By Neibert David
Many of us, human beings, struggle with our true identity. We want to know where we came from, and where we are going. We even want to know why we are here. Why was I born? What is my purpose on this earth? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to contribute to humanity? How should I contribute to humanity?
Yet, at times the answers to these questions elude us, and we end up moving through life without a clear sense of belonging, individuality, value, and purpose. Many of us assimilate our identities with the identities of our mom, dad, or with the family into which we were born, or we even assimilate our identities into the culture in which we live. We have been trained or socialized to allow these relationships and / or the environment to dictate to us who we are.
Some of us even allow our human relationships and environment to question or doubt our right to be here on the earth. We are told that we do not belong, and sometimes we, unfortunately, believe it. But we were made to be here on earth! We were made to unconditionally occupy the spaces that we are in. We all belong here on earth!
The identity of all human beings was given by God, our Creator! He has made each person unique to all other human beings. Our identity was given to us by God! Science has validated that every human being has unique characteristics like the fingerprint and dental prints.
Our identity can be traced all the way back to the first human beings on earth. The core of our identity is grounded in their initial creation. There is a wonderful, supernatural God who created humans as one man and one woman in His image and in His likeness (Genesis 1:26-2:25). You may not believe that there is a God, but please hear us out.
Being settled in our identity is critical for us to live purposeful lives. We must discover and know that we are accepted God. We must discover and be settled with the fact that our identity comes from God. Our identity does not come from anyone or any place else. As we review Scripture from the Holy Bible, we will also discover that as part of securing our identity, God has already provided our basic human needs.
When Adam and Eve sinned, their physical and spiritual relationships with God were broken. (see the Spiritual Healing article for more detail) Their sin severed their spiritual relationship with God – Holy Spirit, and that separation produced spiritual orphans in Adam and Eve. As a result, all people coming after Adam and Eve inherited that orphan condition from them.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes an orphan as “a child deprived by death of one or usually both parents, a young animal that has lost its mother, one deprived of some protection or advantage.” In other words, the orphan is left alone without the protection or care of an authority figure. And as such, there are no protective barriers between the orphan and the world.
The nature of parents is meant to be a barrier of protection against the potential harm in the world. Parents are meant to nurture, shape, provide, defend, and
protect their young until such time that the youths can provide, defend, and protect themselves. Therefore, orphans can be exposed to the nature of the world before their proper time.
They can be exposed before they are properly developed or equipped to handle the nature of the world. And the nature of the world will take advantage of the vulnerable!
When we accept and settle within our own hearts that our identity comes from and is in God, we can begin to be free from the mindset, mentality, and actions that become characteristic of being orphans. Orphans can typically feel as if they do not belong (anywhere).
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary describes identity as “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual; the relation established by psychological identification (psychological orientation equates to the self or one’s own self regarding something else (such as a person or group) with a resulting feeling of close emotional association).”
In other words, our identity becomes shaped and wrapped up in the things, groups, or persons that we become closely and emotionally associated with. From this we can deduce that at the very core of our identity is relationship. This means that our identity is relational at its core!
For example, if we study the characteristics of emotional abuse, we will note that when someone is emotionally abused it affects the very core of who that person is. That person, if not healed from the abuse, will be transformed by the emotional abuse. And eventually they will either become emotionally abusive, and / or they will be drawn into relationships with emotional abusers because of the familiarity or the normalization of the abuse in their life. That is, the abuse comes normal to the abused.
In other words, the emotional abuse becomes a trauma bond that becomes attached to the identity of the person who has been abused. If not healed, the emotional abuse becomes part of their identity.
In other words, the trauma bond produces an unconscious ease, familiarity, or comfortability with the emotional abuse. And that ease, familiarity, or comfortability creates an invisible attraction or pull from the abused person to an emotional abuser. That is to say, an emotionally abused person invisibly and involuntarily draws an emotional abuser to him/herself because the abused person unconsciously identifies with emotional abuse!
Likewise, an unhealed emotionally abused person will unconsciously reject people who are not emotionally abusive to them because the new treatment is unfamiliar to them. The abused becomes suspicious of the person who is treating them differently because the treatment is unfamiliar. Even though the treatment is good, it is still unfamiliar.
