Chapter 2: Identity
by Brian G. Daigle
“To hear you [Lord] speaking about oneself is to know oneself.”
– Augustine (Conf. X.iii.3)
It has been said that our culture is having an identity crisis, and that our children have likewise internalized and have come to reflect this identity crisis. Some have called this an existential crisis, a deep confusion of one’s being and the meaning thereof. The marks of this national identity crisis are said to be seen in the present sexual revolution, the racial unrest afoot, and the widening political divides. Other symptoms, especially in our children, are said to include the opioid crisis and the suicide rates among those under eighteen years of age. Since the new millennium, America has seen a financial crisis, a healthcare crisis, and a higher education crisis. Some say we are now in a political crisis.
Whatever the case may be, we appear to be a nation prone to crises, or we are prone to the label of crisis. And we appear to be in a crisis whenever our ideas reach their extremes, or perhaps sometimes their logical conclusions. Are we a nation of unity or diversity? Are we people of balance or extremes? Are we a country of laws or freedom? Whether we say there is a crisis about us today is one thing, a topic which I do not intend to entertain here, for determining a crisis is a matter of definition and degree. But one thing is abundantly clear: identity is one of the leading ideas, and leading terms, being tossed around in both explanation and justification for what we are seeing politically, academically, theologically, and almost every other way in America. We may not have yet reached “crisis” pitch, but the overt melody of identity cannot be mistaken. Schools, churches, businesses, and political parties are all making many decisions each day concerning identity. Identity is one of those million dollar words in the 21st century. Therefore, identity needs to be one of the first ideas we rightly consider when it comes to how to raise our children in the 21st century.
A defining characteristic of identity crises is the confusion between two choices. On one hand, the man in the predicament sees he is to do his daily work, say his prayers, and love his family. On the other hand, he wants to follow his passions, step out from underneath the divine shadow, and cut the cord of his familial responsibilities. How clear and bright are these paths before him? Who is he? How does he decide between the two? How emotionally and mentally wrought must he become until he is in a crisis?
One of the other important things to realize in an identity crisis, or in identity confusion, is the all-too-present false dichotomy presented to the mind of the individual. A false dichotomy is when two options are presented, often at odds with one another, when there are actually more than two options from which to choose, or when the two options are not separate at all. Examples of false dichotomies can be seen in the paragraph above: “Are we a nation of unity or diversity? Are we people of balance or extremes? Are we a country of laws or freedom?” We could even see these false dichotomies as a kind of false dilemma: “If I am for racial unity, then I am not acknowledging the great diversity in our country, but if I am for racial diversity, then I am not promoting peace in our community. I am either for diversity or unity. Therefore, I am either not acknowledging the great diversity in our country or I am not promoting peace in our community.” Or “If I do my daily work, then I will not feel free or happy when I’m with my family, and if I spend time with and lead my family, then I will not share the Gospel and pray as I ought. I either do my daily work or I spend time with and lead my family. Therefore, I will either not feel free or happy or I will not share the Gospel and pray as I ought.” Or to make it more secular, “If I am a woman and pursue a career, then I cannot have children but I will be independent and free. But if I am a stay-at-home mom, then I will be confined and unable to use my gifts. I will, then, either not have children or I will be confined and will waste my gifts.” So what is a person to do? And how do parents think rightly on this issue of identity when it comes to our children?
Besides the importance of working through the above issues with a logical mind, quite literally with the tools given to us in logic (for example, answering a logical dilemma), we must work through them with open eyes, seeing why these ideas are presented to us as dilemmas in the first place. Our time may be defined as an age where the center has not held. The revolutionary mindset of the past two centuries is still the predominant mindset of our broader society in the west, and this means our age has the spirit which leans constantly toward overthrow, toward revolt, toward rebellion. If we compare this with other societies, both past and present, and we identify many of the other ideas which are main actors in our present script (i.e. Liberty, Equality, and Individuality), we can see how something like identity has taken a lead role, and why dilemmas concerning identity are all-too-common in nearly every institution and every part of the current society in which we are to raise our children. The reason why identity is such an important idea for 21st century parents to get right is because the deeper question of identity, the deeply human nature of identity, is already within our children; it is fundamental to who they become. Likewise, revolutionary times are deeply rooted in questions of identity, where there is a clear war for ideas, almost an overt self-awareness and skepticism with largely contrasting ideas, each idea leading to wholly different ends. And, finally, in our time, identity is a current and explicit tool used by many to confuse our children (and our parents), guiding them down darker paths.
