The Six Places You're Probably Trying (and Failing) to Find Your Identity

There’s an old story about a man who found an injured, adolescent eagle on the side of the road. He took it home, nursed it back to health, and allowed it to live on his farm with his chickens. This eagle began to eat, sleep, and even peck like the chickens. Because chickens never fly more than a few feet, neither did the eagle.

One day, the man lifted the eagle over his head and said, “You’re an eagle—so fly!” As he let go, it dropped to the ground, shaking in fear. So the man grabbed him and this time climbed up a ladder to the roof of his house.

“You don’t belong on the ground. You belong in the air. Now FLY!” he said as he tossed the bird into the air. The eagle wailed in fear and extended its wings only enough to slow its fall and land safely on the ground.

The man finally had enough. He took the eagle, got in his truck, and drove up a mountain. Standing on the edge of a cliff, he looked the big, majestic bird in the eye and said, “Today is the day you find out who you really are. You're not meant to peck around a farm—you’re meant to soar across the sky.” He then lifted him out over the ledge and let him go.

As the eagle plummeted in free fall, it first let out a scream—then let out its wings. In an instant, natural instinct kicked in, and he took flight. Would you believe that eagle never made his way back to the chicken farm after that? (Except maybe for some nuggets.)

The day he found out he was an eagle was the day he stopped being a chicken.

THE WORD

“We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” Numbers 13:33

I once read a quote by Anaïs Nin that said, “We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.” I suppose that's true in more ways than one. We tend to see through the lens of our experiences, as well as our self-perception.

When asked to spy out the Promised Land and report back, the Israelite spies began with a summation of how they saw themselves—and therefore how they assumed they must have been perceived in the eyes of others. But we later find out that forty years later, when Joshua sends spies again into the land, the people are terrified of the Israelites. So much so that Jericho had shut its walls and gates in defense.

Here’s my point: The cost of not knowing who you are is living like someone you’re NOT.

CHRIST VS. CRISIS

The greatest epidemic in the world today is not a disease or illness—it’s the sickness of misplaced identity. Much of humanity does not know who they are. And because of that, men don't stick around to be husbands and fathers. Girls sell their bodies on the street for money and their pictures on websites for attention. Gender confusion is affirmed, and sexual deviancy is celebrated. At the root of all our social woes is a crisis of identity.

People are broken and hurting because the result of not knowing who you are is being who you’re not.

Until you place your identity in Christ, you will always have an identity in crisis. Your identity informs your worth and your purpose.

2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us that if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. Everything that once identified them falls away in relation to Christ. It doesn't mean there aren't still many things that make us unique—our ethnic background, our history, our skills, etc. But it does mean all of these things and more take a back seat to Christ when it comes to forming our identity.

THE SIX PITFALLS OF AN IDENTITY CRISIS

Over the years, I’ve found these are the six most common ways—outside of Christ—where people attempt to find their identity. We all will find ourselves tempted to look to one or more of these areas for fulfillment and worth, but in the end, they will each leave us empty.

1. PERFORMANCE – I AM WHAT I DO

When we attempt to root our identity in our job, our hobby, or our title, our life becomes a performance.

What you do in life is important to who you are, but it isn’t all of who you are. Your value cannot be solely placed in your performance.

In teaching high school, every year I would have a few guys who made basketball their entire lives and identity, convinced they were still going to make it to the NBA. Many of them would go play D2 or D3 college basketball for four years and find themselves having an identity crisis in their mid-twenties because their entire life had revolved around a sport.

"Who am I without it?" Even the greatest athletes have to answer that question. D. Wade played in the NBA, won championships, and competed at the highest level. He retired at the age of 35. That means he will spend more of his life not playing basketball than playing.

A wise man once said, “If you’re nothing without the suit, then you don’t deserve to wear the suit.” That was Iron Man, and he said it to Spider-Man… but it’s true nonetheless. Who are you apart from the job, the title, the sport, the hobby?

2. ACHIEVEMENT – I AM WHAT I ACCOMPLISH

Finding our worth in degrees, education, awards, accolades, promotions—or even in the amount of weight we push up from the bench. We all naturally look for ways to attach a number or indicator to our self-worth.

When the most important thing about you is what you do, then you’ll believe you’re only as valuable as how well you do it.

My first year of teaching, I had a student who was kind of the class clown and a big jokester. He often came off as lazy, but in reality, he was wicked smart and made perfect grades. He hardly had to study because things just seemed to come naturally to him.

One day, he came into my room, shut the door, pulled up a chair next to my desk, and collapsed in tears. I was pretty startled. In my youth pastor brain, I was thinking, “I bet it’s one of the 3 Ds: drugs, drinking, or dating…”

“PZ, I made a B on my exam.” I did not see that coming. (“Are you sure it’s not drugs?” — I didn’t say that.)

As I sat with him in this moment of brokenness, we began to unravel not a crisis of grades or academic stature—but a crisis of identity. “You think the grade on that paper is attached to your worth.”

