Which are legitimate...

I remember speaking with a husband thinking of leaving his wife.  He was probably talking to me because if I gave permission for him to do what he wanted, it would make it right and he would not have to suffer any guilt.  Or maybe he was in a crisis of indecision.  Who knows?  The man did not.  He did not know much about anything.  In the beginning this was the woman he did not think he could live without.  His love for her consumed him and became the premise for ignoring the advice of his family to wait a bit before settling down or friends who did not like this woman.  He simply had to have her and so he tested family and friendship by marrying her.  Now, he sat in my office wondering if he had ever really loved her at all.  After two children and a dozen or more years of life together, he was not sure if he loved her, if he ever loved her, or if he could continue in this marriage.

We all create a false self or identity.  It arises from the myriad of experiences, memories, decisions, opinions, feelings, habits, and desires that form one part of our lives.  We have moments of greater self-awareness when we stand in front of a mirror and realize we have aged or when physical limitations tell us we cannot do these things anymore or when we pass through the rather arbitrary stages of an adult life.  Most of the time we are okay.  The false image of ourselves is a shadow and not the reality that governs our every day.  Sometimes we fall victim to that false self.  And with it comes all sorts and kinds of anxiety, fear, doubt, worry, uncertainty, and panic.  In those moments we face the great temptation to take the invention of ourselves and make it the reality. We literally re-invent ourselves and revise the story of our lives to match what we wanted or expected or desired.  In the end, it is the choice of a moment over everything else and a moment which is more tenuous than reality even if it may not be as disappointing as the reality of our lives and self.

In the strange reality of this modern world, self and identity have become oddly separate from our physical bodies.  The body has even, perhaps, become an enemy to the self or identity we have in the mind.  The rise and legitimization of the transgender phenomenon has left us in doubt about the very things the body once gave to us as certainty.  There is no truth to our identity or self except the one we decide and that decision is less permanent than momentary.  This is who we think we are now.  This fits in very well with the changing image of ourselves we choose or we feel chosen for us by those around us.  In matters more than gender we are constantly saying about ourselves "That is not who I am" or even about others near and dear to us "I don't know who you are anymore." What was meant to be a given or a certainty has become a guess or a feeling or a treasure map with some resolution at the end if we can just figure out all the clues.

For the Christian this “identity” is not meant to be self-determined but given in Christ.  It is not connected with what we now think of as our self or our identity as it is connected with the fact of our baptism and the new birth and identity bestowed upon us there.  The pattern of daily repentance from our sin and rejoicing in the mercy of God that gave us birth by water and the Word is also our daily reconnection to what is lasting from what is captive to the moment.  Scripture insists upon this.  We are not who we were, we have been born anew from above, we are His new creation and the old has passed away, we have died and risen in Christ to be the new people He has declared us to be. The world offers us a constant process of determination according to the way we feel in the moment or the summation of the past as the primary loci for our identity as people.  Self-improvement is the sacrament of this worldly identity as we constantly rediscover and perfect this image or identity.  But Christ offers us the freedom to leave behind both the constant need to decide who we are and the judgment placed upon us by others, our past, and our own prison of the moment.  The old has died and the new has been born not of perishable or changeable seed but eternal. 

In the end, the Christian life is not one of learning who we are or how we are to behave but who Christ says we are.  We learn this by putting the old self to death over and over and over again.  It is not progress which we look for but the daily cycle that must happen until we finally die and the old is no more -- only the new remains.  Our Christian lives are not living to discover what is hidden to us or what the moment says or the past has judged but daily putting the old self to death through confession and absolution so that the new person created in Christ Jesus might arise to do the good things that Christ has set us free to do.  Only by this new identity and reality are we finally and fully set free from the prison of our false self or identity that breeds confusion and fear.  

The man who was not sure if he loved or ever loved his wife and if he wanted to leave his wife and family was caught in this prison of the false self, searching for an identity that would finally be satisfying to him.  What he forgot was that he chose to be husband and father.  What he forgot is that the only identity that is satisfying is that which we have in Christ by baptism and faith and the vocations that we live out on the basis of that baptismal new birth.  He was not led to certainty by any of his musings but only uncertainty and doubt and despair.  These are not the fruits of our true selves and the new identities born in us by baptism.  We know this by something more profound than how we feel or think in the moment.  We know this by God's Word and promise -- the only sure things in a world unsure of just about everything.