As mentioned in the introductory chapter to this series, Chesterton said the modern world is full of old virtues gone mad. The old virtue which has gone mad, when it comes to individual identity, is personhood. Today, individual identity means who I am, despite the other. Personhood is who I am in relationship to the other. Therefore, the protection and remedy for our children, as we guide them on the path of recognizing, living into, and expressing their identity, is not about themselves, but about the other. That is, to correct any virtue gone mad, we must add to it the stabilizing presence of another virtue, like when an arborist places beside a crooked or weak tree the strength of a tethered and grounded stake to make the tree grow straight and tall. In this case, the added virtue we must instill in our children, if we wish for them to get identity right, is submission or selflessness or self-forgetfulness.
Two perspectives will help us get this right, two great influences on Christian thought (and really all western thought): St. Augustine and Solomon. A Solomonian view of the individual will take its cues from the book of Proverbs, where a father is teaching his son what it is to be a man. There are three characteristics of Solomon’s view of the individual that will be woven into this chapter: 1) our child’s well-being will be decided by his relationship to others, 2) our child’s well-being will be decided by his love of wisdom over folly, and 3) our child’s well-being will be established by the paradox of not caring so much for his individual well-being. An Augustinian view of the individual is likewise an important one to weave into our parental imagination. There are three characteristics we should adopt from Augustine concerning how we treat our child’s identity: 1) our child is made in the Trinitarian image of God, and therefore their being is constituted by relationality, 2) the location of a person’s self-identity is primarily his memory, and 3) the objective word by God upon our child’s identity is the most operative. These six principles are the curbs and spurs for good parenting on identity. Only in the bonds of that objectivity can the subjectivity of their individuality truly be free and rightly expressed, in such a way as to promote their well-being.
The Other
One of the marked philosophical blessings of Scripture is that it presents to us time and again the foolishness of our flat thinking and the sacred reversal of something like a paradox. It presents to us wisdom we did not expect, wisdom that appears strange, almost contradictory, to what we would have thought. This is the turning point for identity. The wisdom needed to teach our children who they are and whose they are is a deep paradox.
The conventional wisdom on identity tells us that one must simply find themselves, forget others, the voice of the others, dig deeply into themselves, decide for themselves who they are and who they want to be. But this is not Christ. Indeed, this egoism may be traced in the history of ideas, but it will not find any forefathers in the history of Christian thought, and it will find no support in Christ and the apostles. It will not find any basis in Holy Scripture. Fixing an identity crisis is, paradoxically, not about the individual. Fixing an identity crisis is about that sure and objective and immovable other to which the individual must fix his being.
Solomon states early in Proverbs, that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” (Prov. 1:7) and “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: for they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.” (Prov. 1:8-9).
At the beginning of Confessions, Augustine is recalling his childhood and his earliest memories. He states,
“So ‘I acknowledge you, Lord of heaven and earth’ (Matt. 11:25), articulating my praise to you for my beginnings of my infancy which I do not recall. You have also given mankind the capacity to understand oneself by analogy with others, and to believe much about oneself on the authority of weak women. Even at that time I had existence and life, and already at the last stage of my infant speechlessness I was searching out signs by which I made my thoughts known to others. Where can a living being such as an infant come from if not from you, God? Or can anyone become the cause of his own making? Or is there any channel through which being and life can be drawn into us other than what you make us, Lord? In you it is not one thing to be and another to live: the supreme degree of being and the supreme being of life are on and the same thing. You are being in a supreme degree and are immutable.” (Conf. I.vi.10)
Consider further that we, and every decent parent, want our child’s perspective, understanding, and decisions concerning their identity to lead to happiness. In order for this to happen, that perspective, understanding, and decision-making must relate to an objective other. And this objective other is not merely a spouse or friend or romantic partner or television personality. This objective other is the Lord God, more specifically poured out in wisdom. Hear Augustine in Confessions:
“Is not the happy life that which all desire, which indeed no one fails to desire?…The desire for happiness is not in myself alone or in a few friends, but is found in everybody…Even if one person pursues it in one way, and another in a different way, yet there is one goal which all are striving to attain, namely to experience joy.”
“The happy life is joy based on truth. This is joy grounded in you, O God, who are the truth, ‘my illumination, the salvation of my face, my God’ (Ps. 26:1; 41:12). This happy life everyone desires; joy in the truth everyone wants.”
“There is a delight which is given not to the wicked (Isa. 48:22), but to those who worship you for no reward save the joy that you yourself are to them. That is the authentic happy life, to set one’s joy on you, grounded in you and caused by you. That is the real thing, and there is no other. Those who think that the happy life is found elsewhere, pursue another joy and not the true one. Nevertheless their will remains drawn towards some image of the true joy.”
