In 2021, two men born on March 9, 1952 at a hospital in Sault Ste Marie Ontario, discovered through DNA testing that they were not who they thought that they were. The babies were kept in a separate nursery and only brought to their mothers for short visits, before being sent home with the wrong families. They grew up living the life intended for the other and believing that they were someone else. Each is now suing for damages and emotional suffering. Both sets of parents are deceased leaving Howard Dupuis and Leslie Gagnon facing a crisis of identity and trying to connect with their biological siblings. Their lives have been upended and they remain shaken by the discovery.
Imagine that? Imagine living almost your entire life believing that you were someone else? Your whole world and everything you’ve known to be true about yourself shattered in an instant. Your real family are strangers and those who you know and love are not yours either. So who am I?
These two men spent their lives following paths, building relationships, and making decisions based who they thought they were, only to discover otherwise and to wonder what life might have been – if only.
Have you ever questioned or doubted who you are? Have you built your life on things that have turned out to be false?
I believe that the most fundamental and consequential question that we can ever ask ourselves is, ‘Who am I?’ This question of identity shapes everything about us—our values, our actions and relationships, and ultimately what we consider to be the meaning and purpose of our lives. How we answer the question, ‘Who am I?’ impacts every aspect of who we are and how we live. Each of us has answered this question, and we are living our lives according to that answer. But, is our answer correct?
Mental health experts identify a fundamental need that we all have for an internal framework to make sense of the world. We need some kind of structure ordering our inner world. It includes a value system and a way of orienting ourselves based upon our perceived identity. But what happens when that structure is built on a falsehood? What happens when the foundation of our lives turns out to be untrue?
If our identity is not aligned with reality – if it is not based on what is true—the consequences can be disastrous. A flawed sense of identity can lead us down harmful paths, pursuing things that ultimately don’t matter. It can skew our perceptions and distort our lives in ways we can never anticipate. The effects of a mistaken identity can be utterly devastating. So, we need to be certain that we’ve got this right.
Where then does our sense of identity come from? It comes from others. We find our place first in our families and then in society. And if we are fortunate enough to encounter God’s word, we ultimately find out who we are in relation to Him. It is our relationship with God that puts all other relationships in their proper perspective. We are the creature before the creator, and made in His image. We are his children and He is our Heavenly Father. The world that we live in is His creation and God has given us stewardship of it. When we form families and organize these into a society, our values must pass a divine test.
But this is only one way of understanding the world. Beginning with naturalistic presuppositions, materialism asserts that human beings are nothing more than matter that has been acted upon by chance. Human life is the product of a series of random cosmic accidents and it has evolved over millions of years. We are the unintended byproduct of an indifferent universe. Our thoughts, feelings, and actions are the result of an endless string of biochemical interactions. Many who hold this view conclude that our existence, in the ultimate sense, is devoid of any inherent value or purpose. If we are merely the products of random chance, then there is no ultimate purpose or direction to our lives. It’s entirely meaningless.
We are born, and if we are lucky, we live a few fleeting decades on this cosmic stage, and then, in the blink of an eye, return to nothingness. All of our experiences, all of our emotions, all of our aspirations are nothing more than physical interactions that play out within the confines of our brain. There is no ultimate or eternal purpose ‘out there’. There’s no real meaning to be discovered.
But this external reality is at odds with who we are as people. Everyone feels a need for an overarching meaning in life in order to establish a sense of personal identity. And if meaning is not out there beyond ourselves, we have no choice but to create our own. Materialists are forced to invent themselves or accept that they are meaningless matter, coming from nowhere and bound for oblivion. Personal identity cannot be extracted from an impersonal universe.
In this way and for these reasons…some materialists become existentialists. They do it to infuse meaning into meaninglessness and value into that which is otherwise worthless, for we are all incurably human – making value judgments in the pursuit of hopes and dreams. But when values are individually chosen and collectively expressed, they form an ever-changing standard. Many define themselves by personal achievement or the accumulation of wealth. Others ‘hang their hats upon sexual preference, physical appearance or personal independence. It is all about creating meaning in a meaningless world and elbow-room in a society pressing in from all sides.
There is a heavy focus on self-identity. People say, ‘You have to express yourself,’ ‘You have to create your own path,’ or ‘You have to be true to yourself.’ These sentiments stem from the belief that our identity is something we must forge on our own.
But here’s an important question: if the materialistic worldview is true, why is there such a desire to define ourselves? Where does this need come from? After all, if we are nothing more than atoms and molecules, and if our consciousness is merely a byproduct of complex biochemical interactions, why do we have this innate urge to find meaning and purpose? Why do we yearn to define ourselves and our place in the universe? The materialistic worldview cannot provide satisfactory answers to these questions. It cannot adequately explain why we strive for meaning, why we seek purpose, or why we yearn to understand ourselves on a deeper level.
That should tell us something. We instinctively know there must be something more, and we just naturally live our lives as if that is true. We seem hardwired to demand real meaning and purpose in life and cannot settle for anything less.
So, is the materialistic worldview true? Or is it a false foundation upon which many have built their identity? Is this who we really are?
Is it not more logical to believe that our true identity is based on something – or someone above? Our consciousness, our ability to reason, to love, to dream, all point us toward a transcendent reality that goes beyond the mere physical and material.
Our worldview stands in stark contrast to the prominent materialistic perspective of our modern age. We are a combination of two realities: both material and non-material. We have been purposefully created to seek that very purpose. And it is that purpose that allows us to live in a physical world without extracting our meaning from it. For at the culmination of creation, “…God said, Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness”.
The scriptures inform us that we are not merely physical beings in a material world. Nor are we just spiritual beings in a physical world. We are both physical and spiritual in a material world that interacts with spiritual beings all the time. God is the Lord of heaven and earth. Angels who do God’s bidding, and those who do not, interact with our lives on a daily basis.
So it is that we understand who we are, why are here and where we are going. It is in relationship with almighty God who supplies for body and soul, that we are made whole. We exist because He exists. Our inner being transcends the physical, handling immaterial things with the natural ease of divine ‘image-bearers’.
We have God-given value drawn from an inexaustible source. God is the foundation for the sanctity of human life. He has endowed every human being with intrinsic dignity and worth. Regardless of ethnicity or background, pre-born or elderly, each has God-given value. No other creature on the planet shares this. We have a worth and value that is distinct from the rest of creation. And when we recognize this, the truth transforms us, elevating us and others as nothing else can.
So in the ultimate sense, it is not our earthly family that defines us…it is our heavenly one.
Our true identity, the one that matters in eternity, has been placed upon us by the one who is eternal. Our geneology is important only when it begins with Adam…the son of God…and spiritually with Jesus the eternal Son of God. “For God so loved the world…”. This is the transformed life and with it, true security.
Thessalon ON