5 Identity
A man stood outside the main entrance to the largest food market in Philadelphia, begging for money. His story was that he was driving with his family over the Ben Franklin Bridge, which spans the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey, and his car died. He wanted money to get his family home on public transportation, and then he would decide what to do with his car. You couldn’t help but feel sorry for this poor father, caught in a situation that none of us would want to be in. The only problem was that he was there day after day, telling the exact same story. After more than a year of seeing and hearing him, I thought to myself, “Why doesn’t he change his location or come up with another story?” My only conclusion was that he was there day after day because it worked. I don’t know what this poor man had suffered or why he would ask for money day after day at the door of the market. What I do know is that this man had constructed a false identity. He wasn’t a father fearing for the safety of his family, his family wasn’t stuck on that bridge and, whatever he wanted money for, it wasn’t to get his family home safely. The story he told wasn’t who he was and wasn’t what his life was about. It was very compelling, it got a lot of attention, and it clearly produced results, but it simply was not true.
I am afraid that social media has become the man outside the market of twenty-first-century life. It is a scary garden of false identity that makes you think things about yourself and others that are not true and, because it does, it has the potential to do way more harm than it does good. There are few more significant, decision-controlling, and life-shaping human thought processes than assigning to yourself some kind of identity. From the earliest days of a child’s life to the final days before death, identity is one of the ways we make sense out of life. Whether you know it or not, in the constant private conversation you have with yourself, you are always talking to yourself about who you are. Sometimes it will be a moment of self-rebuke: “You’re a grown woman, you should know better.” Sometimes it will be for the purpose of courage and motivation: “You trained for this. You can do it.” Sometimes it will be to stimulate your faith: “You’re a child of God; you are not alone.”
The one who created our rationality knows how important identity is to our sanity and proper functioning, so his word has much to say about it. In fact, identity is one of those gospel cords that winds its way through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible is clear: who you believe you are will determine how you live. This is why you cannot take a serious look at the toxic reactivity that now shapes so much of our moment-by-moment, day-after-day communication without looking at the topic of identity. I propose that there are five false identity temptations that live in the culture of toxic reactivity which we have been considering. Why do I call them false identity temptations? Because they function to make you conclude things about yourself that are not true and, because they do, they are not only deceptive but also powerfully seductive.
For all of us, the attention of other people tends to have far more power than it should. We are wired by God to be social beings who are not meant to dwell alone. So our hunger for relationships is not an evil thing but rather a God-created thing. But attaching your identity to the amount of attention you are receiving from others is dangerous. If this is where you get identity, then you begin to do and say things not because they are right, good, loving, kind, moral, or appropriate, but because they garner the attention you seek. If your attention-seeking strategies don’t work, then you find yourself depressed and angry, but you will try even harder to get the identity you’re seeking.
Imagine that attention is where you get your identity, security, and inner sense of well-being and you’re at a party. Whether or not you’re conscious of what you’re doing, you will do things at the party that draw attention to yourself. If you succeed, you will leave thinking it was a great party and you will think well of yourself. If your attempts fail and it feels like no one even knew you were there, you will leave depressed and regret that you ever decided to go. Here is the identity power of social media: it allows all of us to draw attention to ourselves. There is power in the number of views or likes. It’s why you will post something on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok and then return again and again to see how many likes you’ve gotten. One of the addicting qualities of social media is its ability to capture attention and thereby feed our identity perception. Sadly more and more of us live to get more and more followers and to get more and more clicks, likes, and views from those who follow us.
All of this social media attention-getting tempts us to behave and communicate in ways that are not good for us or for others. The pride of personal attention and the things we will do to get it are the soil in which toxic reactivity grows. If you post something outrageous that should not be posted, it will get you attention. If you humorously mock someone you should respect, you will get lots of reads. If you mercilessly take someone down, attention will come your way. And if you are looking to social media for identity, you are at least tempted to do these things.
There is something particularly powerful in putting others in their place. You get a buzz of self-righteousness when you take someone down. There is power in having the last word. Why is it more attractive to us to think that we’re Jesus with the whip in the temple than it is to follow Jesus in the self-sacrificing love of the cross? There is identity power in proving that you’re smarter than the person you’re responding to. There is power in thinking that you know more and think better. There is power in thinking that you’re on the right side at the moment and on the right side of history. Mockery feels powerful. If you’re just the average, unknown person, putting a respected leader in his or her place on Twitter makes you feel like something. And then to have your put-down retweeted by others just adds to the buzz.
