Where do you find your identity?
Your very identity starts with God. I know, that’s not a very attractive thing to say. We like our identities to be about our unique selves. But we can’t begin to know ourselves truly without knowing who created us.
Your view of God may fit into one of the following categories:
God is not fully good and loving but He is all powerful
God is fully good and loving but He is not all powerful
God is fully good and loving and all powerful
Each of these perspectives informs how you identify yourself. I’ll explain, starting out with the viewpoint for #1.
God is not fully good and loving but He is all powerful
If you view God as an all-powerful being but not fully good and loving, He may seem more of a dictator to you. And most likely, you won’t believe Him to be someone you can or would want to have a relationship with. And, why would you? You may respect His authority but you won’t have any desire to further investigate His character. If you see Him as devoid of love, all that power must be very scary.
So, you’ll live your life fearing God in a terror sense. You may even follow Him and even identify as a Christian, but out of a sense of obligation in order to be on good terms with Him. Anytime you hear how He is supposed to be good, you never understand. From your perspective, He doesn’t seem very loving or good at all.
You live in a world where you know God rules over everything, you’ve given up that control to Him (albeit begrudgingly). But you and all His creation individually manage the moral standards for life. It wouldn’t seem right to you for a loveless God to have that role.
How does this affect your identity? Since you assign yourself the moral standards of what is good and bad, your identity shrinks or expands based on those measures. Your identity remains intact so long as you believe you are “good enough” according to the definition you’ve settled with consciously or subconsciously. And conversely, if you fail those standards, your life and identity begin to crumble beneath you.
God is fully good and loving but He is not all powerful
If you view Him as a loving God but lacking in power and authority, He may not seem like a God at all to you. Probably more like a genie in the sky who gives out good gifts every now and then. Therefore, you don’t fear Him at all, either in the terror or reverent sense (see Understanding the fear of God blog). Therefore, you shift your fear to something or someone else.
You may have a relationship with God and feel good about the comfort of His loving words in scriptures. But when push comes to shove, you don’t see Him as really being in control. You feel you know what is better for you, if not the world around you. Your relationship with God becomes more of a helpful assistance to your already steered ship. And the relationship here tends to be transactional and not really loving at all.
This will then leave you feeling stressed and worried when you’re unable to control your life. You’ll feel perplexed because you may feel as though you depend on God, but in practice you hold tightly to everything in your life. The last thing you want to do is give away that control. So your identity roots itself in how well you control your life. You believe that as long as you follow what you believe is the right thing to do, life should go well for you. But when it doesn’t, you’re a wreck.
God is fully good and loving and all powerful
If you view God as His full character, as fully loving and good as well as all powerful, you view Him as your Father.
Side note, I know parent relationships can be very painful to discuss. If viewing God as a father is difficult for you, please read how I describe the relationship and less of the title itself. I hope this helps.
This parental relationship looks completely different than the two scenarios described above. It changes everything when God is all powerful and all loving, with an active desire to have a relationship. Now your relationship with Him isn’t transactional. It doesn’t depend on your level of goodness or control, it’s an unconditional one dependent on God. Unconditional love can only come from God who is the only fully good and loving one in the relationship.
This also means you’ll have a fear of God in the refereeing sense. Your love for Him will come out of the love that He first gave you - the you’re responding to.
If your identity is wrapped up in this type of relationship, it isn’t dependent on anything you do at all. It’s not an identity we’ve conjured up ourselves, it’s defined by God. And given to us, freely. There is no leaving that identity, nothing can ever take it away from us. As a Christian, that is an identity that we can rest in with all peace and assurance. Because as God never changes, His Words always stand. And He will always be our King as well as our Father. No matter what we do.
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” - Romans 8:38-39
In each of these examples, you find your identity in someone or something. Just because you believe in God, doesn’t mean you automatically find your identity in Him. Your view of Him directly correlates to how you view yourself.
Where is your identity settled in?
