Neither Jew nor Gentile, Who Am I?
Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus, the New York City instantiation of Athen’s idyllic acropolis, descended into a battlefield for justice. On campus, red, white, and green streaks blur en masse for the Palestinian cause while the star of David dissents. Accusations of terrorism and injustice explode from both sides; arrows fire into the identity of the opposition. This is the reality. Identity, in both colloquial and philosophical understandings, motivates moral action in the modern age.
What then is identity? Who am I? What characterizes me? How should our identities grow as followers of Jesus Christ who serves his Kingdom first?
Intriguingly, within the various academic disciplines of knowledge today, a pattern of distrust and disapproval surrounds the concept of essential identities (i.e. a fundamentalist perspective that I am always a, b, or c without change). For example, post-structuralist philosophers and literary theorists frequently challenge any stable conception of identity, opting for relational constructions (that we are constantly altered by the relations around us) of shifting individual identities.1 French continental philosopher Gilles Delueze systematically rejects the concept of identity due to its seeming alterability, instead detailing a metaphysical conception of only becoming as the reality of human identity. Even moral psychologists frequently deem the perception of the true, essential self, as merely a figment of imagination.2
Yet still, we operate as individuals, on a conscious or unconscious level, under the assumption that our identities remain stable. That I am American or Chinese. That I am an athlete or a student. That I follow Jesus. I assume that the decisions I make remain to some extent still my own. I bear some internal will attached to myself and who I am. Here, external realities and internal wills collide – some identities are alterable, yet others remain as eternally foundational.
For Christians, we should recognize these complexities in engaging with the larger discourse on identity and the self. Our essential, substantive identity is relational: the wonderful God, the good Creator of all things, enables the validity and truth of my identity. Likewise, David in the Psalms defines his “I am” as being “fearfully and wonderfully made” by the almighty God. 3 Believing that Jesus as God perished for our sins and rose again in victory, we now live as children of God with the Spirit of God within us. This is our essential identity.
However, a mere is fails to encompass the earthly becoming of Christian identity before Christ returns. Is remains stationary as merely being. Instead, the earthly Christian identity and the Christian life remains actively transforming, striving towards a clear goal: to actively put off our old self and put on the new self, cleansing our entire conduct and mind towards Christ. 4 In fact, the Christian life’s becoming advances towards a full instantiation of our identity as children of God, who have received His complete atonement as pure heirs. A wonderful calling of identity as eternally enduring yet practically transformatory, the Christian life is simultaneously finished by Christ and continued through Christ.
1 See Deleuze & Guattari “1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible…” A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. See also Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto
2 See Strohminger et al, 2017
3 Psalms 139:14
4 Ephesians 4:22-24; Romans 12:1-2
Gabriel Cao is a junior at the Dual Degree Program between Columbia University and Tel Aviv University. He enjoys bowling and playing pool during his free time.