But the false identity of social media power is very different from the power of grace-produced character, God-given gifts, surrender to God’s call, and a harvest of good fruit that is the result of a life of sacrifice and service. That feeling of power after you’ve just put someone in his place is the crack cocaine of identity. But it doesn’t last long and, because it doesn’t, you will be back soon, and you’ll be back again and again, getting addicted along the way.
We all want to belong. We all long to be invited in. We all search for groups we can identify with and, when we find such a group, we not only hunger for its acceptance but we do things to get it. None of this is wrong in and of itself, but that acceptance better not be where you get your identity and meaning and purpose. If it is, you’ll find yourself doing and saying things that you would not otherwise do and say to get the acceptance that you are seeking. I am persuaded that the toxic tribalism, which is having such negative effects on the church, politics, the function of government, the family, and the health and unity of our local communities, is driven by social media. In a culture where many of us feel alienated, powerless, and alone, the identity of community is a powerful draw. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we hunt for a tribe that we can identify with and that will take us in, we take up its cause, and we morph our thinking and communication to whatever standards it may have.
Every time you begin scrolling on your phone, iPad, or laptop, remember that social media is not your church, with trained and godly leadership and a loving, mutually ministering community of faith. Social media is not your family, with seasoned parents who, although imperfect, most often want what’s best for you. Social media is not your circle of trusted friends, who really do know you and, if true friends, care about and work toward your welfare. The people in that tribe don’t really know you. They don’t know if you are happy, sad, depressed, lonely, joyful, or discouraged. They don’t know what hardships you are facing. They don’t know the level of your spiritual and emotional vulnerability. They don’t know where you might need help. They don’t know you. You live in relative anonymity behind the screen. In the true sense of what community means, they are not your community. Social media tribal identity is a mirage that will never replace true community’s sturdy love, constant comfort, loving rebuke, commitment to help you bear your burdens, willingness to forgive, acceptance of you, and refusal to abandon you when you mess up. The hunger that the Creator placed in our hearts, which we all look for, will never be supplied by the backlit screens that seem to dominate our lives.
“Moral high ground” was a foundational piece of the identity and toxic legalism of the Pharisees. Jesus powerfully exposed that what the Pharisees thought was moral high ground was a mirage, a false identity. There is a stark difference between true righteousness (the moral high ground that is only ever ours by grace) and prideful self-righteousness. The parable of the Pharisee and the publican in the temple alerts us to the danger of this false identity (Luke 18). It always leads to a distorted self-assessment and a judgmental dismissal of others. A moral high ground spirit will not make you patient, kind, nurturing, understanding, and forgiving. It won’t make you listen well and with grace. In the face of someone’s inadequacies, weaknesses, and failures, it won’t make you reflect on your own. It won’t make you assume the best or prevent you from thinking the worst. It will make you quicker to judge than you are to encourage. Moral high ground superiority, with its self-righteousness and judgmental spirit, is a significant accelerant in the fire of toxic reactivity that daily burns away so much of the good that social media could produce. There is a buzz-producing power in thinking that you’re more righteous than others, but it’s a false identity that will damage both you and the community.
Leaving a conversation, digital or otherwise, that you have controlled can be a heady experience, but it often tempts you to think of yourself in ways that are not true. You may not be as smart as you think you are. You may not communicate as well as you think you do. You may not have the respect of others that you think you have earned. You may have dominated the conversation but, in fact, have little real power. Much of the toxic reactivity on social media is about control. If I post an outrageous response or an over-the-top reaction to you, I entice you to defend yourself or your position. At that point, I am in the driver’s seat, now controlling the exchange. Others react against me or they react to defend you or your position. I go after them or their tribe, and the posts are no longer about the original issue but about me. Sadly, sin makes us delight in taking control, even if it’s destructive of good communication, healthy community, reputation, respect of another, and the cause of God’s kingdom and his righteousness.