Additionally, if the emotionally abused does not receive healing, they likely become the abuser. The shaping, molding, ease, and familiarity of the emotional abuse opens the abuser to do the same that was done to them. Meaning, many abusers repeat what was done to them, if they do not accept and identify that what was done to them was wrong. The abused becomes the abuser!
Have you ever heard of the saying: you attract who or what you are? This happens because we unconsciously identity with whatsoever or whosoever we have relationally experienced, and we draw them or it to us unawares. It happens because identity is relational at its core!
This understanding is key! Because unless we till the soil of our hearts and unroot the seeds of our identity formation that do not represent who we were truly meant to be, we will unconsciously draw and attract the same relational characteristics that we have experienced in the past. Therefore, we must do the work to unroot what was planted in the soil of our hearts when it does not represent the truth of what God says about us.
As part of being settled in our identity, we learn that our basic and core human needs are provided for by God. In God’s plan of wisdom, He gave other human beings the responsibility to flow or funnel these basic human needs to us. However, if no one meets these needs we can ask God for them, and He will meet them temporarily. He can and will meet these needs until He gives another human being the assignment to provide for our needs. Nevertheless, these basic and core human needs ultimately come from God!
Let me emphasize that God originally provided all of our basic human needs for us before He gave someone else the privilege of meeting these needs. God always provides an example of what He expects of us and for us! God first demonstrates what He wants us to do or be before He asks us to do it or be it. In other words, God models the example for us before asking us to do or be what He wants us to do or be.
Psalm 27:7-10 – in these verses of Scriptures, King David is crying out to the Lord. He is admonishing himself to seek the face of the Lord. In V10 he acknowledges that even though his father and mother forsake him, the Lord will receive him.
It is the same way with us, in our lives on earth, God will never reject us when we call out to Him! David is an example of how we are to seek God’s face. We must determine within ourselves that God’s face we will seek!
Isaiah 49:15 – in this Scripture, God compares Himself with a mother who has borne and nursed a child. Yet, God says that even if that woman forgets her child, He will never forget that child. This is the heart of God for all of us, whether we were cared for by our parents or not, God has guaranteed that He will not forget us! He will care for us! He will care for you!
Therefore, in settling and accepting that our identity comes from God without regard to our circumstances, we can be transformed from the characteristics of an orphan.
There are two phases to identity as a human being. The first phase of our identity is the identity that we were given as a natural born human beings who are separate and apart from God. This person is unredeemed. Unredeemed means that the person has not yet been reconciled into a saving relationship with God the Father. The Father offers this relationship through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, His Only Begotten Son.
When we have been redeemed, it means that we have been bought back, or we have been won back into a right relationship with God the Father. Being ‘bought back’ or ‘won back’ into relationship with the Father occurs through acknowledging and accepting that Messiah (Jesus Christ) already paid the price for all humans to be in right relationship with God the Father. (Galatians 3:13) But at our natural birth, all human beings are unredeemed, yet we are also all valued by God who created us.
The second phase of identity that we will examine is identity from the phase of being a redeemed person. The redeemed person has chosen to receive the free plan of redemption offered by God. This person has received the forgiveness for his or her sins by receiving God’s free gift of salvation that the Son of God offers to each of us through His shed blood on Calvary’s cross.
This second phase of our identity is chosen by us; we access it based on our own free-will choice. This phase is our responsibility. In other words, God has given us the responsibility to choose the second phase of our identity. We get to choose God or not! While at birth God automatically provides the first phase of our identity.
All human beings are valuable! There is value on the inside of each person. When God created human beings, He placed His worth and value on and in us, and that worth and value has never changed!
At our creation, God gave us worth and value. He gave us the highest value that we could even imagine, because He made us in His own image and likeness (Genesis 1:26-27). God gave us His own characteristics. He gave us the same creativity that He has! The same creativity God used to create the entire world, He gave to us. It is this same creativity that humans have used over the ages to advance the world to what we see today.
The fact that we can talking to each other from different parts of the world is a function of the creativity that God deposited in us as human beings when He created Adam and Eve. And we are all the children of Adam and Eve! Everything that we see comes out of the creativity that God deposited in us. We are all valuable! We must believe it. We are all full of value as our identity comes from God, our Creator! We are all valuable, and we are endowed with identity from God!
