For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Hebrews 4:12
Social media has always been a great temptation for me because I’m a vain person. I’ve never been able to sign on to social media without my mind and heart immediately beginning to spin: How many followers or likes do I have? Why does so-and-so have more when she always posts stupid kid stuff? Wait, when did he get promoted? Is his new title better than mine?
My identity spiral rages as I get pulled into others’ posts and become aware of my lack of social impact.
During some points in my life, I would wake up, roll over, pick up my phone, and start scrolling. Many times I would look at work emails. Other times I would get my blood boiling by reading news alerts about political dealings. And, of course, I would sometimes go onto social media. The abyss of my smartphone consumed me. And I’m not alone.
More than 70 percent of teens say they often or sometimes grab their phone to check for messages and notifications as soon as they wake up.¹
By starting our morning facing a screen, we’re allowing our smartphones to set the tone for the day. After finding myself caught in this trap for years, I realized something deeper was happening. It was like my head was asking my phone a very practical question: What do I need to do today?
And in the same moment, under the surface, my heart was asking my phone a much more profound question: Who do I need to become today?
Fractured, Not Reflective Identity
Who am I? And who am I becoming? These are the questions our morning routines inevitably ask and answer for us. No words except the words of Scripture can accurately reply to these questions.
The story of Scripture is clear. We do not know who we are apart from the God who made us, and we do not know who we are becoming apart from the God who is renewing us.
We long to know who we are. We daydream about versions of ourselves that we hope to become. But apart from Jesus we can do neither of these things.
Picture a broken mirror. Shards of glass litter the ground. That’s what we humans are— broken reflectors. Alone we reflect a small piece of who God is. Together and redeemed by Christ, we fully can reflect him.
This means we can’t know who we are by looking deep inside, discovering our true identity, and then mustering up all our effort and willpower to become that person. That is not how it works at all.
If we look inside ourselves, we often find a self in conflict. This is because we are created in the image of God, but we are fallen. Good and evil war within us.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. The apostle Paul, the greatest missionary of all time and author of much of the New Testament, faced the same inward battle. In Romans 7:19-20 he writes, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it” (NIV).
So what did Paul do? Was he able to discover his true self?
Yes, but not by turning within. He turned to Jesus. And we can do the same.
Paul went from being frustrated at his inner conflict and calling himself a “wretched man” in need of rescue, to thanking God for delivering him through Jesus Christ (see Romans 7:24-25 NIV).
Like Paul, we have different versions of ourselves that fight against each other. There are versions of ourselves we think we should be, versions our parents think we should be, versions our coaches and teachers think we should be, versions our culture urges us to be—and the list goes on.
This means the way we guide our formation is not by looking in and choosing our favorite identity; it is actually by looking out. Because we are little mirrors made to reflect big things, our internal sense of identity actually ends up reflecting the many different things we’ve spent our life looking at, whether good or not.
We can’t become ourselves by ourselves. The way we discover ourselves is by staring at someone else.
This can be dangerous if we look to another person for identity, such as a boyfriend, girlfriend, friend on social media, or influencer. Staring at another broken shard of glass only makes us more broken.
But when we turn our eyes toward Jesus, we finally see the kind of person we were made to be. We are children of the King, perfectly loved—not because that’s “who we are,” but because that’s who he is making us.
In his death and resurrection, Jesus gave us his place in the universe. We’re heirs to the King of the new heavens and the new earth. Our most true sense of identity is found only in the story of who we are becoming, and that story is found in the words of the Bible.
We become ourselves only by gazing on that story. But every morning there are other stories competing for our identity. The Common Rule habit of Scripture before phone is intended to cultivate the habit of resisting those stories and embracing the true story.
Each morning presents us with these questions: Who am I? And who am I becoming? Each morning, the Scriptures answer the same, with God saying, “You are my child, and you are becoming like me.” That is something to stand the day on.
¹ Jingjing Jiang, “How Teens and Parents Navigate Screen Time and Device Distractions,” Pew Research Center, August 22, 2018, www.pewresearch .org/internet/2018/08/22/how-teens-and-parents-navigate-screen -time-and-device-distractions/.
Adapted for Rooted from The Common Rule Youth Edition by Justin Whitmel Earley. ©2025 by Justin Whitmel Earley. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com. Stay tuned to the Rooted Parent Podcast for an interview with Justin, coming August 2025!
