This excerpt was adapted from Grounded in Grace: Helping Kids Build Their Identity in Christ © 2024 by Jonathan D. Holmes. Used with permission of New Growth Press. May not be reproduced without prior written permission. To purchase this and other helpful resources, please visit newgrowthpress.com.
Traditional Identity
Historically, identity1 was formed in response to the question, “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” Most children would have responded with something to the effect of, “I want to be a good person. I want my parents to be proud of me.” Making parents proud was one of the most important things to a child, and it was accomplished by fulfilling the role that a son or a daughter was expected to play in society.
In traditional settings, a son was to follow in the vocational footsteps of his father. If your father was a baker—guess what—you’d be a baker. If your father was a farmer—guess what—you’d become a farmer. Career days at the local Anglo-Saxon elementary school would have been boring and predictable.
For daughters, there was even less mystery or variety. In traditional settings, the role of a daughter was to get married, have lots and lots of children, and to be a submissive wife. No dual-income households or moms who homeschooled and then moonlighted on the side as a business professional. No, daughters were raised for one primary role.
Why was this so? Well, historians tell us that this push to live a good and honorable life was ingrained in society. Early philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle believed there was some moral good in the universe (represented by virtues like love, justice, honor, and fidelity) with which the individual should align himself or herself.
For boys, the ultimate realization of this would have been to die in battle for the good of your family, tribe, and clan. For girls, the ultimate realization of this would have been less exciting. You guessed it—the goal would have been to have a large family (preferably sons) and to be a loving and submissive wife.
How was success determined in a traditional identity setting? Well, ultimately one needed the approval and affirmation of an outside authority, namely one’s parents. Parents or a higher authority were the ones to say, “Well done. You have brought honor to the family.”
Modern Identity
Somewhere along the way, a shift began to take place in the culture. In modern identity, the determiner of identity has moved from something outside of you to something inside of you. Your inner voice is now the decisive factor of determining who you are and what you want to be.
In a modern identity context, the highest pursuit is the individual’s happiness and well-being, not the happiness or well-being of the family, tribe, or clan. To live an authentic life is seen as the highest good.
As a father to four girls, I am well attuned to the magical world of Disney. From their theme parks to their movies to their global empire of products, Disney is a shaping influence for many. Now hear me rightly: I’m not anti-Disney or advocating for a boycott of Disney, but rather, I want to show you how the modern process of identity formation we described above makes its way into our homes and into our children’s hearts.
Take a moment and think with me about some well-known Disney characters. Take Elsa in Frozen, for instance. Elsa’s parents die in a tragic storm and leave her to rule in their stead over the kingdom—a classic traditional identity paradigm. It doesn’t matter what Elsa feels like doing, what she must do is what her parents tell her to do. Throughout the movie, Elsa feels this internal conflict deeply, but eventually her feelings about who she is ultimately win the day. In her breakout song, Elsa talks about breaking free. What is she exactly breaking free from? The old, traditional ways of constructing identity. She’s tired of suppressing her true self; she wants to live out her true identity.
Again, I’m not anti-Disney in any way, but simply want to show you how culture shapes and forms us through not only the upstream of academics, but also the downstream of movies, social media, literature, and art. The new understanding of identity is everywhere.
Is There a Third Way?
As we will see, neither the traditional model nor the modern model works as the basis for a sure, godly identity. One process (traditional) puts all the power of identity into the hands of one’s parents and family of origin, while the other process (modern) locates it solely with the individual. So what are we to do? The answer can’t lie in a mushy amalgamation of traditional and modern identity, but a true third way. Who better to turn to in times when we need a true, stable, and secure word on who we are as individuals than the God who made heaven and earth, boy and girl.
We echo the words of Simon Peter who said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn. 6:68–69).
As you read about modern identity, I’m confident you see some of the immediate concerns with this identity formation process, namely that it is rooted in one’s own feelings and self-determination. You might be tempted to say something to the effect of, “See, that’s why we need to get back to the old way of doing things—a time when kids respected their elders and parents.” But we would err there too. While traditional identity has its positives, it has drawbacks too.
Timothy Keller writes, “The traditional self is suffocating, captive to what your family and tribe tell you that you must do. Adding some religion and moral structures only aggravates the problem.”2 Additionally, in a traditional identity formation system there is little to no room for the individual child to chart their own path that is different from that of their parents.
What is wrong, for instance, if a child of a local farmer wants to be a teacher? Or if the young girl working at her parents’ store wants to head off to university to study and become an engineer? While the subjectivity and permissiveness of modern identity has its own set of problems, the traditional identity formation process has its own pitfalls as well.
Bringing It All Together
What we need to pass on to our teenagers, then, is neither an identity that they must earn from us (traditional) or an identity that they must create for themselves (modern), but an identity that is received and not achieved. A gospel identity comes from outside of us and relies on the unchanging, steadfast words of a God who is the final authority. We do nothing to earn God’s approval. He creates us in his image, redeems us from sin, and brings us into his family. The identity he gives us is bigger than ourselves, more permanent than anything we could ever imagine, and true today and forever regardless of our circumstances or situations.
Listen to the way Jesus frames this in Matthew 10:39: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” In modern identity our children are told to dig deep inside themselves to find themselves, and lo and behold, a generation is struggling in the end to find true meaning. The gospel, as it always does, turns things upside down. Jesus commands us to first lose our lives, and in losing our lives we ultimately find our identity in Christ.
What does Jesus mean when he speaks of losing our lives?
C. S. Lewis writes, “Give yourself up, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. . . . Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”3 In other words, when we focus our energies and passion on discovering what God has called us to do, our very identity often takes care of itself as we find our meaning and purpose in him. What an amazing truth that we can pass along and live out before our teenagers.
Similarly, a gospel identity protects us and our children from pride and self-reliance. Christopher Watkins explains, “The fact that we are in the image of God and are not God therefore prevents us from thinking too highly of ourselves. It also prevents us from assuming the burden of defining ourselves. It reminds us that we are not the final court of appeal in questions about our own identity. . . . I do not ultimately own or define myself.”4
May our teenagers see the freedom and the beauty of an identity that is received and not achieved. May they experience the relief that comes when they entrust their whole being to a sovereign, wise, and loving God.
To hear more from Jonathan Holmes, we hope you’ll consider joining us for our 2024 Rooted Conference, where Jonathan will present a workshop on “God, Gender, and Grace for Challenging Conversations.”
Footnotes:
- Timothy Keller, Gospel Identity Conference, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York, New York, November 17–18, 2017, https://gospelinlife.com/downloads/gospel-identity-conference; Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical (New York: Viking, 2016). I am indebted to the late Timothy Keller for his lucid synthesis of these concepts. Much of what is related here is drawn from these sources.
- Keller, Making Sense of God, 134.
- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; repr., Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 226–27.
- Christopher Watkins, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2022), 93.