And hear Solomon:
“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.” (Prov. 3:13-18)
A child, therefore, must live in a constant state of reminder (that is, educated), both explicitly and intuitively, that he is a creature, whose Lord is God, whose reality is Trinitarian, that he is a child, whose parents are present and active, that he has relationships and responsibilities, that there are objective standards to which his imagination of individuality must conform and that those standards must be obeyed subjectively, with wisdom and virtue. To state it plainly, a child must find their identity in their relationality and responsibility, ultimately to God, and not further inside themselves. Here is the blessed paradox: if we want our child to find themselves, they must lose themselves. If we turn our children inward to find their identity, they will collapse.
To Whom Do You Belong?
Given then what has been said, the most important identity question a parent must get right in their own mind, and in their explicit instruction of the child, is, “To whom does my child belong?” Consider for a moment the implications, even subtly in one’s imagination, if the answer to this question is one way and not another. What would my parenting decisions look like—the child’s education, dietary habits, discipline, bedtime, vocabulary, behavior, etc.—if I believed that my child belonged to the state? Or if I believed they belonged to my parents? Or solely to me? Or solely to themselves? Or to a future romantic love? Or to fate? Or to some strange mixture of all the above? The latter is what I often find in my dealing with parents, even Christian parents. There is a real disintegration in many parents’ minds when it comes to answering the question “To whom does my child belong?” This is not only a practical problem, it is philosophical and theological problem, and it exists for many reasons. But the primary reason this exists is because Christians have adopted a low view of the Sacraments, which has come about by a low and shallow view of the Scriptures and Church history. We have, in other words, not believed God concerning his identity markers for his people, and we have even been reluctant in many Christian traditions to apply those markers faithfully to our children. And so it is not that we don’t give our children any sign, any covenantal marker. We instinctively know our children cannot live signless; and so, perhaps even with good intentions and biblical proof texts, we give our children signs and identity markers contrary to our Christian faith. We may even surround them with signs and identity markers of the world, and then we wonder why at eighteen they experience a spiritual identity crisis. This is why baptism is not just a matter of ritualism or good feelings, or the individual and subjective decision of the baptized. The objective reality of baptism must be understood rightly. But the details thereof are for another occasion. For purposes here, the point simply needs to be made.
In Christ, there is no room for an identity crisis. With baptism in Christ, there is no need for wondering where the starting point is regarding my child’s identity. We must teach our children, implicitly and explicitly, that the starting point regarding their identity is not at all with them but with God, with their family, with their Christian community who enables them to remain faithful to their baptism, with the Lord’s Supper, as an ongoing recollection and restatement and re-conciliation of their baptism. We cannot begin to ask the big questions of our parenting, to solve the big problems, until we answer the most basic question, until we set the foundation aright: what is my child and to whom do they belong?
Our children will never know who or what they are until we are confident in who and what they are, until we can clearly answer the question “To whom does my child belong?” Without rooting our children in their identity in Christ, and without rooting our parents in the eternal and unchanging identity of our Triune God, our parenting will waffle between conventional ideas on children as well as how our parents raised us.
The Signs of the Bond
If our child’s identity, then, is inextricably bound to an other, how is it this bond is created, strengthened, and upheld? To reiterate, our children will be surrounded by signs and symbols. This is inescapable. Even the absence of signs and symbols points us to something beyond itself. That is to say, a vacuum of signs and symbols is never a complete vacuum, or perhaps we can say that a vacuum is as educational as an abundance. Because identity is about relationality, and for human persons relationality plays out in a material world, in a world of bodies and imaginations, we then must realize as parents that the signs and symbols with which we surround our children, the art and words as well, will construct for them not just their identity but the deeper ways they go about asking questions about identity or solving problems regarding identity, and even how they help their peers and siblings with their own questions of identity.
If you look at the historical and more traditional liturgies around the baptismal rite, you should notice something important about the words. The words in the baptismal rite are words about relationality: child to God, child to neighbor, child to church, parent to child, Church to child, Church to God, parent to God, pastor to child, pastor to parents, pastor to Church, pastor to God. As the child grows, so will the need for strengthening these bonds, for re-minding the child of these others, reminding ourselves as parents of these others. The strength of one’s identity is about the strength of their memory regarding the other. “Whose am I?” the child will ask. “Who are my people?” the child will wonder. “What’s up with all this?” the child will seek. “If I am confused, what is my starting point?” the child will want to know. These are not questions that just come during teenage rebellion. These are existential questions which nature pushes on the child from the earliest moments of self-awareness. These questions are relentless. And because the child will learn more from what we do and build than what we didactically teach, we then ought to be aware that it is not the moments of the explicit question and the explicit answer where an abiding identity is created for our children. It is the quiet and mundane and constant moments which teach our child whose they are and what it’s all about. We must, therefore, not wait until the child asks identity-type questions before we give answers. We must answer the child’s daily identity-type (and silent) questions by what we surround the child with, by the symbols and people and activities in which the child lives and moves and has his being.
