Who Do We Let Define Us?
God or the world.
As I come out of the time of bleakness that characterized most of my past month and a half, I've been thinking about how we define ourselves.
How do I define myself? Or, to put it more precisely, because I think as humans we are inherently relational creatures: who do I let define me?
I could let the mental illness of the person who abused me as a child define me. The person themself probably sees me as just fine; but their mental illness might see me as deficient, as broken, as worthless. I could define myself that way.
Or I could let the bullying of a few unhappy kids in high school define me. A few of them hated me because I was smart and I knew it, and the antics they pulled were serious enough to get the cops involved. If I let their pain define me, I would probably define myself this way: smart, arrogant, and generally a pain in the ass.
Or I could let my old boss define me. I could call myself lazy, stupid, bad at my job, and not worth investing in.
I actually have defined myself all of these different ways over the years, because on a deep level I assumed that all of these negative judgments must be true. I spent some pretty rough years thinking that I was irredeemably broken.
Or I could let someone else define me.
Who would that be? Well, who made me? Who breathed breath into my lungs when I was just a spark in my mother's womb? Who knows every hair on my head, every thought I've ever had; who knows my worst impulses and my greatest triumphs and has seen everything about me from the moment I was first conceived?
God.
So how does God see me? It turns out that to answer that question, I don't have to guess. I can ask Him.
And the answer comes back: "You are my child, radiant and unbroken; and whom I love dearly."
But there's more to it than that. And to understand that more, we have to take a sojourn into one of my favorite stories: Harry Potter.
One of the reasons that I love Harry Potter is because, at its foundation, it's a book about identity. About who we let define us, and about how we define ourselves.
In the first book, Harry spends the first few chapters being miserably bullied by Dudley and abused by his aunt and uncle. His life is bleak and generally joyless.
But then, in chapter four, Harry meets the half-giant Hagrid. And a fascinating conversation about how we define ourselves ensues.
On one side is Uncle Vernon, who snarls that, "I accept there’s something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn’t have cured." That's how the world wants to define Harry: as a worthless kid, whose ability to do magic is a weird abnormality that ought to have been beaten out of him.
On the other side is Hagrid, who tells Harry that he's a wizard. Harry accepts Hagrid's definition…and his life utterly transforms.
Of course, there's more to the definition of who Harry is than just "wizard." In some ways, he spends the rest of the series discovering that more. At first, when he gets to Hogwarts he's The Boy Who Lived: famous, but also marked indelibly by the sacrificial love of a mother who died to save him. But he's defined by more than just something he did at the age of one year old, too. As he progresses through his school years, he learns things about himself. He's extremely adept at Defense Against the Dark Arts. He has a knack for getting himself into trouble, partly because he's brave and partly because he leaps before he looks…and, partly, because from the very first book he's willing to risk life and limb in order to save the people he cares about.
And, of course, he keeps running into Voldemort.
As the story progresses, the definition of who Harry is keeps changing. First he was the Boy Who Lived. Then he was (unofficially) the boy who somehow kept saving the school from dark magic. Then he was a thorn in Voldemort's side. Then he was the Chosen One.
He keeps finding—and defining—himself on a deeper and deeper level. The wizard who actually defeated Voldemort. An Auror (after the series ends). The man who walked into the Forbidden Forest to let Voldemort kill him, because he would do anything to protect the people he loves.
Everything he did throughout the series can, on some level, be traced back to the same boy he was in book 1. On some level, his identity is the same as it's always been. But on another level, throughout the books he grows—not by changing the core of who he is, but by learning to mine that same essence more deeply. The gem inside of him has always been the same, he's just gotten better at polishing it and at bringing out its light.
And that brings us back to true identity—to the more that I mentioned in how God defines me (and each of us).
On one level, God absolutely does define me as His dearly loved child. He defines each and every one of us this way. There are 8 billion humans on this planet, and God loves each and every one of us so much that He was willing to die on the cross for us. My own sense is that, if you were the only human being on earth, He would still have died for your sins, and called it a good trade if it gave you a chance to know Him.
But He also made each of us to be utterly, breathtakingly unique. This is what the Apostle Paul talks about when he describes the Body of Christ.
"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
"Now if the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body." (1 Corinthians 12, 12-20)
From Paul's words it seems clear that each of us has a unique role in advancing God's kingdom, a unique identity beyond and in addition to the identity we share with every other human being of being God's adored child. We are hands, or feet, or eyes, or ears, or noses. Or, to put it less metaphorically: we are healers, or leaders of men, or untiers of knots, or warriors, or joyful wanderers, or teachers, or ministers, or beautifiers of the world (which I prefer to the term "janitors"), or some combination thereof.
Here's another way to think about it. In Isaiah 62, God says that "you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow." (Isaiah 62:2). Like our earthly name, this name is unique; we aren't all named John Doe. Unlike our earthly name, this name is bestowed directly from God. This name is what I mean when I refer to our true identity.
When we know our true identity, a lot of life falls into place. We know our mission and our purpose. We can also see where God has given us specific skills—skills that the world might scorn—in order to act out this purpose.
In Revolution Within, theologian Dwight Edwards says that "we were created and redeemed to mount up on God-given wings…and to abandon ourselves to the high adventure of warring on behalf of God's kingdom in this dark world." We were all made to do something, to bring peace and joy and love and connection to this broken world in our own unique and powerful way. Understanding our true identity can help us to do that.
Of course, our sense of our true identity may continue to shift as we go deeper in our walk with God. It is not that we are changing; it is more that we're developing a deeper awareness of who we always were. Harry's sense of his true identity evolves from "Wizard" to "The Boy Who Lived" to "Thwarter of Voldemort" (my term, but I don't know what else to call what he did in books 1-5) to "Chosen One" to "Defeater of Voldemort" (again, my term). After the series ends, as he continues on his calling of fighting Dark wizards, I suspect that his sense of his true identity continues to evolve.
My own sense of my true identity has certainly evolved. When I first asked God what He called me, He told me I was his Healer. As I went deeper, I asked him again; and this time I heard Warrior Healer. My first hearing wasn't wrong, it just wasn't all that God wanted me to know about myself. I suspect my sense of my true identity will continue to evolve as I walk longer with God; and my sense of myself and my mission here on earth will become correspondingly deeper and richer and more joyful as it does.
If you never have before, turn your eyes to the divine (however you define that) and ask God: "What do You call me?"
The answer might change your life.
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