Who God Says You Are

A Christian Understanding of Identity

Klyne R. Snodgrass

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780802875181
• eBook ISBN: 9781467449649
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

WHO ARE YOU? 

For respected New Testament scholar Klyne Snodgrass, this is the most important question a person can ask—the question from which everything else in life flows. Other questions follow:  What made you who you are? Who gets to say who you are? And—perhaps most vital— Who does  God say you are? 

In this book Snodgrass offers wise guidance to all who are wrestling with such universal human questions. He examines nine factors—including one's body, personal history, commitments, and boundaries—that shape human identity, and he expertly draws out what the Bible tells us about who God says we are, how we fit within God's purposes, and how our God-given identity can and must impact the way we live our lives.

FACTOR 1

You Are Your Body

A person is known by his appearance, and a sensible person is known when first met, face to face. A person’s attire and hearty laughter, and the way he walks, show what he is.

—Sirach 19:29–30

A powerful bodily experience—the “body-self”—has a far stronger purchase on one’s sense of who and what [one] is than do any social roles.

—Jouette M. Bassler, “The Problem of Self-Definition”¹

To say “You are your body” may seem obvious, but this is not merely to say “You are your meat and bones.” The body is more than physical stuff and includes all that we assume with human existence, for your mind, hardwiring and all, is part of your body. Or is it? Some would argue that the body is merely a vehicle in which the mind, the self, is housed. That will need discussion, but you are still your body.

We may give our bodies lots of attention, but we do not think much about how our bodies determine us. We just assume our bodies. But do not underestimate the importance of the body for identity. Our body is a huge determiner of our identity, for most people the greatest determiner of all. Our bodies determine so much about us: gender, size, race, attractiveness, vulnerability, health, metabolism, opportunities, proclivities toward communication, attitudes such as anger or passivity or aggression, drive, and a host of other factors. Our reactions to the benefits and liabilities of our bodies also shape us.

Sometimes people think of the body as if it were an isolated material entity, but nothing is further from the truth. Our bodies are always connected both literally and metaphorically to others and other realities. They never are in isolation. Our bodies were formed while connected to a womb. Our bodies were born connected to parents and family. As we grew, gained experiences, and made commitments, the connections of our bodies multiplied exponentially in relations and actions that define us. Our bodies become connected to habits, to responsibilities, to sin, to inadequacies, possibly to addiction, to sickness and death, to a host of other options, and hopefully to Christ. To what will you consciously connect your body? None of the realities of our bodies is conceived in isolation. They all are grasped in relation with family and community and in the way societies value and interpret them. Two people with the same physical characteristics in two different cultures will not have the same identity. You are your body, but even that is understood communally.

Physical abilities and gifts are particularly determinative, and especially the degree to which one is satisfied or dissatisfied with one’s own body. If you have uncommon or even common abilities, it is part of your identity and will shape you. Attractiveness, like it or not, will open doors that would otherwise be closed. Mental capacities, hardwired in the brain, likewise open or close doors. The more one is dissatisfied with physical appearance and ability, the more negative are the results for positive identity construction. If damage is done to the body physically or psychologically, the impact, even with healing, may not go away. The scars and the diminishing are always there, even if to varying degrees.

You are not going anywhere in this life your body does not take you. Your identity is fused to your body. Many parents tell children, “You can be anything you want,” but that is a lie. They cannot be what their bodies do not allow. No matter how much desire and training are present, few will be professional athletes or rocket scientists.

You both are and have a body. You use your body and are accountable for it and vulnerable to it. You own it, and it owns you. You are conscious of it at least partially. It is both the subject analyzing and the object being analyzed. You do nothing apart from your body; no, not even prayer.² Thinking and language do not happen apart from your body.

Your body is the means by which other people determine who you are, so recognition is a big factor in identity. We read bodies, and we do it quickly. Within seconds even small children discern whether another person is safe and an opportunity for enjoyment or is a threat. Sameness of body, even in the process of change, makes identity possible. Your body is the place you relate to other people.