For others, it’s the amount on your paycheck. Maybe it’s the title on your office door, the degree framed on your wall, or the trophy on your shelf.

How easily we can buy into the lie that if I haven’t achieved enough, then I’m not enough.

3. MATERIALISM – I AM WHAT I HAVE

A bigger house, a nicer car, more clothes—it’s an endless pit in the pursuit of fulfillment and happiness.

A 2012 Gallup poll found that despite America being one of the wealthiest nations in the world, it ranks 33rd on the global happiness scale. The top 10 happiest countries, however, all ranked lower economically than the U.S. What does that mean? Money and materialism don’t buy happiness. We are not what we possess.

“For a lot of people, things aren't just things. They're identities. Shopping is now the number one leisure activity in America, usurping the place previously held by religion. Amazon is the new temple. The Visa statement is the new altar. Double-clicking is the new liturgy. Lifestyle bloggers are the priests and priestesses. Money is the new god.” —John Mark Comer

How true that is. Where we live, what we drive, and how we dress are all forms of status symbols in a society that often uses status as a form of currency all its own. That’s why so many people have high status, low income, and even higher debt. (I’ll let you figure out that equation.)

4. RELATIONSHIPS – I AM WHO I’M WITH

It’s tempting to place our worth and value in who we are connected to. We often see this in people who jump from relationship to relationship because they are desperately afraid to be alone. For them, being alone somehow equates to being less valuable.

But it's also true of many who simply desire to be a good mother, husband, leader, etc. Our motives can start out very pure. I certainly want to be the best husband to Jill and father to Parker and Davis that I can possibly be. I want to be a good pastor to my church and a good leader to our staff. I want to be a good friend to many—and while we’re at it, an Olympic athlete, an astronaut, and one of those dudes who drives an armored vehicle. (It just seems cool.)

Okay, I got carried away—but you get the picture.

We often carve our identity out of how we relate to those around us. Once again, this plays a very important role in our lives—but it does not hold our inherent self-worth. Kids grow up and move away. Spouses let us down. Friends drift apart. Jobs and responsibilities evolve, come, and go.

Rooting your identity in who you are connected to makes a false god out of the people in your life.

It’s what takes us from pleasing God to pleasing others. That’s why our identity must be rooted in the most important relationship above all—the Father.

5. APPEARANCE – I AM WHAT I LOOK LIKE

Physical attractiveness—subjective as it may be—is one of the quickest and easiest ways to find affirmation, especially in a world connected by the internet. Likes and comments make it easy to find an immediate measurement of one’s supposed value.

Growing up, I was super self-conscious about my ears. If you’ve never heard my carnival clown story, I’ll spare you all the details and just sum it up this way: a dunking booth carny with a painted-on face roasted me in front of a crowd at the fair. He made fun of the size of the protruding listening devices I have on each side of my head. I was 9.

So I grew my hair out to cover them and wore hoods whenever I could.

I started shaving my head when I gained a newfound confidence halfway through college—not coincidentally, when my relationship with God skyrocketed. Turns out, the more you get to know God, the more you begin to understand about yourself.

The phrase “apple of His eye” used throughout the Bible is an expression that describes staring so deeply into someone’s eyes that you can see your reflection.

For any who struggle with your appearance, learn to find your reflection in His eyes more than you do the mirror. In seeking Him, He will reveal not only Himself to you—but YOU to you. And He will reveal just how beautifully and fearfully you are made in His image.

6. SEXUALITY – I AM WHO I’M ATTRACTED TO

The message of today is “be true to yourself.” If you’re attracted to the same sex, embrace your attraction. If you feel as though you are the opposite sex, live out your feelings. If the spark has gone out in your marriage, move on to your next season.

But being true to ourselves means being stuck in our sin. That’s why Jesus said, if anyone wants to be His disciple, they must deny themselves.

You are not what you are tempted by. You are not what you’re attracted to.

Hebrews tells us Jesus was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet He was without sin. Temptation gives birth to sin when we indulge what we desire.

Recently I listened to a man share his story of coming out of a transgendered lifestyle after he gave his life to Christ. People often ask him: “Were you born that way? Born in the wrong body? With the wrong feelings? The wrong brain chemistry?” I loved his honest response: “I have no idea. All that matters is that the Bible says we must be BORN AGAIN.”

Born again doesn’t mean never tempted again. It means a new creation has taken the place of the old, and we now live according to a new standard—not according to our desires, but according to His commands.

CONCLUSION

We will all wrestle with these pitfalls at times. We will all find ourselves attempting to find purpose and comfort in one or more of these areas. But we must look to the truth of God’s Word to find the revelation of our worth.

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” —Ephesians 2:10

God has called us to do a great work—but notice the Scripture first says we are a great work.

We are the workmanship of God—and that means we have value apart from what we produce, look like, or feel.

An identity rooted in Christ enables us to know who we are first. In Christ, what we do flows out of who we are—not the other way around. You are who God says you are, and that's what matters most!