Identity Issues

This was previously posted on my old blog. I rediscovered it, saw it was good (even if I do say so myself), so I thought I'd post it here.

For my dissertation I have been reading essays on how certain characters have fictionalised others (usually the male fictionalising the female, as this line of argument is often found in feminist discourse), and this got me to thinking. To what extent am I just a figment of society’s imagination? How is my identity as an individual determined? Fortunately, I came to a reassuring conclusion, but you’re going to have to wait for that.

The question of identity is one that is an issue that is existent in our lives since about the age of two. In fact, it is the arrival of the question of identity that makes the twos so terrible. For the first years of a baby’s life they are under the impression that they are merely an extension of the primary care-giver (as it usually the mother, that is what I shall continue to call it). Their existence is bound by their mother's; the child is alive only because their mother is. Come two, however, and the baby realises that when the mother is not there they still are, and it suddenly hits them, they are an autonomous being (Not quite like that. I doubt any two-year-olds have thought ‘Hang on a second, I’m an autonomous being. I have an identity to formulate’). Then boundaries must be established and the terrible twos have begun.

But what exactly is our identity? If I were to write down who I was we would hit problems. I would have to make use of flawed and problematic labels in order to define me. I would write something along the lines of ‘I am a: twin, brother, son, grandson, boyfriend, cousin, nephew, student, blogger, citizen of the United Kingdom, inhabitant of both the New Forest and Aberystwyth’, you get the picture. These are the slightly less transient ones. However, identity is always fluid. When I enter a shop I am a customer; when I visit another country I am a tourist; when I take the bus I become a passenger. So we can already see that identity is a very complex notion.

Also, there is a question of who’s me am I? Everyone who knows me has a slightly—or sometimes drastically—different opinion of who I am exactly. My friend Kaylee, who I know from my secondary school will think I am ‘a friend, from secondary school, who is not that organised’. However, some of my friends at University (where I have had to take responsibility for myself) will say that I am one of the most organised people they know. To be honest I think that I am quite organised, but have my silly moments. But which am I: am I Kaylee’s disorganised Thomas; my university friends’ organised Thomas; or my middle-ground Thomas? You would probably tend to say that my opinion of myself is far more accurate than those around us. Kaylee hasn’t seen my new-found skills in time-management, and my friends in Aberystwyth do not know what poor Kaylee had to put up with whilst in secondary school—however I have seen it all.

Yet, it is unlikely that we have the best knowledge of who we are. Freudian psychoanalysis has dismantled that idea well enough, but I shall discuss it anyway. Mental illnesses are the most extreme instance: the delusions of grandiose that schizophrenics suffer and the distorted body-image of those with eating-disorders are two examples of how an individual’s view of themselves can be mistaken. However, there are less extreme ways this occurs. Words such as ‘arrogant’, ‘selfish’, ‘egocentric’ are there for those who believe themselves to be better, more worthy or more important than they actually are (as denoted by social standards). To use myself as a case-study, yet again, there have been numerous times that I have realised my view of myself was wrong. I believed for a good part of my life that I was born in the year of the dragon, according to Chinese zodiac. I was quite proud of that, despite not believing in its implications. However this was dispelled when I realised that Chinese New-Year was quite late in 1988, and I was born before it. This made me a rabbit. Yes, a rabbit—quite a jump (or should I say hop. Sorry, that was terrible). This is just a small incidence compared to those you hear about in trashy magazines (‘My mother was actually my father’ type headlines). So it appears that I can’t rely on myself to form my identity. This is especially difficult with the Freudian idea of denial. You could say I was just about anything, and if I tried to refute it the most effective retort is that I am in denial.

So it appears as if we have come to a brick wall. I can't form my identity, or really know what it is. Nor can anybody else I know. So it appears that I will never know who I really am. That is quite scary. I am now an undefinable entity, and impossibility, so to speak. However, we have come to my positive conclusion. I must warn you, I have been leading you all so far to a testimony of my faith, a reason why I feel I must believe in Christ. Hopefully that will not deter you from reading on.

I have an assurance of identity in my faith. I have a God that knows everything that can be known about me. He knows how many hairs there are on my head (Matthew 10:30). God created me and knows all about me. In Psalm 139 it says

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
...
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

God created me and knows all about me, even before I was actually born. So my identity is formed through my belief in God, and through Christ. Colossians 1 tells me that Jesus is what holds the universe together, so it is him that holds my identity together. It is not my view of myself, it is not my friends' opinions of me, or who I think I am, but it is through Christ that I am made. This means that I must live in Christ, to have any complete identity:

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him,
rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of the world rather than on Christ.
For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ.

Colossians 2:6-10

So there it is. The fullness of my identity is found in Christ. I am free from the despair of existential philosophy (which indeed leaves me hollow), or the denial of Freudian psychology, as long as I continue to be rooted in Christ. As my sense of identity depends on it, I think I will.