The madness of a constant hunt for identity, with all the false identities that such a hunt produces, is graciously and gloriously solved by the gospel. Let’s look at some gospel identity passages that are powerful cures for the false-identity temptations that are at the root of much of the toxic reactivity sadly found in the conversations of Christians on social media.
Second Peter 1:3–9 is a diagnostic passage. Peter proposes that there are people who really do know the Lord but whose lives are “ineffective or unfruitful” (1:8). This means their lives are not producing what you would expect the life of a believer to produce—virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love (see 1:5–8). Now, when you come across a diagnostic like this in your Bible reading, you ought to ask yourself, “How does this happen? What has caused these people to be ‘ineffective or unfruitful’?” The answer is in the next verse. Peter says if someone lacks the qualities of character that make one effective and productive, it is because he “is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins” (1:9). Peter says that if you forget who you are in Christ, you quit pursuing what belongs to you in Christ (the transforming power of grace to progressively renew your character), and you live, relate, and react in ways that are disharmonious with who grace has declared you to be.
And there is more. If you are not getting your identity vertically, you will search for it horizontally, and then you will be susceptible to all kinds of false identity temptations. Looking horizontally for your identity and inner sense of well-being never delivers what you hoped it would; rather, it exposes you to all kinds of sins within and with others along with the personal and interpersonal damage that results. This is why your Bible is full of encouraging descriptions of what it means to be a child of God or “in Christ.” In Christ we are not only forgiven but we are also given a brand-new identity that protects us from the madness of horizontal identity-seeking and the toxicity it often produces in our digital and face-to-face relationships with others.
First John 3:1–3 is another incredibly helpful and encouraging identity passage:
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. (1 John 3:1–3)
This is a “says it all” identity passage. It covers identity past, identity present, and identity future. As God’s child, here is your security. Here is your identity. Here is your inner sense of well-being. This is what removes your need to be regularly accepted, affirmed, respected, and agreed with. Here is your freedom from frantically seeking horizontally what you’ve been given vertically. And here is your freedom from the madness of identity-seeking that fuels so much of the toxic reactivity that lives even in interchanges of Christians on social media. Think about what John is saying. The Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, who rules all things by his wisdom and power, placed his love on you and named you as one of his children. Let it sink in. This means that on your worst day, you are loved. When you feel alienated and alone, you are loved. When others have mocked and dismissed you, you are loved. When the door of human acceptance has been closed to you, you are loved.
“Child of God” is a title you could never have earned or deserved on your own. It is who you are only by the intervention of divine grace. What John is talking about here is not some future hope; it is who you are right now and, because it is, you have been freed by grace from the identity-fear madness that grips so many. But there is more. John says that you can expect that the world won’t understand or affirm you because it did not understand or affirm Jesus. If you are God’s child, at the deepest of levels you share identity more fundamentally with your Lord than you do with your neighbor.
Not only was love placed on you in the past and an amazing identity granted you in the present, but your future is secure as well. Finally, John declares that it is personally purifying to rest your identity in the one who planned what needed to be planned, controlled everything that needed to be controlled, and moved inside of you with convicting and empowering grace so that you would become his child. When you place your trust in him and rest in your identity as his child, you are protected from the temptations that come with looking for identity where it can’t be found. You’re freed from doing and saying things that you should not do or say in order to get attention, power, acceptance, moral superiority, or control. You are able to stand alone. You are able to sustain being misinterpreted and misunderstood. You can stand even being falsely accused or your character being maligned. You don’t have to have the loudest voice, control the conversation, or win the day. You are freed from the power-buzz of taking someone down. We should be eternally grateful for the purifying power of our identity as the children of God.
So the next time you sit down with your laptop, grab your iPad, or pull your phone out of your pocket or purse, before you begin to scan your Twitter feed or check out TikTok, stop and remind yourself of who you are by means of glorious adopting grace. Remind yourself of the identity you already have and, because you do, the identities you do not need. Remind yourself that the gospel of justifying, accepting, adopting, and identity-establishing grace is the only lasting curative to the identity madness that propels much of the toxic reactivity that damages so many things that we should hold dear. Speak the psalmist’s words to yourself again and again and again; speak them until you are in the forever that is to come and you don’t need to speak them anymore: “Though my father and mother forsake me, / the Lord will receive me” (Ps. 27:10 NIV). Here and here alone is where the purifying power of identity security is found.