Identity issues

It’s back to class. Let the winter session begin. I got my syllabus yesterday and discovered I had reading and writing due today (nothing like a little lead time). Anyways, the chapter I read was about our identity. Here’s really quick summary: Ask any anthropologist and they will tell you that everyone is constantly seeking an identity of some sort. We all want to know who we are and what we’re doing here. Also, ask any anthropologist and they will tell you that no one is ever satisfied. No matter what a person acquires—be it candy, job, spouse, success—that person always wants something more or different. We just do! We want something that ultimately this world in its finiteness just cannot afford. Enter God, say many anthropologists. He (God, not anthropologist) guarantees 100% satisfaction.

I was thinking that it’s an appropriate time to be reading about this because everyone is talking about their New Year’s resolutions. People want to save money. People want to spend money. People want to lose weight, spend more time at home, get organized. Whatever. We want things. And when we have those things, we’ll want more things. Are these the things by which we define ourselves? Are these our identity? And what happens when we can’t reach these goals or acquire these things?

Anyways, at the church I’ve been attending (yes, the one that sings The Black Eyed Peas), the pastor is slowly teaching through Colossians. We’re not very far. This past week we spent a lot of time on Colossians 1:24-25. This morning I decided to read Colossians 1 in The Message translation just to get a slightly different spin on that chunk of Scripture. The words were rather fitting and timely in light of my homework. Thought I’d share.

"We look at this Son and see God's original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.

He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross."

Colossians 1:15-20