Your body is also the physical substance through which you perceive reality. You encounter the world and the world encounters you only through your body. You have no other choice. Your body is the means of expression and communication, of experiencing pleasure and pain, and the means by which you express happiness or grief. The experiencing body is the self. If your body suffers, all of your being suffers, and you experience all of life in a field of suffering. You do nothing in this life apart from your body. “Geography is identity,” and part of your geography is your own body. There is no external point from which any of us may view existence, even though we act like there is.

But let’s not overstate the case at the outset. Yes, you are your body, but you are not merely your body. There are nine major factors that make up your identity, and all must be given their due. Your body may be foundational, but all the other factors are intertwined with the body, and Christianity transforms how the body is viewed in relation to them. Your body is born into a history and into a set of relations and is part of your boundaries. Your body is engaged in the conversation between the individual and the external community. Your body makes you recognizable to others, and you have an identity only in relation to others.³ The body is the means by which you make commitments and perform actions. The body is always changing and will die, so identity is always changing, but does identity die? You are more than your body, for so many other things go into making up your identity. Although your body is a major factor determining your identity, there is no one-to-one relation between your body and your identity so that the body expresses all of identity. Still, this body is significant! One New Testament scholar even says—rightly—that the body is “the earliest gift of our Creator to us.”⁴ But what if the gift is unsatisfactory to us or even “defective”? You cannot take the gift back for a refund or exchange it for another.

With all nine factors of identity, part is given and part is chosen. None of us chose the body or mental structure that we have, but at some level we must accept what our bodies are and decide how we will use them most effectively. We do choose what we will do with our physical and psychological makeup. We are all created with certain tendencies and abilities, each contributing to our uniqueness. At the same time, those tendencies, abilities, and inabilities are not merely accepted as givens. They must be schooled and augmented, and some inabilities will have to be overcome for us to function well in life. Some tendencies, such as self-centeredness, aggression, anger, and timidity, will have to be changed, controlled, redirected, or eliminated so that our actions and attitudes fall within a legitimate range of what it means to mirror the character of God. Sometimes we must choose not to be who we are, if we are to become who we should be. Our identity in Christ is in front of us calling us. Even our physical and psychological makeup must be filtered through the character of Christ.

There are huge theological issues here. How good and valuable is human nature, and how destructive and incapacitating is sin for our bodies? All sin is “constitutional”; it is in the fabric of our being. It is part of our hardwiring, and we are not all wired the same way. This raises major questions about free will and responsibility, but even so, sin is part of who we are and the way we are oriented to ourselves. Negative tendencies that are part of our nature will have to be corrected and controlled. We often say, “That is just the way I am,” but that is a confession, not an excuse, and it is a platform for repentance and change. Note how the virtue lists like Galatians 5:19–23 disallow tendencies such as envy and anger and require positive virtues such as love and self-control. We are not bound to our tendencies, even if they are not easily set aside.

You did not get to choose your body, and hardly anyone is completely satisfied with his or her body. If a few people are, they will not be for long, for aging is relentless and destructive. And yes, you have to be you. There is no other choice. You cannot make yourself taller or shorter or of a different race. You cannot absent yourself from your physical and mental makeup,⁵ but nor are you merely a victim of your body.

You do choose to some degree how your body will present itself. Clearly there are limits, but you can shape your body somewhat, or if you have a lot of money and are obsessed, perhaps you can shape it a lot. The amount of money spent on cosmetics, weight loss, and plastic surgery is ridiculous and unconscionable, which suggests that many people are not satisfied with their bodies at all. In fact, many hate their bodies, but does that merely suggest that we idolize attractiveness, which is rather easy to do? In any case, the body you have is the only one you will get, so how can you accept your body positively, regardless of your dissatisfaction, and live positively? How can you find a foundation for living that is more substantive and enduring than appearance? To what degree will you have to reject the way your body defines you? Certainly people with serious physical disabilities must reject any supposed devaluation of their being.