An atypical week in the life of a youth-worker

One thing about my church, my job and my life in general is that I don't really get typical weeks. There are elements that stay constant but the bits around the edges seem to change all the time. This used to be a source of stress as I can be a bit of a control freak but now I really like it.

As my weeks are less than typical it's hard where to start with these things. I've had some quite busy weekends so I'll probably end and finish on those.

Saturday 2nd July
I got the keys to my new house the evening before and aimed to move some stuff in during the morning, but I got up late, had an argument with my brother and was generally too tired to do it. I made up with my brother; we argue every now and again but the hurt feelings never last more than an hour. So, instead I got ready for the wedding of Erica and Andy, two people in my church. I didn't have lunch, because I was really nauseous with nerves. I was playing the piano for the service and it was the first (and hopefully last) wedding I've ever played at. It was probably my stress that had a major contributing factor to the argument in the morning.

I arrived at the wedding, played (some people said I played well, I was a bit too dazed to really notice), and went to the reception. I ceilidhed the night away. Well, actually I left at about 10.30, because I'm a light-weight. The wedding and reception was really nice. It was good to be involved in the process (not only did I play but Andy had me, half of Mosaic, the bridesmaids and most his family slaving away over the favours, Orders of Services, and name place cards).

Sunday 3rd
I got to our church's monthly gathering, about 10 minutes late. I sat there bleary-eyed and a feeling like I had a hang-over (I only had a flute of champagne and a glass of white wine during the meal. Honest). I think I got myself a bit worked up about the playing and the effects of the stress had finally hit me. Mind you, some people (mention no names) didn't even get up until the gathering was over.

I moved most my stuff to my house, gate-crashed the Bumroses for a bit, played with giant chalk crayons and then slept my first night at my new abode. I did skive off a clan-leaders meeting.

Monday 4th
It was Duncan's birthday so went over his house for pizza. I bought him The Action Bible: God's Redemptive Story. (Just to clarify, it was his 24th birthday, not his 14th. He happens to like comic books, okay? It says nothing about his reading/mental age. It's far lower than 14.)

After pizza we went to the Trago Pub quiz. There was quite a few of us so we split in to two teams. One of the teams came second. It wasn't my team, unfortunately.

Tuesday 5th
This is a "church" day. I only work part-time and Tuesdays are my office day. This Tuesday I was meeting with Pete, my boss, and Suzy, Chair of Trustees. The meeting started late and went on for quite a while, so I didn't leave until about quarter to six, nearly two hours after I normally leave.

Wednesday 6th
Mosaic night. Probably my favourite evening of any week. We were thin on the ground, Andy and Erica were honeymooning and Duncan was "ill". We're nearly coming to the end of a series looking at the book of Acts. It's been quite good. I prefered the weeks where we were asked to respond to them in a practical way, like go for a prayer-walk. Lately they've been mostly reflective and it seems too similar to what I normally do.

Thursday 7th
My "day off". It was mostly restful but I did have to bail two of my teenagers out of a soul-survivor situation they've got themselves into.

I was meant to be meeting with Duncan for accountability stuff (the technical term) but he was "tired" after being ill for the last two days. Bless him.

Friday 8th
This is my long day. I go to my sixth-form job from 8:30-4:30 (well, there abouts) and then go to church job from 5:30-10:00. A long day. It went okay. I've been doing content light session recently, mainly because the attendance hasn't been great. I think it's mainly because the sun is out, it's music festival season and parents tend to take weekend breaks about now. So we're doing bring and share sessions, where the teens have to bring and share thing to read, watch, discuss or pray about. I did kick this one off, to give them an idea of what to do. I shared a clip from Sister Act, Psalm 139:1-18, and this job vacancy of a disciple. There was also a bit of Q and A opportunity, where they got to ask about my journey with Jesus.

Saturday 9th
I moved the rest of my stuff into my house. Then I helped the Bemrose's set up Immy's 2nd birthday party. There were fifteen small people. FIFTEEN. I was exhausted by it. Steph made an amazing Pepper Pig cake. A lot of additives and sugar was consumed. There were the obligatory tears. They were mostly mine. I went home and slept for a couple of hours. Then went to my parents (I was staying the night there as I was off to Devon the next day) and went straight to bed. I slept straight through until morning. I don't know how parents do it.

Quick Questions

1. Do you have quite structured weeks? Or is it all free and easy?
2. What would you bring to a bring and share?
3. Do you feel sorry for Duncan? I give him a bit of a hard time, don't I?

My part of the story

(A friend and co-blogger wrote that we shouldn't try to see God in our stories, but see ourselves in God's story (she took it from Eugene Peterson, so shouldn't get all the credit). I love this concept, that we are part of something bigger and greater than ourselves. So, this is a story where God is the main character, but I have just a bit part. It reads a bit like a children's story, which wasn't my original intention but I quite liked it. I also refer to myself as in the third person, in order to emphasise that this is not just my story, but my small part in a much more crucial narrative-not because I'm crazy.)

