The Precursor Answer 8, Identity Part 1
Why does God allow bad things to happen to innocent people?
Note: Each of these articles builds on the one before. If you’d like to go back and read them in order, please follow the link here:
If the Precursor idea is true, it has some profound implications regarding how we see ourselves (identity), how we see our obligations toward each other (human relationships), and what our purpose in life actually is. And this is because it defines our identity in terms of God’s purpose and not our own.
Our identity can be described in three contexts: with the assumptions behind the way we have historically used it, assumptions behind the current trends in the use of identity, and identity as a consequence of Precursor idea. Not only is the Precursor idea ‘identity’ not consistent with current or past ideas about who we are, it is fundamentally different and does not have a single assumption in common with the other two.
In the past, identity was based on immutable characteristics (e.g. race, ethnicity, genetic characteristics present at birth). This was the most obvious, the most objective, and the least subject to interpretation. In this case, the assignment of identity has nothing to do with the considerations of the person making the assignment. But there might be a purpose behind it.
When Martin Luther King famously said that he had a dream that someday people would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, he was not disowning the fact that he was a black man. He was condemning the purposes for the use of that identity at that time, as perverse.
But as societies became more complex the use of the assignment of identity began to respond to the possible purposes of the person(s) making the assignment, more rather than less. Identity itself became less objective and began to be established in response to the behaviors of an individual. A person is said to be a liar if they tell lies. A thief is someone who steals the property of another person. The purpose for using this basis of identity is that society needs to protect itself from such people. But what if the behavior changes? Does the identity change?
One of the possible tragedies of identity on the basis of behavior is when we use it to define ourselves. A person who struggles with the shame of past failures enters a very dangerous state of mind when they shift from saying to themselves “I’ve done something despicable” to “I am something despicable.” The first one holds the promise of change, of a new person, but the second is hopeless. The adoption of identity can do that.
In our current culture a new form of identity has begun to emerge, the adoption of identity by the person choosing it. A person may assert an identity based on an observation, characteristic, or a preference they adopt for themselves.
For example, I love blueberry muffins. Truly I do. In fact, if I enter a room and there are blueberry muffins in the room none of them are safe. I may inform you of this by telling you that I am a blueberrimuffifile and my purpose in doing so might be to influence you to give me one, if you have any. Or at least my purpose would be to suggest that if you ever want me to do something nefarious, well, I have a price.
The point is that our use of identity usually has some purpose behind it, whether we are aware of it or not. All identity that we assign to others has the possibility of perverse purposes behind it, and every identity we adopt for ourselves contains the risk of tragedy.
But the identity that results from the Precursor idea is not based on any characteristic, preferences, or criteria that we might assign to others or adopt for ourselves. In no way is its purpose perverse, nor can it be.
And it changes everything.
I hope you read on...
John Villegas-Grubbs