My Secret Identity Is?

How many days of the week do I sit in my room reading comics thinking if only I could have spider powers or was really rich to be able to dress up like a bat and run around a city stopping crime. Wouldn’t that be the life? You get too hide behind a mask and are whoever you want to be. You can swing to roof tops and punch muggers but all in the end you cannot tell anybody who you are. That is what makes it bitter sweet. The secret identity, who you really are in situations you try to hide behind a mask of personality is what really kills relationships with  those you care about and really hinder that personal relationship with God.

            I have not really thought about identity and how it shapes your actions all that much until about a week ago. I figured out that my identity is not quite as I wanted it to be. I see myself as a gamer, science major, a son, and a thinker, who is a Christian. But see I figure that isn’t good enough. In a letter that the apostle Paul rights to the city of Corinth he says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” Basically this is saying that once you accept Christ into your life you are no longer who you were before. In high school I was rude, shallow, cynical, and just had a lot of excess anger from nowhere in particular. But I came to college and decided that following Christ isn’t just something you do as a child in Sunday school. I started to change after that, Get more patient and in all reality more intelligent. Being able to look at situations in different ways and trying to reason though the whole of the bible. I sought identity in being a wise and thoughtful person but not so much in Christ. It led to shallow faith and some large periods of basically crippling doubt. Don’t get me wrong I think doubt is what keeps us sharp as Christians but not the kind that I experienced. I stopped writing and lost all desire to learn more about who Christ was and who god wanted me to be.

            Identity shapes how we see ourselves and my identity needed a drastic change. I needed to not be a gamer, science major, or thinker who is a Christian, but a Christian who is all those things to.  I am not saying that we are to give up all we are to follow Christ, but we are called to open ourselves up to his plan and make our hearts available to change and our lives open to what he wants us to do. No matter where you are when it comes to faith I encourage you to take a look at how you identify yourself and see if that’s who you really need to be or even want to be because behind my Christian mask I was just going through the motions treating it like a class about how to live life rather than a lifestyle in of its self. We are not meant to hide behind masks and close our true selves off from the world like Batman but we are meant to live together with Christ and other people in full and deep relationships.

Following blindly is never asked for by God,

Cyrus Schaaf

2 Corinthians 5:17