A Mistaken Identity

Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going?

These are the three questions that every human asks of the cosmos at one point or another. We need to understand our origins, our purpose, and whether there is hope for a future beyond this life.

While we may ask these questions individually at different points in life, they are remarkably interconnected, and we cannot answer either of the second two without first understanding the first.

And yet so many often start with the third question, wondering if its answer would some how bring resolution to the other two. Where am I going? This question is most often formed as “Is there life after death?” We all want to know whether or not an afterlife is hopeful, because the answer to that question allows us to reconcile the mysteries of the present. Our lives are chaos and can be pockmarked—if not filled—with tragedy and bad fortune. We can often feel we are victims of circumstance, unable to catch a break and unable to figure out why life is so difficult.

For many, the idea of reincarnation seems reasonable. Since we all innately experience guilt (even in the absence of external influence), we’d like to think that a “do over” gives us hope for improvement. Still, this is “us” trying to improve “us” with nothing more than just “us” attempting to accomplish the transformation. As I’ve noted previously, we can’t fix ourselves.

For others, everything seems to be okay most the time. We grow up in a nice household, don’t experience any significant discomforts, grow up and go to college (or not), start a career (in one way or another), and trudge forward through our existence, all the while striving to be the best persons we can be.

But why should we care about an afterlife? Why be concerned with eternity? And it’s here we see how the second question is connected intrinsically to the third. Why am I here? We all yearn for purpose. We struggle for satisfaction in any occupation that seems to hold no value except to the stockholders, and our efforts appear to have no significant impact on our own lives or the lives of others. We all desire to be more than just a cog in a machine, wontonly expecting that our existence on earth has much greater significance than that which we can see. For we know that there’s more to us than just existence or survival. We yearn to understand our purpose because we know we have one. 

Ultimately, if our lives are without meaning or purpose, than why should there be any great desire to prolong them? And why would we want to live forever if this is as good as it gets? An atheistic worldview argues in favor of lives without purpose. As a collective soup of walking genetic mutations, they assert, we must be resigned to act according to whatever our evolutionary instructions dictate. Our thoughts are not our own, but are born only from random electrical currents that are accidentally interpreted as something to which logic and reason could be applied.

This way of thinking encourages the idea that all of the laws and beliefs mankind has carried throughout history are all “social constructs,” formed only by each individual culture at hand with the sole, unconscious purpose of affecting the maintenance and propagation of our species. Of course, if this thinking is true, how can we know this thinking is true since our own thoughts are just random electrons speeding around our accidental brains without purpose or design? 

And if we are all just creatures of circumstance, not designed for any inherent purpose—just biological mutants that just happen to have brains that are exponentially superior to that of our “closest relatives”—and our sole purpose as humans is to simply “exist” and propagate to further extend this futile existence, how hopeless is that?

Of course, if human beings are, indeed, just random descendants of purposeless goo formed a gazillion years ago, with each subsequent mutation surviving for no better reason other than to perpetually exist, then how can we possibly explain the random willingness of one person laying down his or her life for another? How do we explain suicide? What is the purpose of murder and war? If our sole purpose as human beings is to simply survive and keep our species going, what’s all this other stuff about?

So despite any arguments to the contrary, every human on the planet knows there’s more to life than simple birth, existence and death. It’s why we celebrate the birth of a child. It’s why we cling so hard to life.  And it’s why we are so desperate to avoid death. Even if we live like there’s nothing afterwards, the question will remain until we get there.

When we don’t know why we’re here, we struggle to get through each day, and every choice seems to be a mistake, because we don’t even know what our choices mean! How can one choose what’s right when she doesn’t know what’s right? How can one know if he made a wrong turn when he doesn’t have a map? And what good is the map if he doesn’t have a destination in mind?

And so, as I said at the outset, it all comes back to the first question, Where do I come from?

Our identity is everything. We can grow up with parents and siblings, always knowing who we are because we’re “lost” in the middle of a family. We look like our moms or dads, or similar to our siblings. We “look” like family. The bigger the family, the more secure in our heritage and identity we become, because we always know “where we come from.”

For the orthodox Jew, there is no question. When he reads the story of the Israelite exodus in his Hebrew Bible, he reads how “we” were saved by God from the Egyptians. To him, Moses was the great uncle he never met, not a historical figure of some other nation’s past.

But when we grow up in isolation—in single-parent households, broken families, estranged siblings, and abusive homes—we lack the necessary connection with our heritage. In these cases, we don’t have a “family” to be connected to; no history within which we can find our identity. 

And as wonderful as adoption is—when a family can love another’s child as their own—that adoptive child has identity for as long as he believes he was born into that family, because the adoption also includes that family’s history and heritage. But when that child learns he has origins outside of the home he grew up in, what is his immediate yearning? Yes, it’s the question for which he thought already had an answer: Where, then, do I come from?

