Simply Being

Who are you? If you asked 10 people this question most of them would probably answer first with their name and then with what they what they have achieved. It might be teacher, wife, father, student or barista. In fact I had two people respond with, “that’s a hard question!” This question haunts all of us at one time or another. We talk of ‘finding themselves’. We say things like, “who do they think they are?” or “who are they to think they can…?” For many the answer lay in what they do or have done. Even when we ask someone who someone else is, after we get their name, we often get information on either what they do for a living or who they are related to. Is our identity defined by what we done or who we are related to? I want to consider two distinct approaches to life and identity. The first is basing our identity on externals.. This approach defines our personal value by the socially decided value of what we do or who we are related to. The second approach is to know who we are and what we do follows. This approach defines personal value based on identity

It really comes down to being and doing. Does being result in doing or does doing result in being? I believe that only when we know who we are will we find ourselves doing what we were created to do.

There is a danger in identifying and categorizing people based on achievement. I regularly hear, especially in educational and sports circles, about, ‘overachievers’ and ‘underachievers’. These can pigeonhole people and leave them resigned to an underachieving life, living up to significant others expectations. I was one of these. Epileptic since the age of 5 I was constantly battling with “you could do so much better if you just applied yourself”. I could never do enough or perform at a high enough level to satisfy teachers, coaches, church friends, and sometimes family member’s expectations. What none of us knew until much later was that the levels of medication I was on were affecting my ability to apply myself. Because of these experiences I learned that I was a lazy, underachieving, waste of potential both academically and athletically. At least that was the identity I gave myself based on what I thought people’s expectations were of me. My identity was developed through my doing (or lack thereof).

The other approach is to understand our identity (being) apart from our activity (doing). This means that our identity is based on something outside of our control. I didn't have any control over the fact that I was born to Boyd and Lois Brue. I can’t change the fact that I was (thankfully) born to these two people. There is evidence that I was born to these two people in that I resemble them. My identity as a Brue has nothing to do with what I have or have not done and it is not affected by anybody’s expectations of me. I am a Brue because my DNA says I am.

The big question is this, Will we strive to achieve an identity that meets our’s as well as our significant others expectations, or will we seek to understand our given identity and let the activity of our life flow from it? A life lived out of being which leads to doing, or a life lived from doing which creates our being. 

Until we have an understanding of who God says we are, we will never be able to settle into what we have been created to do.