IDENTITY
Eyes and Names
Ego, the name the boy gives himself at the beginning of this story, is a word that refers to our own ideas about ourselves, from our own perspective… the picture of ourselves that we create in our own minds. Think about trying to draw a picture of your own face based on feeling your face. Have you ever thought about the fact that you can’t see your own face without the help of some type of mirror? Isn’t that strange! You have never looked at your real self with your own eyes without the help of another. And what if you didn’t have a mirror, or a camera, or another person to tell you or show you what you looked like: How could you know? You could feel your face with your hand and get a general idea of its shape. But the one thing you would never know is – what? The color and sparkle of your eyes! And a person’s eyes is the part that most defines them. It’s the part we look at when we talk to someone. Looking at a person’s eyes is looking at THEM. Some say “the eyes are the window to the soul” – meaning as we look into someone’s eyes, we see the “real them.” But it is precisely that part of yourself that you could never see or know without the help of someone or something else showing it to you.
In the same way, no newborns name themselves. We are all born without the understanding or verbal ability to choose and announce a name for ourselves. We are born dependent on another to name us.
Eyes and Names – two of the most fundamental aspects of identity. But we are ignorant of our own eyes, and incapable of naming ourselves. I would suggest these two realities point to a deeper truth inherent in the fabric of humanity: We need to be in relationship with ‘another’ – to know ourselves. Identity was never meant to be taken to oneself or imagined in one’s own mind. Identity, if it is anything at all, is a gift. A gift given by a rightful ‘other’….
Authority
Consider how inappropriate it would feel for a stranger to insist on a name for your child. (“Uhhh – excuse me! My child is MINE. Back off!”) This sense of the appropriateness of due authority and responsibility when it comes to naming is written into our very DNA as human beings. Find me a person on the planet who doesn’t claim the right to name their child – or even their book, or their business….
We name what belongs to us. And we don’t name what doesn’t belong to us.
The Christian belief is that the Creator retains the right to define us, 1) because He made us and 2) because He became a man and paid the death penalty for sin so that we could belong to Him again. I owe Him my life because he made me and paid for me. I belong to Him, so He gets to define me.
Sexual identity is at the heart of human identity because God made us male and female in His imageaccording to the Scriptures. These two identities, as revealed by the body parts we were born with, show forth the will of God in our design. No mysteries here. Just plain physical evidence.
What’s in a Name
A name is like a very small tip of a giant iceberg. The tip above the water is what you see (or hear, in this case). The iceberg below is what gives substance/ weight/ significance to what the tip merely suggests.
If a name is “false” – either because it has been given by a non-authority (someone who God did not entrust with the job) or given on one’s own authority (which is no authority at all, since we do not belong to ourselves) – then it is like a chunk of ice floating at sea, disconnected from anything of significance beneath the surface. You could say: It holds no weight. It will float about, and eventually melt, because there is no source beneath the surface, sustaining it in its frozen state. So it is with false names/ identities. They make a show, pretending to suggest a deeper reality. But they do not. And they will melt… before the one-day revealed Light of the Creator, and the revelation of His immutable design. What He has named, no man can change.
The funny thing is this: Many people might think that they want to choose their own identity, whether it be their gender or some other part of their created design. But deep down, everyone actually wants to be named by another. For identity was never meant to be something we crafted by our own will and wisdom. No! It was meant to be a gift. A promise, if you will.
When God speaks to our hearts and says, “I have called you by name: you are Mine!” (Isaiah 43)… therein is rest; therein is comfort; therein is the reason for which we were created: to be chosen and known by another. Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” (John 15:16)
Think back to grade school recess: It’s time to pick the teams. You line up. You hold your breath. Will the cool captain choose me? Now which would make you feel better/ bring true ease and comfort to your heart: to demand your right to be on the team you want/ to choose and appoint yourself to that team? Or to be chosen -- freely and willingly -- by the cool kid captain who had been appointed to choose?
Jesus is the ultimate “cool captain”—and He’s called your name… picked you for His team. Now that is Rest. You can let go of that anxiously held breath as you stood in the line-up. YOU GOT PICKED.
That’s what it’s like to be named and chosen… and might I add, loved… by a true authority. Comfort. Rest. Belonging. IDENTITY.
We only go searching for this elusive thing we call “identity” when we have not been loved. But when we have been loved, and called, and known, specifically by God (not to belittle the fact that parental love plays an enormously huge role in this), we stop striving. We rest… in who God made us to be.
