Identity Cult

The priests of secularism admonish you to contort yourself into whatever image you so desire; become the embodiment of the meandering current of feelings inside of you; shape your own identity.

We’ve become an Identity-cult. One’s identity is a sacred altar to the god of self. There the treasures of self-adulation, self-admiration, and self-righteousness are laid. Self brings praise unto self. Fanciful notions of who you think you are are brought to flatter yourself.

Self-worship is like plugging a power strip into itself, then awarding yourself a Nobel prize for discovering the source of limitless electricity. All you’ve brought yourself is the mangled image of your fallen self, and you’ve been deceived into thinking it’s something worthy of worship.

Self-worship makes us skittish. We don’t want to be told that all of our Identity contortions are actually further mangling the Image in which God made us. All this Identity preening and primping leaves us fearful that we’re becoming more hideous than we began. 

So, like a magnet collecting metal shavings, we form fraternities of other humans to soothe those fears. We clump together in various “like-minded” huddles––fad diet groups, fitness trends, sexual perversion clubs, political parties, etc. These Identity groupings are an attempt to seek shelter from our guilt of presuming to be God.

Our nation has deceived itself into thinking it can discard the Imago Dei, and create from nothing our own glory. We have looked in the shattered mirror of self, and delighted in the dead corpse we beheld there. We have elected leaders who reflect our self-adoration, and our nation has partaken in the horrors of abortion, debt, antidepressants, and pornography which prop up all this selfishness. 

But along comes the Gospel. It damns us all. Then offers to save us all. It mocks our Identity idol. Then offers to restore the Image of God. It promises that those who are in Christ are offered a new Identity. That new Identity is that we are clothed in Christ, and when God looks at us He sees Christ. Jesus not only restores in us the Image of God, He also gives us a new reference point for fellowship with our brother. He gives us true Identity, and true Fellowship.