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
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