By David Kalamen

We are facing continuing and growing chaos as pertains to the expression of identity in our culture. In some situations, the battle for self-identification has led to incredible levels of personal confusion. In other circumstances, individuals have faced criminal charges for failing to discern another’s identity and address them as they deemed necessary. Yet, in other settings, those highly educated struggle against being on the wrong side of history and political correctness by having to define a woman in biological terms. This has led to some very conflicted moments and continues to add significant levels of anxiety to interpersonal conversations.

      This identity crisis is not like a mid-life crisis where one tries to find themselves again. The present identity crisis suffers from a critical personal absence of never knowing who they were from the outset. People are suffering from much more than identity theft. At least with identity theft, there was an identity to steal, and one to get back.

      From my perspective, this present identity crisis is fruit that is now being picked from a tree that was planted in the ground of evolution. An entire generation was fed on the ideas that they came from nothing and were going nowhere. They were told that they were here by chance and survived only by effort, comparison and competition. No wonder they are struggling with knowing who they are.

      Add to that, you have Internet gurus like Yuval Noah Harari, dominating Google with his philosophy of trans-humanism, calling human beings hackable animals. Speaking at a World Economic Forum recently, he stated: “The whole idea that humans have this soul, this spirit, free will and nobody knows what is happening inside me, so whatever I choose – supermarket, elections – that is my free will. That is over…. The greatest question in the decades to come is what to do with all of these useless people…how do they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless?”

      Every generation has had their philosophers. Every one of them have struggled with the same question of identity and the meaning of life. Edna Dt. Vincent is quoted as saying, “Life must go on – I forget just why!” Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Every existence is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and then dies by chance.” No wonder Henry David Thoreau described humanity as leading “lives of quiet desperation.”

      However, I believe, that just as the adopted child carries a deep desire to know their biological parents, every human being is involved in a search for personal significance. They want to know where they came from, who they are, and what they are supposed to do in life. As a fellow traveller on this journey, I have seen this urgency grow more intense the older people get. They want to believe that there was a sense of meaning to being here.

      Much of this modern generational diaspora is rooted into a failure to acknowledge the existence of God as Creator. Romans chapter one makes it clear that a refusal to get to know God will result in an inability to know oneself. God and humanity are inexorably linked. The closer we get to Him, the more we find ourselves. The further we run from Him, the more we lose ourselves.

      The Bible says that we were created in God’s image: to reject that requires us to create our own self-image. If our worth does not come from the intent and design of a Creator, one must replace it with self-worth.

      Well, how does one determine self-worth without God? Dr. James Dobson outlined three major ways humanity, outside of God, locates their personal value. The world around us has developed a unique way of determining personal value: it is based upon looks, education and wealth.

      We all know the fallacy of these three value systems. Most people without God are trapped by that peer assessment. Unfortunately, we all know that beauty is skin deep, and age catches up on us all. Still, people will spend significant resources to try and maintain their value based on a fleeting, temporary and superficial evaluator. Education is no different. When knowledge is doubling every thirteen months, and AI is threatening to do our job better than we were trained, it is a challenge to hold on to self-worth. Money too comes and goes and goes faster than it comes. It cannot buy us what we desperately want, a sense of identity.

      For the Christian, the question is not so much, “Who am I? as it is “Whose am I?” The Christian believes that there is a Creator, that they are a created being, and were created with intentionality and purpose. They are not here by chance but by choice. Birth was not a meaningless experience. Life was planned and looked forward to. God placed His DNA inside each life as did biological parents.

      The Christian’s sense of value is based upon the value the Creator places on His creation. As a painter perceives the value of his or her work, so the Creator establishes the value of His work. It is in the eyes of the beholder. I don’t get my sense of value from looks, education or wealth: I got it from my Creator. I am Who He says I am. I can do what He says I can do.

      Paul writes the Roman church these words: “He who did not spare [even] His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him,

graciously give us all things?” (Rom 8:32) Here Paul establishes our personal value: the price of God’s own son in exchange for my life. Any other cost to God for human life is nothing in comparison to what He has already paid.

Psalm 139 says we are central to His thoughts every moment of the day.

He has searched my life out thoroughly

He knows my down-sitting and my uprising

He knows my thoughts from afar

Not a word still unuttered is not known to Him

He has shut me in – behind and before – enclosed me in His love

There is nowhere to run or hide from His presence

He put me together in my mother’s womb and watched over our beginning

He has precious and weighty thoughts about me – how vast a sum they make, more than the sands of the sea, the stars in the sky

      This generation has been called the “survival generation,” a take-off probably on evolutionist thinking of the survival of the fittest. The thoughts that we are here by chance and not choice, that we are a mistake and not planned, that we are alone and not befriended, are destroying a generation’s hope of being and becoming.

      I will take a Creator any day over a Creator-less day. God knows us and why He created us. The more connected we are to Christ the more aware we are of who we are in Him. I will take His estimation of my life’s value over and personal attempts at self-estimation. God-esteem beats self-esteem every day of your life.

      Your identity is not determined by your own self-imaging: it is discovered in a relationship to your Creator. It is not based on what side of the tracks you grew up on, your skin colour or your sin colour. Your future is not based upon the past but upon yielding to be and do whom God has called you to be and what He has called you to do.

      I never found myself – my identity, who I was created and born to be – until I found the Lord, the Creator of my life. I am not everything God planned for me to be, but I am moving further and further from who I was. My true life started when I met the lover of my soul, the One who had been dreaming about my existence and planning my arrival. My identity is now hidden with Christ in God, and every day, as I submit to His will, I am finding out new things about who I am.