Written with the guidance of and dedicated to Dr. David F. Wells.

In today’s world, individualism is a highly celebrated philosophy within Western society. At its core is the push for people to be “true to themselves” and not to worry about other people’s opinions or expectations. The philosophy is about embracing who we are as individuals, and — having completely nuked the traditional ideas of identity and value — it has become the champion of modern self-discovery, self-awareness, and self-acceptance.  

But if we are ultimately the ones responsible for creating our own identities, why is it that this area of our lives is often a major source of fear and anxiety?   

The truth is that society evaluates our worth and value based on our identities by looking at who we are and what we do. Because we want to feel valued, we do everything in our power to identify with things that will mean something to others. But there is always something missing — deep down we seem to be subconsciously aware of a hole somewhere in our identities that we can’t quite place. Why is this?   

This reality stems from man’s fall into the stark reality of sin found in Genesis 3.   

The reason why we feel the gap in our identities so deeply is because the human identity was created alongside the presence of God. Our separation from His presence is the hole we feel in our identities.

When God created mankind at the beginning of time in the Garden, He was directly present with them in a deep physical and spiritual relationship. But when mankind was tempted by the serpent and fell into sin, our actions led to direct separation from God’s loving presence that even today we can’t begin to fathom. Genesis 3:23-24 makes this clear:  

“[T]herefore, the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (ESV).   

For the first time in history, the human identity was separated from its source.   

Now we are inherently conscious of this “gap” that exists between humanity and our Creator, and we are constantly looking for ways that we can fill it. J.R. Briggs was the speaker last year during Gordon’s Spiritual Formation Week, and during one of his sermons, he used an analogy to illustrate this idea: We’re like that patient who runs to the Doctor’s office to see their primary care physician (God) and explains to them loudly, ‘I know what I have’ – and proceeds to lay out what we believe is wrong. Christians are especially guilty of doing this. We run to God saying, ‘Here is – insert any issue – please fix this or enable me to fix this!’  

But the reality of this metaphor is that as modern culture runs in wild circles trying to “fix” or “fill” what we believe to be wrong with our identities, we miss the quiet invitation to let the greatest Doctor and Healer into these spaces of our lives that need action and direction.  

Individualism is one of the human responses to feeling this internal separation from God. Modern culture tries to fight this gap by filling it with as many things as possible that promise to instill human value: Athletics, education, jobs, money, cars, houses — the list is endless. But the choice to “find something to identify with” ultimately stems from humanity’s fear of not being valued. We hope that if we can identify with something – anything really – we might be able to bring security and peace to our lives.

So now that we know why this separation exists, what do we do about it? 

While the world often leads us toward fear and anxiety over this separation at the core of our identities, the gospel and our relationship with Christ allow us to conquer these issues.

To help me write the action step and response section of this article, I went to my grandfather, Dr. David F. Wells, a former distinguished senior research professor of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and an extremely accomplished theologian (I’m allowed to be biased here.) He is the author of many books exploring and covering theological application in today’s world, including God in a Whirlwind: How the Holy Love of God Reorients Our World and Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World.   

When I asked him how we as Christians can respond to the gap within human identity, his theological wisdom lent great insight. He said that to begin to deal with this deep issue as Christians, we need to focus on finding and placing our value in our relationship with Christ.  In our conversation he pointed out how “Sin is constant self-centeredness and leads to all kinds of corruption — and the whole point of the Christian faith is that we are in Christ – and we are enabled – slowly in our lives – we are enabled to create a God-centered life.” If our identity and life are centered upon the rock of God’s calling, the entire idea of human values gets rewritten. When we surrender our lives at the feet of Christ, we are also surrendering our human understanding of worth – which is a critical part of finding peace as a child of God. He stressed that to have an identity in Christ and begin to shape a God-centered life, we need to “center to the mind, heart, and will of living the Christian Life.” At the core of this action are three actions. My grandfather helped me unpack each.   

The first is to be “God-centered in your thoughts.” We need to open our minds to the truth, guidance, and assurance of the gospel. The second action is to be “God-fearing in your heart.” We need to have a healthy respect and fear of God’s power and authority, both in the world and in our lives. As he commented, “Learning to be God-centered requires humility – which is based on the fear of God.” Finally, we must be “God-honoring in all that we do.” As we go about our daily lives, we need to understand that our words and actions can be a direct reflection of Christ.   

I firmly believe that these steps are a critical part of centering our worth, value, and identity upon the bedrock that is Christ. While the storms and waves of human values try to push their way into our lives, we have peace – and identity — in the steadfast foundation of our relationship with our Heavenly Father.