Our Strongest Identity
Our Strongest
Identity
This week I will recommend the book Strange New World by Carl Trueman. I've just finished it and I couldn't help share his insight on the influence of our communities and how we see ourselves (our perceived identities). For example, how I relate to my dodgeball team as an included member informs (at least in part) how I perceive myself. However, my social community as an American foreigner is certainly stronger, since it is actual and I don't (yet) have a dodgeball team. Stronger still is my family community that informs my identity as a son, a father and a husband. Our communities tell us much about who we are.
Usually the strongest communities to which we belong are those that we feel reflect our interests best, or simply where we spend the most time. Communities of relatability or convenience are often where we are drawn first.
In the world we live in today, the strongest voices are saying that each individual must determine his or her own identity based entirely on feeling and preference, and is then given an array of options. Most notable today is the "spectrum" of genders. Young persons especially are encouraged to choose without the influence of 'traditional' community identities i.e. male and female.
Christians find themselves on the outside of this new community, often wondering how this development in identity confusion came about. Trueman helps answer that question from a historical perspective on the development of what he calls the "social imaginary", or how society perceives itself, again, I recommend reading the book for a better understanding of what's going on in our schools, governments and neighborhoods, especially in the western world.
Carl Trueman puts it this way,
“And the strongest identities I have, forming my strongest intuitions, derive from the strongest communities to which I belong. And that means that the church needs to be the strongest community to which we each belong.”
Our communion with Christ ought to form our strongest identity. In Him, we are sinners redeemed by God's grace. In Him, we are set free from the power of sin and death. In Him, he is regenerating us, making us new by the Spirit of God alive in us. In Him, we grow in our knowledge and love of God and others through his Spirit and Word. This identity as a Christian actually informs all other identities we have. The irony is that we carry our individualistic perception of self-determinism into the community of Christ rather than submitting to Christ and his community to inform our identity. Unfortunately we cannot have it both ways.
Paul give us the perspective necessary to see our place in the body of Christ,
“19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit”
Our identity in Christ is inseparable from our identity in his community. Therefore Paul says,
“...do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. ...submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
How can we as a church continue to emphasize this as our strongest community to which we belong?
I thank the Lord for each of you to whom I can submit and with whom I can enjoy Jesus more.
Loren