as found throughout the Holy Scriptures, to help us understand who He truly is.

God is our adoptive Father, who has existed from eternity past and will continue through eternity future. He created all that exists out of nothing, by His spoken word. He is all powerful, all knowing and there is not a place in all existence where He is not at any given moment. He does all that He chooses and no one or nothing can prevent His will from being accomplished. He guides all history and raises up and brings down kings at His decree, and controls the borders of nations, keeping them within the barriers set for them until the time He chooses to allow their expansion or reduction. He has set a plan in motion, which absolutely will take place and cannot be hindered. He created man in His image and gave him dominion over all creation. However, man rebelled, as God knew they would, but He did not leave him in darkness, but sent His only begotten Son, making a way for man to be reconciled with Him. He loves all people but will not force anyone to follow Him but gives all the opportunity to make Him their Lord. He is patient, not wanting any to perish, but has set a time for this era to end. And He has created a place for His children to live for all eternity, a place that our eyes have never seen, our ears have never heard from, and our minds have never imagined. And He is constantly protecting those who are His own. And our purpose is to be in communion with this Almighty God, and to enjoy fellowship with Him.

As Christians, we do not need to create our own identity, for we were given an identity before the foundations of the world. As Paul wrote to the Church at Ephesus,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. ” Ephesians 1:3-6.

We are adopted children of the Almighty God, a being so far beyond us, it says that

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9. 

He is of infinite power, knowledge and majesty who has prepared a place for us, that we may dwell with Him forever and ever. We have the right to bear His name and to go before Him in both humility and boldness. We can relate  to Him as ABBA, our Daddy. What an incredible identity. Why do we then feel the need to create an identity that pales in comparison to our actual identity in Christ.

As a child, I would dream of being someone great, a superhero who could do everything necessary to keep friends and family safe. I longed to be someone who was strong enough to fight off the bullies and make my parents proud of me, rather than someone who constantly disappointed them. I struggled to find ways to be approved of by both my family and friends; all along believing I was someone no one wanted to be around. I began to act like others wanted me to, simply to feel accepted. As an adult, I still strove to find my identity through pleasing and trying to fit in. But by becoming a true Christian, Christ has set me free from all that, and a wonderful peace has taken the place of the torment of insecurity. I now know that I am a son of the true God of the Universe. He accepts me as I am and is working to conform me to the image of Christ, which is as it was always intended. If you have never embraced your true identity as a child of God, I encourage you to do so. And I also want to encourage you to study the scriptures, focusing on who God is as revealed in the scriptures. Then you will understand just who you really are,  a child of the eternal God and King. What more could we ever want to be?

Published inTheological

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