When a “Christian” book skyrockets in popularity I like to read it to know what others are talking about and being influenced by. This is one of them. My opinions are my own, and I respect that other Christians see this book differently. But after sitting on this for a couple months I have decided to share my thoughts, primarily to challenge us to think more deeply about what we absorb–whether in books, sermons, podcasts or the like.
No one talks to you more than you talk to you, which means what that voice in your head says matters—a lot! Our self-talk has the power to help us stand secure or spiral us down quick. As a counselor, a majority of my sessions include some form of challenging thoughts, rethinking narratives, and replacing lies with truth because of how quickly we speak shame over ourselves.
It is for this same reason, even before I was trained as a counselor that I wrote my book, Face Time: Your Identity in a Selfie World. My daughter was battling an eating disorder and she had everything in the world going for her; only she told herself a different story. She’s not alone. We are all tempted to attach our identity to our accomplishments, appearance, accolades, and more. But none of these can anchor our soul—they are shifty, leaving us insecure. So we have to get our story straight about what is most true.
For starters, as humans made in the image of God, each of us hold inherent dignity and worth. As believers in Christ, we also bear his record, which means we have HIS worth. In other words, God sees us as he sees his son—holy, perfect, and righteous—making this identity ours. This is the doctrine of justification and where the rubber meets the road in terms of theology in practice, for we are either resting secure in our Jesus-merited perfect identity or struggling because we’ve forgotten His identity is ours.
When I learned of Jamie Winship’s popular book, Living Fearless: Exchanging the Lies of the World for the Liberating Truth of God, the language of justification conveyed in the subtitle had me. I see this doctrine as everything when it comes to living free. But quickly, I realized liberating truth for Winship moves from Christ’s identity for us, to security actually found rooted in our individual “identity.” I’ll explain.
Anchoring Truth: My Identity or His?
Winship’s use of “identity” feels more like what I would name purpose or passion. Semantics aside, the premise to living fearless appears to come not in resting in who Christ is for us but in discovering and operating out of our specific role/assignment/purpose—“identity.” Out of our true “identity” we are unstoppable, Winship purports. There is nothing Satan can do to us. Nothing to fear. Nothing we can’t accomplish. At least that is how I read it.
Certainly, this makes for a great motivational pep talk, but oh, the failure and shame if we miss hearing from God about our exact “identity.” Or, maybe we think we do and grab hold of it but then aren’t successful in the way Winship claims we will be. I can imagine the self-talk now:
I must not have it done right.
I’m a failure.
I didn’t pray hard enough. Listen and discern correctly.
What’s wrong me that I’m not as brave?
In all this, the focus is ME (my listening, my identity, my strength, my success), not Christ (his identity for me, his strength in my weakness, his perfection in my failure). When again, what we most need when Satan seeks to take our self-talk hostage is to know our secure standing in Christ—his identity! Not ours. And while Winship reminds the reader of our Belovedness in Christ, it feels like the stepping-stone to get to what he deems the deeper truths of our identity and not THE grounding truth.
The One Story of the Bible: Me or He?
To help the reader grab hold of what happens when we know our identity and live out of it, Winship points to King David as the primary example. From the time David was a boy we are shown how his “shepherd-poet-warrior-king” identity enabled him to live fearless. Specifically, the story of David defeating Goliath is used to highlight David’s confidence in stepping forward to fight the giant as coming from knowing his “identity.” When I read 1 Samuel 17 though, I see a boy who upon arriving on the scene is surprised by the Israelites’ fear, “For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” Essentially, he is asking, Is God not faithful to his promises? If he is for us, what do we have to fear? When David ends up stepping forward to fight, yes, providentially he’s been trained as a shepherd to ward of lions and bears, but his confidence is in his God, not his own ability. “For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hand (1 Samuel 17:47).”
The point of this story is not about David and his identity. It is not about how to fight our giants; certainly, it’s not about our individual identity. Rather we are to see David as our representative champion pointing to the One who will come from the seed of David to be our Champion—the only one who can fight sin and redeem us from its’ power. When we make scripture about us, we miss the meta story of a king who came to give us his identity! The Bible is not primarily a roadmap or a collection of stories with examples to follow. No, the Bible, every part of it is about Jesus—his work and worth—and our desperate need for him.
We also see in Scripture that we will suffer (John 16:33). Things aren’t as they should be. Even as believers made new, we still have indwelling sin (Romans 7:21-24). We won’t always live fearless even when we know our identity. Satan won’t always flee even when we do stand strong. But in our sanctification God will use our temptation and sin, trials and suffering to grow us in grace and dependence. Despite what Winship may think, his theology leads us to depend more on ourselves than finding our strength in the Lord, and opens us up to more shame when we think fearless living should be our permanent reality.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life would lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
Mark 8:34-35
This is not Jesus demanding a certain level of submission or surrender. Rather he is going below the surface to the core of our being—our identity—saying that if we try to find identity in anything apart from Him and his gospel, we will lose ourselves. The world says life is found in finding ourselves, in living in our roles or calling, in our things, in our successes. Jesus says, “Die to this way of living and find your true identity in Me!” Only in him will we find the security we long for.
