literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Date: Tue Jul 22, 2003 7:33 am
Subject: Christian Identity: Who Am I?

http://www.sulekha.com/chpost.asp...ilosophy&show=0&cid=66993

Christian Identity: Who Am I?

http://www.christianity.co.nz/ident1.htm

The story is told that Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher of
pessimism, was sitting one day in the Tiergarten at Frankfurt,
looking somewhat shabby and dishevelled, when the park-keeper mistook
him for a tramp and asked him gruffly, "Who are you?" To this enquiry
the philosopher replied bitterly, "I wish I knew." A similar story is
told of Marlon Brando. When asked "How are you?" he replied, "How do
I know how I am, when I don't even know who I am." The writer Edward
Dahlberg observed, "At nineteen I was a stranger to myself, at forty
I asked 'Who am I?', at fifty I concluded I would never know. " Woody
Allen put it a little differently. He said that his only regret in
life was that he wasn't somebody else.

The dawn of a new millennium finds us living in an uncharted world
where the major conflicts are mapped more by cultural and ethnic than
geographic and political boundaries. Harvard political scientist
Samuel Huntingdon, as he surveyed the post-Cold War realities in The
Clash of Civilisations (1998), warned of a world "anarchical, rife
with tribal and national conflicts". He saw the end of the twentieth
century marked by an "eruption of a global identity crisis."

For whatever reason, it seems that one of the problems many people
face in today's Western society, is finding out where they fit in the
scheme of things. Some 100 years ago the artist Paul Gauguin scrawled
in the corner of his painting the words "D'ou Venons Nous? Que Sommes
Nous? Ou Allons Nous?" ("Where do we come from? What are we? Where
are we going to?") He then swallowed a bottle of arsenic and prepared
to die. He actually survived and carried on painting but he had, in
that moment, expressed a despair that many are feeling more than ever
today as they consider those three big questions.

No doubt there are many reasons for this state of affairs. One must
surely be the increasing breakdown of family relationships-with
growing divorce rates, increasing solo parenthood and extra-marital
sex, and the blurring of sexual boundaries and the definition of
what "family" really means. Most people find their first sense of
identity, of really belonging somewhere, in close family
relationships. However, when these no longer exist, it is no wonder
that many feel lost.

A second factor is the crass materialism that exists in our culture,
the constant emphasis on the acquiring of things rather than our
relationships with people. In a book of essays titled The Culture of
Consumption, historian Jackson Lear examines the psychological
effects that consumption has had on Americans, effects that are no
doubt true of Western society generally. Whereas earlier Americans
(when they were citizens, not consumers) were inner-directed, having
their identity revolve around a higher principle, modern Americans
can be termed other-directed.

Lear notes that the other-directed person is just "an empty vessel to
be filled and refilled according to the expectations of others and
the needs of the moment." People's identities consist of the masks
they put on, masks that either make them look successful or help them
get success, allowing those around them to define who they are. We
have lost our separate selfhood, or at least momentarily misplaced
it. Instead of finding it in our rich family heritage, or in the
gifts that have surfaced in us, or in the laughter of our children,
we have been sidetracked by the consumer culture's claims that we are
incomplete and needy.

A third factor in our computer-and-TV-driven society is the multitude
of conflicting messages we are constantly receiving from so many
sources. Jim Fidelibus, who has a background in philosophy, theology
and psychology, and twenty years experience in counselling and
related fields, says in The Death of Truth (ed. Dennis McCallum):

According to postmodern theorists such as psychoanalyst Jacques
Lacan, we never really achieve a stable image of who we are. In a
seemingly ever-changing contemporary society with media linkages to
our homes, cars, schools, and places of employment, the images we are
fed-and with which we identify-are so varied and incongruent that we
begin feeling like patchwork. The moment we are sure of ourselves, we
hear scores of dissenting voices, no longer just from without, but
now from within. To take a stand on any issue, be it related to
lifestyle, career or marital choice, sexual orientation, child-
rearing, religion, or politics, seems arbitrary in the light of so
many voices, all of which present themselves as equally valid
alternatives. And certainly, claiming "truth" for an arbitrary stand
can only be seen as arrogant. So we act without any claim on truth.

A fourth factor is the pervasive influence of postmodern thinking. K.
Gergen in The Saturated Self put it like this:

Postmodern psychology argues for the erasure of the category of self.
No longer can one securely determine what it is to be a specific kind
of person-male or female-or even a person at all. As the category of
the individual person fades from view, consciousness of social
construction becomes focal. We realise increasingly that who and what
we are is not so much the result of our "personal essence" (real
feelings, deep beliefs, and the like) but of how we are constructed
in various social groups.
It is no doubt that this lack of self-identity is behind much of the
increasing violence in many of our societies today. Jim Fidelibus
goes on to say:

The loss of self-identity has been associated with some of the most
unsettling findings in the entire psychology research literature.
When people's group experience diminishes their sense of self, people
tend to behave in ways less restrained and more indulgent.
Individuals are also carried into adopting more extreme positions,
and favour more radical action than they would take independently.

Some of the most disturbing findings in this area come from the work
of Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University. He conducted a prison-
simulation experiment in which college students role-played guards
and prisoners over a period of six days. What happened was
frightening. Participants increasingly seemed to confuse role-playing
and self-identity as the basest, most morbid side of human nature was
exhibited. Experimenters were horrified to see "guards" take pleasure
in cruelty and "prisoners" become increasingly preoccupied with
escape, individual survival, and mounting hatred. The experiment,
originally planned for a two-week period, had to be aborted before
even one week had been completed.

So much for an analysis of the problem. Is there any solution? The
purpose of this article is to assist you to find your true identity
from a Christian perspective. When we look at the Bible-the New
Testament in particular-we find that our identity, first as human
beings and second as children of God, is something so wonderful that
it is not easy to grasp its full significance. It is an identity that
grows out of a relationship to a God who created the universe for
your benefit, who was willing to endure infinite suffering in order
that you might find your true identity, and who has a purpose for you
that will be beyond your greatest dreams.* Other philosophies and
religions have their own ideas about who we really are, or who we are
meant to be. Speaking from a Buddhist perspective, Buddhagosa, in
Path of Purity, says, "I am nowhere a somewhatness for anyone." In
Hitler's Germany, during the 1930s, many young members of the Hitler
Youth would chant these simple words: "You are nothing, the nation is
everything." Or, in the words of one of Pink Floyd's famous
songs, "You're just another brick in the wall." However, if the Bible
is true, you are something infinitely more than that.

Get your own free IRC Chat room