The Quest for Identity

We live in a world that values self-made identity.  The virtues of paving one's own way are heralded as the supreme exalted purpose of humanity.  At the core of this ideology is a deep vacuous longing in every human for identity, and an even deeper truth that compels us to create one: we each know, at the core of our beings, that there is some sense inside of us that our "true" identity is in some way broken or damaged in need of mending.

The world tells us that sees who we are as a blank slate, an empty page that is waiting for us to write upon it whatever we may desire or wish.  Again, the impetus for this thought stems from the basic truth that all humans recognize that our identity is some way damaged.  Unfortunately, how the world and the natural man deals with this discrepancy avoids the issue at hand, ignoring the original cause of the problem of distorted ideas of identity: sin.

In the Garden of Eden, before the Fall of humanity, Adam and Eve received all of their identity in God.  All that they had, all that they did, all that they were was given them by God.  Their very identity, who they were was found in God.  God created them and interpreted them too.  This is to say that God defined their identity just as much as He created them.

All this being true, the Fall so pervasively marred humanity that their identity, which was ultimately and truly found in Christ, was also marred.  And, as every human was in Adam, every human's identity is damaged and in dire need of repair.

Fortunately, God has provided us grace in His Son.  Now, through faith in Jesus, our original and true identity is repaired, regenerated, and reborn in Christ.  Therefore, the search for identity must begin not with an intense introspection but with worship and faith in the Lord.  For only in seeing the Holy Lord can we truly see ourselves as we actually are.  This is the true essence of true identity.  And any attempt to establish identity apart from God will ultimately be found to be insufficient for it is based on an insufficient finite instead of an all-sufficient Infinite.