In the beginning was God, and since then he has done a lot of miraculous things. First, he created the universe, which is no mean feat. He then sent his Son to reconcile the universe to him. It was not an easy reconciliation, it was painful and hard; the universe got the better deal. God has always been faithful, back when he made the universe and back when he was doing the reconciling. He remained faithful to two of his people, M and B. B, at this time, was pregnant with twins. God gave this couple a message, through a well-respected elder at their church. The message was simple, it was "Everything is going to be fine."

Later that evening, B began to bleed quite heavily. Although scared that they could be losing their babies, M and B remembered the message that God had given them. And, again, God was faithful. The twins survived.

On the 6th February, B went into labour. The first twin was born and they named him Stephen, for Stephen was the name of his grandfather and was also someone in the Bible. Stephen was not a healthy baby. He had a Tracheoesophageal fistula. This is where the food pipe goes into the wind pipe. If something wasn't done about it Stephen would have died. Six minutes after Stephen was born, the second child came. They called him Thomas, for Thomas means twin. He was not a healthy baby either. He had too little blood (for Stephen had it all) and the doctors thought he may have meningitis. But, again, God was faithful. The twins survived.

Stephen and Thomas grew up, and M and B loved them very much. Because of this they also knew that they were loved by God. When they were eight, M was telling Thomas and Stephen how he came to know about God (who created the universe and reconciled the universe to him through his Son). Although Thomas was young, he decided that he wanted to know God too. Whilst sitting in the back of the car, Thomas decided that he would live his life getting to know about this God.

Thomas lived his life, learning more about God and his son Jesus. However, it was not always easy. Sometimes Thomas felt as if God was not there with him. Sometimes he would tell God that he didn't feel like following him any more. But when this happened, Thomas always knew that it didn't matter what you felt like. God was still God, and it was no point trying to hide from it.

Whilst at secondary school Thomas ran his CU. It didn't go too well, but he did learn a lot from the experience. Thomas stayed at his school's sixth-form, which was a mistake. He was very unhappy there. So unhappy that he began to hurt himself on purpose. It was only in small ways, but it still wasn't wise. Thomas thought that somehow he could control the way he felt if he hurt himself, and he would then feel better for it. It was silly because it actually made him feel worse. Thomas wasn't doing very well at sixth-form and his marks weren't that good. He was meant to be going to university but he didn't know where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do. So he decided to apply to go to Swansea, even though he don't really want to go there.

Thomas wondered where God was in this situation. God wasn't helping with the pain he was feeling, nor was he making his university choices any clearer. Thomas felt that God had left him on his own and this made him feel hopeless. But God was faithful at the beginning, and God was faithful at Thomas' birth, so God was faithful even through this time.

When it came to finding out his A Level results, Thomas found out he did not have the grades needed to get into the Swansea University. This meant he had to look for places in other universities to see if they will let him in. He phoned many different universities who did not want to let him in. He then phoned the university in Aberystwyth, and they said they would love to have him and invited him to an open day. So Thomas took the train, on his own, all the way to Aberystwyth. When he arrived the sun was shining, everyone seemed welcoming and Thomas was glad to be there (there were also a lot of Jewish people there, which Thomas thought was strange, but this isn't important to the story). Thomas decided that Aberystwyth was the place for him.

Thomas did end up going to Aberystwyth University. He made lots of friends, he found a church where he felt like a member of the family and really enjoyed his course. He no longer felt he need to hurt himself anymore, and he was happy. It was God's plan, all a long, that Thomas would go to Aberystwyth. Even when Thomas was sad and unsure and without hope, God was still faithful.

It took him a while to realise this. At a CU weekend away Thomas was asked to share his testimony. He was telling this story (with some extra bits, or others missing) to a group of students when he realised how God had been so faithful to him, even when he couldn't see it at the time. Thomas had to try very hard not to cry.

Soon, university was coming to an end. Thomas, like at sixth-form, didn't really know what he wanted to do afterwards. This time, however, rather than feeling hopeless he decided to rely on God. A friend suggested to him that he applied for a job in a church. So he did. He applied for a job in Oxford, but he didn't get it. Though Thomas knew it was a part of God's plan, he was still getting slightly worried, because he did not want to move back home to Southampton. He thought that he had left his parents' house for good. God, however, had other plans (which are always better than our own).

God provided Thomas a job at a church in Southampton. It was called Waterfront Church then, but now it's called Exilio. It was only part-time and he needed another job. Thomas applied for a job at Totton College. Unfortunately, because one of the references didn't come through he didn't get the job he had applied for. Thomas was a bit sad, but thought that God knew what he was doing. A few days later he gets another call from Totton College. The references had come through and they had made a new job post just for him. God had provided Thomas with the other job he needed.

Thomas loves the church he is at. He loves the people he has met and the teenagers that he works with. Thomas knows because of everything that has happened that God has an exciting plan for him. But most of all Thomas will always remember that God was faithful back when he was making the universe, he has been ever since and he will continue to be faithful forever and ever.

Amen.

Quick Questions

1. Any questions?
2. What's your story?