It is worth stopping to reflect on how our physical and psychological makeup is presented to others. We convey messages about how we want to be identified. Through cultural signals such as clothing, hair style, jewelry, and a variety of other “markings” we communicate realities like gender, marital status, sexual interest, modesty, rebellion, class, desire to fit specific occasions, and attitudes toward ourselves. Often we buy into cultural expectations without thinking, but, if we take our being in God’s image seriously, we will need to be much more thoughtful. Is the presentation of our body an attempt to identify with the culture or rebel against it? Are we merely tired of ourselves? What actually honors both our bodies and God?

Much of this, of course, is a facade, and there is a huge difference between form and true identity. We spend too much time on form and pay little attention to what really counts, identity. Humans look at appearance, but God looks at the heart (1 Sam. 16:7). This contrast argues that there is something much more substantive than appearance. This is not to say that appearance is unimportant. The Old Testament in particular often shows an appreciation for beauty, not least in the Song of Songs (see also 2 Sam. 14:25, 27). Appearance is not negative, but it is no sufficient foundation for life and relations. If there is not something more substantive than appearance, one’s identity is an illusion.

So, what does God say about our body? The creation story stresses that God created humans in his own image, gave them responsibility, and then judged his creation, including human bodies, as very good. The Bible does not offer a negative evaluation of the body and the material realm.

The Image of God

The most important thing that can be said about humans is that we are created in the image of God.⁶ This is an all-consuming assertion about the origin of the body and the source of identity, and is a foundation for all theology. If we are created in the image of God, we are not the origin of our own existence, we cannot explain ourselves, and we are not the ultimate source of our own identity. We are the result of action by Another; our identity is a gift of grace; and we mirror and point to Another. If this is true, the oft-repeated comment from theologians is obvious: we can never know ourselves without knowing the God in whose image we are made. I underscore again what John Calvin said at the beginning of his Institutes of the Christian Religion: “Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God. Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self.”⁷

With the universe as enormous as it is—billions of light-years across—where is dignity to be found for mere humans on a seemingly insignificant planet?

Louie Zamperini was an Olympic distance runner who survived capture and torture by the Japanese in World War Two. Laura Hillenbrand, in writing the story of his life, wrote about prisoners subjected to dehumanization: “Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live. . . . Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.”⁸ She argued that dignity—that sense of self-respect and self-worth that is the innermost armament of the soul—lies at the heart of humanness.⁹ Without dignity Zamperini would have died. The point is underscored by John Kilner in his Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God. Dignity determines destiny. This is especially important. “Images or standards according to which one lives have power to shape identity. False images can foster false identities.”¹⁰ What you think is the basis of your identity, even if only unconsciously grasped; it shapes you, directs you, values you or devalues you, and controls what you do. A conviction of being created in the image of God gives us dignity and enables worthwhile identity because it orients us to a valid destiny. Humans have dignity because God gives it to them.

You have dignity and value because God says you do. God has founded your identity as something important because you were created for relation with God and to mirror God’s character. There are many ways in which you are not like God. You are human, limited in numerous ways by definition: finite in every respect, sinful, and inadequate for independent existence, but you were never intended for independent existence. You were created for life with God.

Regardless of what you feel, you were created in God’s image, and even though finite and vulnerable, you are still capable and possess power. A second-century Christian, reflecting on humanity in the image of God, commented, “Live therefore as one who is next in rank after God,” and added, “You will not live well without God.”¹¹ This presupposes, of course, creation with a purpose, not as an anomaly, but then, it is hard to take your identity from an anomaly.

If being in the image of God is so crucial, what does it mean? Stunningly, for all its impor...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Who God Says You Are—and Should Be
• Faith Transforms Identity
• FACTOR 1: You Are Your Body
• FACTOR 2: You Are Your History
• FACTOR 3: You Are Your Relations
• FACTOR 4: You Are Your Mind
• FACTOR 5: You Are Your Commitments
• FACTOR 6: You Are Your Actions
• FACTOR 7: You Are Your Boundaries
• FACTOR 8: You Are an Ongoing Process of Change
• FACTOR 9: You Are Your Future
• A Final Appeal for Identity—That You Become a Person
• Select Bibliography
• Index of Names and Subjects
• Index of Scripture References