Identity

What is your identity? I participated for many years in a personal strategic planning group called Focus Four. One of the exercises of Focus Four was to identify all of the roles that you play in your life and how you can be better at them. I am a husband, a father, a friend, a brother, a son, an entrepreneur and so on and so forth. Roles are factual - I am a husband because I am married (to a wonderful woman for 32 years I might add). I am a dad because I have three daughters (and wonderful ones they are). You get the idea.

I say that because roles define our identity. Sometimes however, roles get mixed up with beliefs or even worse opinions. Congressman Steve Scalise was targeted because he was a Republican. Our country has become increasingly polarized by this process of mixing up beliefs and roles.  It seems to be a problem on all ends of the political spectrum. We can disagree, but if you and I are friends, that is our role. Your opinions don't change that fact.


For the Christian, this is becoming even more and more of a problem. I don't even like to use the word Christian any more to describe me because people automatically assume I have a set of opinions and beliefs that cloud the only thing that matters. Increasingly, I like to use the word "Christ follower". The early church was described as "The Way" patterned after John 14:6 where Jesus said "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man comes to Father except through me".  Christianity was never designed to represent a set of political beliefs. Some of my well meaning Christian friends seem to have lost sight of this fact.

As a Christ follower, I am called to influence the world through internal change in the lives of people. Some people refer to this as the cultural mandate. I can serve the culture I live in and impact people that way. Peter says I am an ambassador. An ambassador comes from somewhere else and represents something else. We might say well that was then and this is now. But at the time of that writing Rome was the dominant power and Rome had slavery, abortion, infanticide, rampant sexual deviancy, and so forth. Yet there is not one word in the New Testament about the Christian trying to change this culture through demonstrations or political insurrections. One of Christ's disciples even changed from being an insurrectionist - his name was Simon the Zealot.

The change was through the change of hearts, one heart at a time. What I know and can testify to is that Christ changed my heart and my life many years ago. If I believe that Christ changed me and many like me, I have internal evidence. And if I believe that I can have a relationship with the creator God because of this, I am compelled to share this news which we call the Good News. Everything else I can do is a smokescreen to this.