The importance of being

Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine you could ask noteworthy figures of the past how they “identify.” Socrates, Confucius, Cleopatra, Luther, Napoleon, Charlemagne, Lincoln, St. Teresa: How do you see yourselves? It’s doubtful that these history-makers, much less the average Joe on the streets of colonial Williamsburg or ancient Rome, would even understand the question. They “identified,” essentially, with what they did; whether baker or bricklayer, slave or monarch, their work defined them, along with family name and place of origin.

It’s still common in some circles to ask new acquaintances, “So, what do you do?” If occupation is not quite the measure of men that it used to be, it’s a significant piece of existence as well as a handy conversational opening.

But among those who “identify as,” there’s no reason for that classic cocktail party/fellowship hall question to ever come up. Identity is an obsession of youth, so perhaps many of the identifiers haven’t taken time to map out a career or vocation. Or they may have too much time on their hands. Whatever the reason for its surge in popularity, the phrase “self-identify” sounds tinny and flat, and its overuse opens it up to ridicule on Facebook. “I self-identify as an attack helicopter” (look it up) lacerates the notion of self-identification, in terms that aren’t printable but nonetheless perceptive.

Reality has a way of intervening, but in the meantime vulnerable young people have learned to swap being for identity.

By now millions have seen the video made by the Family Policy Institute of Washington, in which interviewer Joseph Backholm questions students at the University of Washington about recent transgender controversies. None of the young adults who appear on the video have a problem with Backholm hypothetically identifying as a woman, but they squirm a bit when he suggests he might be Chinese, or 7 years old (“What if I wanted to enroll in first grade?”), or 6 feet 5 inches tall. The height seems the toughest proposition to swallow, but none of the students in the video offer to compare the 5-foot-7-inch interviewer with a yardstick. None propose standards for disproving any claim of self-identity, even as the stocky, clean-cut white guy presents himself as a towering Chinese female.

This is a level of confusion that can’t be cleared up by a yardstick—it goes down to the very rejection of being. Identity, as it’s understood today, is not being. Identity begins with choice, even if that choice seems unavoidable. Being begins with birth.

Throughout history, a gifted few have been able to “identify” as world-shakers and bend circumstances to their will, to a point. This is the first time in history that a small percentage of ordinary people (at least in North America) have claimed to be what they manifestly are not—particularly in relation to sex—and have a large percentage of ordinary people taking them seriously. The kind of willful blindness that can’t bring itself to correct a facetious interviewer on a college campus surely will not have a long shelf life (unless it never ventures off the college campus). Reality has a way of intervening, sooner or later, but in the meantime vulnerable young people have learned to swap being for identity. The “Say I’m a Six-foot Chinese Woman” video is hilarious, but it isn’t a joke.

In the beginning, God made a human form and bent down to breathe into it, and “man became a living being.” “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” sings the Psalmist—made by a divine hand, not assembled from a buffet of backstory and buzz and impulse and inclination. Never before have so many received society’s permission to define themselves with audacity and boldness. What it costs them is fear and wonder.

Since the Fall, no one is entirely comfortable in his own skin. The agonizing confusion some people experience about gender and sexuality is not the problem. It’s a symptom. The solution is not crafting an identity, but centering ourselves in our Creator. The question “How do you self-identify?” is satisfied with a checklist. “Who are you?” is deep and mysterious, and takes a lifetime to answer.

Email jcheaney@wng.org