This was previously posted on my old blog. I rediscovered it, saw it was good (even if I do say so myself), so I thought I'd post it here.
For my dissertation I have been reading essays on how certain characters
have fictionalised others (usually the male fictionalising the female,
as this line of argument is often found in feminist discourse), and this
got me to thinking. To what extent am I just a figment of society’s
imagination? How is my identity as an individual determined?
Fortunately, I came to a reassuring conclusion, but you’re going to have
to wait for that.
The question of identity is one that is an
issue that is existent in our lives since about the age of two. In fact,
it is the arrival of the question of identity that makes the twos so
terrible. For the first years of a baby’s life they are under the
impression that they are merely an extension of the primary care-giver
(as it usually the mother, that is what I shall continue to call it).
Their existence is bound by their mother's; the child is alive only
because their mother is. Come two, however, and the baby realises that
when the mother is not there they still are, and it suddenly hits them,
they are an autonomous being (Not quite like that. I doubt any
two-year-olds have thought ‘Hang on a second, I’m an autonomous being. I
have an identity to formulate’). Then boundaries must be established
and the terrible twos have begun.
But what exactly is our
identity? If I were to write down who I was we would hit problems. I
would have to make use of flawed and problematic labels in order to
define me. I would write something along the lines of ‘I am a: twin,
brother, son, grandson, boyfriend, cousin, nephew, student, blogger,
citizen of the United Kingdom, inhabitant of both the New Forest and
Aberystwyth’, you get the picture. These are the slightly less transient
ones. However, identity is always fluid. When I enter a shop I am a
customer; when I visit another country I am a tourist; when I take the
bus I become a passenger. So we can already see that identity is a very
complex notion.
Also, there is a question of who’s me am I?
Everyone who knows me has a slightly—or sometimes drastically—different
opinion of who I am exactly. My friend Kaylee, who I know from my
secondary school will think I am ‘a friend, from secondary school, who
is not that organised’. However, some of my friends at University (where
I have had to take responsibility for myself) will say that I am one of
the most organised people they know. To be honest I think that I am
quite organised, but have my silly moments. But which am I: am I
Kaylee’s disorganised Thomas; my university friends’ organised Thomas;
or my middle-ground Thomas? You would probably tend to say that my
opinion of myself is far more accurate than those around us. Kaylee
hasn’t seen my new-found skills in time-management, and my friends in
Aberystwyth do not know what poor Kaylee had to put up with whilst in
secondary school—however I have seen it all.
Yet, it is unlikely
that we have the best knowledge of who we are. Freudian psychoanalysis
has dismantled that idea well enough, but I shall discuss it anyway.
Mental illnesses are the most extreme instance: the delusions of
grandiose that schizophrenics suffer and the distorted body-image of
those with eating-disorders are two examples of how an individual’s view
of themselves can be mistaken. However, there are less extreme ways
this occurs. Words such as ‘arrogant’, ‘selfish’, ‘egocentric’ are there
for those who believe themselves to be better, more worthy or more
important than they actually are (as denoted by social standards). To
use myself as a case-study, yet again, there have been numerous times
that I have realised my view of myself was wrong. I believed for a good
part of my life that I was born in the year of the dragon, according to
Chinese zodiac. I was quite proud of that, despite not believing in its
implications. However this was dispelled when I realised that Chinese
New-Year was quite late in 1988, and I was born before it. This made me a
rabbit. Yes, a rabbit—quite a jump (or should I say hop. Sorry, that
was terrible). This is just a small incidence compared to those you hear
about in trashy magazines (‘My mother was actually my father’ type
headlines). So it appears that I can’t rely on myself to form my
identity. This is especially difficult with the Freudian idea of denial.
You could say I was just about anything, and if I tried to refute it
the most effective retort is that I am in denial.
So it appears
as if we have come to a brick wall. I can't form my identity, or really
know what it is. Nor can anybody else I know. So it appears that I will
never know who I really am. That is quite scary. I am now an undefinable
entity, and impossibility, so to speak. However, we have come to my
positive conclusion. I must warn you, I have been leading you all so far
to a testimony of my faith, a reason why I feel I must believe in
Christ. Hopefully that will not deter you from reading on.
I have
an assurance of identity in my faith. I have a God that knows everything
that can be known about me. He knows how many hairs there are on my head
(Matthew 10:30). God created me and knows all about me. In Psalm 139 it
says
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
...
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
God
created me and knows all about me, even before I was actually born. So
my identity is formed through my belief in God, and through Christ.
Colossians 1 tells me that Jesus is what holds the universe together, so
it is him that holds my identity together. It is not my view of myself,
it is not my friends' opinions of me, or who I think I am, but it is
through Christ that I am made. This means that I must live in Christ, to
have any complete identity:
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him,
rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
See
to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive
philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of
the world rather than on Christ.
For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ.
Colossians 2:6-10
So
there it is. The fullness of my identity is found in Christ. I am free
from the despair of existential philosophy (which indeed leaves me
hollow), or the denial of Freudian psychology, as long as I continue to
be rooted in Christ. As my sense of identity depends on it, I think I
will.
