Why would something that sounds so freeing be crushing? Well, let’s say your whole identity is built on what you can achieve or do. Perhaps you want to be smart, successful, and make lots of money and your identity is wrapped up in that. Now, compare yourself to everyone else who is also embarking on this personal identity making journey. They too want to be smart, successful, and make lots of money. No matter where you look or where you go, there will always be someone else out there who is doing more, making more, and being more than you are. This is true no matter what you base your identity on.
What is the hardest thing you have ever done? Think about it. Maybe for some of you something physical comes to mind. I knew a man who built his entire house from the ground up. From digging the foundation to creating the architectural plans for his home, he literally made his own house.
Perhaps some of you are thinking of something academic or mental. In college I had a friend who was studying for his MCATs and he studied around the clock his senior year to prepare. Or maybe the hardest thing you’ve ever done is related to a decision you had to make on an important issue of life—getting married, having kids, choosing a career, moving to a new place.
All of these situations definitely present challenges, but I’d like to offer a challenge that I think is one of the hardest things you will ever do: create an identity for yourself. Think about it for a moment. This is no easy task! Remember the last time you went on to a website and were prompted with:
Create a username and password
Now imagine on the website of life a prompt coming up:
Create your own identity and live it out
Talk about challenging. What immediately comes to mind? What pieces are integral to who you are? Is it your talents? Write them down and take a look at them. Do any one of them stand out as being the one thing you want to build your identity on?
What about your virtues? Write those down. Now take a look at them.
Kindness
Patience
Compassionate
Great virtues, but what happens the next time you are unkind to someone or impatient with someone? What happens to your sense of identity then?
I think you get the point by now. All of these are good things, but they can’t be the ultimate things that generate and sustain our identity. Who we are as individuals is far too important of an enterprise to be left in mere human hands. Consider that all humans have limitations. Consider your limitations. You know your own weaknesses and shortcomings. Do you really want to add “identity creator” to the list of responsibilities?
I don’t know about you, but most days I’m lucky just to get out the door with keys and wallet in tow. Creating my own identity? No way!
That’s why we must go to the Lord for help. There’s a scene in the book of John where Simon Peter and Jesus are having one of those existential life-altering conversations (in my house we call these “come to Jesus” conversations, pun intended). Jesus and Simon Peter are talking about life and the way to God. Jesus asks Simon Peter pointedly toward the end of the conversation if, after all Jesus has shared, Peter wants to walk away from him. To which Simon Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
I so wish I could have been with Jesus during Bible times because I would have loved to have been in conversations like this with Jesus and Peter. I can almost hear the pain, angst, doubt, and hope in Peter’s response. To paraphrase Peter, it’s as if he’s saying, “There’s nowhere else to go to figure out the big issues and questions of life.”