There is no topic we love discussing more than ourselves. The self-discovery industry has never had more pull than it does in the contemporary West. In the immortalized words of the country singer Toby Keith, “I wanna talk about me, wanna talk about I, wanna talk about number one, oh my me my. What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see.” We laugh because it’s true and we laugh because it reveals our narcissism.
Christians might be tempted to push back on all of the obsession of self-discovery and reject it as narcissistic and ungodly. John Calvin, the 16th century French Reformer, would disagree with this wholesale assessment. In the first chapter of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, the Reformed theologian makes a point about self-understanding and our relationship that might surprise you. He says,
Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.
Calvin suggests that we ought to pursue self-discovery because we cannot know God without knowing ourselves.
On this point, Calvin is in agreement with Socrates, who said that the first step to true wisdom is to “know thyself.” From a Christian perspective, it’s not surprising that our knowledge of God is tethered to ourselves. After all, we were made in his image (Gen. 1:27).
It is for this reason that Angel and I wrote Trading Faces: Removing the Masks that Hide Your God-Given Identity. We believe that the culture gets self-discovery wrong. We have believed the lie that we can craft our own identity, or that our identity is understood by the roles we serve in or our attributes.
Much of evangelical teaching on identity conflates the wealth of teaching into one category: being a child of God. While our identity as children of God is necessary and beautiful, it is the tip of the iceberg in what Scripture teaches us about our identity. God has given us many identities (the New Testament, in particular, is loaded with them), and they all point not only to who we are, but to who he is. To understand who we are is to better understand who God is and to live the abundant life he has intended for us.
To navigate a world that attacks our identities from every angle, we need a robust and multifaceted theology of identity that can stand up to the assaults on our identity. We need to be able to speak God’s hopeful truth over ourselves when the twisted voice of shame fills our head. We need to be able to speak God’s corrective truth when the enticing voice of desire lures us. We need to be able to speak God’s corporate truths when our fleshly individualistic impulses beguile us.
A great place to start is by taking this quiz on which false identities might have the strongest tug on your heart. Our prayer for you is that as you discover more of who you are, you might also learn more about your Creator and Savior. May our journey of self-discovery ultimately be a journey of God-discovery.
As an Amazon affiliate, I may receive a commission from qualifying purchases.
You May Also Appreciate:
Jesus Loves Me, This I Know
Photo by Polina Silivanova on Unsplash