This “question of origins” is foundational to our understanding of our identity. For we can only know who we are in the midst of knowing where we come from. And as I mentioned earlier, if we are here only by accident, then the question itself has no value. But it does have value, because deep down, we know we’re not here by accident.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

If we choose to accept the idea that the universe magically created itself—magical in the way that space, matter and time didn’t yet exist in order for anything to “come into existence” using any physical mechanism (and that sounds like a miracle to me)—and choose to accept with equal enthusiasm that life was spontaneously born from a concoction of elements that were born from that magical universe in the most adverse of conditions possible—even though scientists are unable to recreate the event under the most ideal conditions (sounds like another miracle)—then we must relegate everything to pure chance and accept our origin and identity from nothingness and error. This downgrades our possibility of purpose to zero, since even the lowliest insects can not only survive but also procreate. And it completely nullifies the question of “after death” because we’ve then accepted that nothing matters at all.

But you don’t believe any of that. Not really. Though you’re also not ready to accept the true answer to question number one, because the answer has ramifications with which you’re not prepared to contend. And so, instead, you reach out to others who are asking the same questions of the cosmos and who’ve come to the same crossroads as you. Others who expend significant energy in denying what they already know to be true.

You turn to everything and everyone for the answer to the question of identity except the very one who can actually answer it. Who am I? Is what I’m feeling wrong? Why does it hurt?  Why is it so hard? Why don’t people like me? What’s wrong with me? What did I do wrong? 

First, you try to answer your own questions. Then you look to social media for affirmation about the lies you believe about yourself—the lies that come into your head and feed your insecurities. You invite others, who don’t know anything about you and who are asking the same questions of themselves, to answer your questions: Why  do I feel bad about doing something that “feels” right? And they say, “That’s just society telling you it’s wrong. So whatever you “feel” is right MUST BE right.” 

And strangers are more than happy to affirm the lies: Be yourself. Do what feels right. Trust your feelings. Go with your gut. Look out for number one. Trust your heart.

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” Jeremiah 17:9-10

But here’s the thing. If you relegate your identity to another’s opinion of you, then you have no identity at all! Because their opinion of you will change, won’t it? If you place your identity in your occupation, how you earn a living, what sport you play, what university you attended, or what degree you hold, then your identity is lost the moment those things are lost.

If you identify as a football player, what happens when you suffer a crippling injury that prevents you from every playing again? Who are you then? If you identify as a ballerina yet have a foot amputated as the result of a car accident, who are you then? If you are a Nobel-prize winning scientist who discovers a cure for cancer, yet is sentenced to life in prison for the spontaneous murder of your spouse, who are you then? If you are born into a single-parent, low-income minority family, and your brother is murdered by a gang, yet you stay in school, get married, stick around and raise your kids, and one day become the mayor of the very city you grew up in, who are you then? 

If your identity is in your association with another person, activity or group, who are you when those things are gone?

Truly, you cannot choose your identity. Because your identity is not what you do or what you feel. Your identity is not what you believe or how you live your life. Your identity is not your race, ethnicity, color, creed or gender. Your identity is not where you grew up, what you do for a living, the neighborhood you live in, or the car you drive. Your identity is entirely based on where you come from. “Who I am” is a direct reflection of “who created me.” You can’t change that, and any effort on your behalf to “identify” as someone or something else . . . is a lie.

In today’s world, there is so much outrage about identity. It’s called identity politics. It’s aim is to pit one identity group against another, seeding discord and fomenting community isolation. Ironically, the language of identity politics often includes “unity,” “equality,” and “acceptance.” And there is great turmoil with the idea that one’s skin color should not be used to identify them. And we all agree: nobody should be identified by the way they look, what they feel, or what they believe, right? But even the feminist demands that she be “treated equal to the man,” all the while demanding she be respected as being uniquely different as a woman, all the while criticizing men for treating her differently. 

Yes, it’s confusing.

While there shouldn’t be, there is also confusion in regards to “gender” identity. Again, an individual’s gender association becomes a misguided effort at attempting to determine one’s own true identity. So instead of just being a girl who’s attracted to girls and prefers dressing and acting like a boy (or vice-versa), she must now “identify” as a boy. Why? To what end? How is identifying as something we’re not change who we are? Effectively, it only changes one thing: how others see us and treat us. But who are we really that any of those things should matter? But because we fail to grasp our true and unchanging identity, all that does change is our and others’ perception of ourselves. 

When we claim to be something we’re not (or someone we’re not), we will always eventually be found out to be liars. And the resulting consequence in relevant relationships will always be a lack of trust. When we’re found out as liars about our identity, then others can never really be sure who we are. And who we are is the most important aspect of any and all relationships. Unless and until we understand who we are, we will never be successful in a relationship. Until we accept our true identity, we will always be pretending.

Where we come from is the place where we are accepted, without conditions, by He who has chosen us. Not accepted by those we have chosen to know, but by He who knew us before we were ever born. Where we come from is who we are. It’s not how we identify ourselves, but rather how God had long since identified us.

From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God. Psalm 22:10

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13

“This is what the Lord says—your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the Lord, the Maker of all things, who stretches out the heavens, who spreads out the earth by myself.” Isaiah 44:24

Unless we know our origins, we can never learn our true purpose. And without understanding that purpose, it is impossible to comprehend an eternity. 

So until we accept the answer to the first question, there’s no point in asking the other two. Until we accept who we really are—created by God in the image of God—we can never find the “You Are Here” pin on the map. For only when we know our starting point can a destination be considered. And only then will we give permission for Jesus to show up and carry our luggage. And, as it turns out, the moment we let him take them is the moment we realize we never needed them at all.

So who’s your Daddy?