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Looking for identity in broken places

identity
  2nd in a series on identity A soul under pressure goes looking for safety in what are often broken places. We look for release in relationships, jobs, hobbies, video games, and sports among other activities. And we begin to define ourselves according to the things we do. Have yo…
By Seth Barnes

 

identityvsrole 3
2nd in a series on identity
A soul under pressure goes looking for safety in what are often broken places. We look for release in relationships, jobs, hobbies, video games, and sports among other activities. And we begin to define ourselves according to the things we do.
Have you done this? Have you found yourself looking to the opinions of others to validate your sense of self-worth? It’s normal – we all do it.

But it’s not a legitimate source of identity. The applause of people may feel like a source of validation, yet anything we do to earn it—good grades, trophies, and titles—at best generates a temporary boost in our sense of well-being. Our performance is not us; the applause we hear is for the performance, not for who we are as people. It’s for the false self that we’ve become.

It may work for a while, but the false self is a tyrant, always craving more, never feeling safe, never feeding our soul. Failing to find a sense of safety, our soul may feel cast adrift and may settle on any number of coping behaviors in its search for a safe place: addiction, neurosis, cutting, eating disorders, pornography, and worse.

So what started as a very normal search for safety can land us in a far place, estranged from ourselves, wondering how we got there, without a clue how to get back. We never asked to be abused, never wanted to fall in with a rotten crowd that gave us bad advice. We didn’t understand the treacherous waters we were navigating—we were just looking for a safe harbor to dock our soul’s boat.

The truth is, we need help getting to safety. It’s a cruel world with precious few maps to navigate by. We may not even be aware of the false self we’ve taken on. The ego props may seem like such a natural part of our identity that we no longer recognize ourselves. Like Eustace in C.S. Lewis’ *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, we acquire a layer of dragon skin and can’t even see it.

At some point, all of us need to take a closer look at our search for identity. Have you found a safe place? Have you sought the approval of men and settled for something counterfeit? Is the persona that you let others see the real you, or is it a false self?

As God said to Jonah, “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.”* If you want grace, better to come clean with God now. All of us want and deserve to be loved for who we really are. It’s a good day to raise the issue with a friend and start talking about it.
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For an example of someone working through her identity issues from a biblical perspective, here’s a good blog.

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