The Eastern Orthodox have a habit of putting icons in each room of the house. I have heard of fellow Anglicans who will put at least a cross in each room of the house, maybe also an historical work of Church art or some other such image or symbol of Christian culture. Despite my thoughts on some of the reasoning and motivations behind these practices, when it comes to identity, the practice is brilliant. Growing up in a Roman Catholic family, I can remember the haunting crucifix in nearly every room of the house (even at my grandparents’ house), especially in the bedrooms and family room. I can remember where they were located; I can remember the disruption they were to my selfish and boyish ambitions; I can remember the sense that no matter where I went or what I did, the reality of the cross was constant. Despite my artistic or theological or liturgical thoughts on the matter, the presence of that symbol mattered. It was instructional. We can say it was efficacious. We can go so far as it say it was sacramental.
I often tell teachers at Christian schools, and any school really, that when you are not teaching, the walls are teaching. And when you are teaching, the walls are still teaching. That is, your classroom is just as much of an instructor and educator as you are, if not more so. So, you should create and decorate and organize your room, and what’s in the room, accordingly. If you are at a classical and Christian school, you should have a mature classical and Christian practice and philosophy of aesthetics and the spatial arts. The walls are great instructors of identity, even in our homes.
“What will make me happy?” the child thinks. The child looks on the eastward wall: “Christ!” the wall says.
“To whom do I belong?” the child considers. The child passes through the hallway, by a painting of a palm branch. “The King of Kings,” he remembers.
“Why do I have to do my stupid homework?” he grumbles. The child sees the Bible on the coffee table. “Sacred literature is real,” he sees.
“Why can’t I have what I want, when I want it?” he pries. The child sees his father whistling and loading the dishwasher. “Because good men serve joyfully,” he learns.
There is, therefore, some practical and logical conclusions here for parents. Liturgy, time, movements, and memory (story)! As Augustine states, “Memory preserves in distinct particulars and general categories all the perceptions which have penetrated, each by its own route of entry…There also I meet myself and recall what I am, what I have done, and when and where and how I was affected when I did it.” (Conf. X.viii.13-14) To be sure, this is not my Anglican bias coming through. This is indeed the valid conclusion of what has been said thus far. The child’s memory matters, as does their sense of time, place, and season, their sense of people and story. All of these build a sense of self. And the three most influential arenas for all these are the home, the church, and the school. The fourth would be the city. What have we been given in Church history, including Scripture, to deepen a child’s Godward memory, their Godward identity? Liturgy. Our child is homo sapien, but let us not forget they are also deeply homo liturgicus. Their identity will be shaped by a liturgy. The question is “Whose and to what end?”
How Should We Then Parent?
There are three great crossroads when it comes to our children’s identity in Christ, and the family is essential in all three of them: The child will learn, 1) “What do my parents teach me (in thought and deed) about the Sacraments?” 2) “What do my parents teach me about their identity?” 3) “And how do my parents educate me?”
As to the first, if we do not treat the signs and symbols of God with great gravity, we cannot expect our children to have their feet firmly planted; they will float away. If we neglect the identity-markers, the identity-reminders, and the identity-makers given to us by God, we cannot be surprised when our children have an identity crisis. If we do not give our children the image of God, we will teach them to find another portrait to imitate.
As to the second, mimesis (imitation) happens each day with our children, especially as they watch us to see who they are to become, as they see who we decide to become in our moments of joy, fear, frustration, sadness, gratitude, and confusion. Just as the laws of physics necessitate the downhill path of water, so the laws of nature necessitate the parentward path of a child’s identity. What do you praise in your child? What do you praise in yourself? What do you criticize in your child? What do you criticize in yourself? Each word, each action, is one brick on top of another, one mosaic tile beside another, until your child resembles what you’ve been building all along in yourself and in them.
As to the third, Voddie Baucham once said, “We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.” Education is an identity issue long before it is academic or scholastic issue. Whatever schooling we choose for our children, we must realize that where we place our children for their schooling will be the loudest identity shapers in their lives, where their identity will be shaped more consistently than anywhere in their lives, for the most hours each week, by the most influential people you approve of shaping their identity. The crumbs gathered at youth group will not hold a candle to the banquet presented each and every day to your children at their school. What are you allowing them to be fed?
But let us not get sideways, assuming a mechanical outcome so long as we parent rightly. The right identity for a person is a gift from God, because it is in the likeness of Christ, and that means we must be parents who pray for our children. We must work and pray. We must work in the above ways, and we must pray so that God would make those ways fruitful, in his timing, according to his good will.
Published the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 2020
Brian G. Daigle
