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Brian S. Rosner

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Herausgeber: Crossway
Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
Sprache: Englisch

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A Christian Answer to the Identity Angst of Our Culture In the 21st-century West, identity is everything. Never has it been more important, culturally speaking, to know who you are and remain true to yourself. Expressive individualism—the belief that looking inward is the way to find yourself—has become the primary approach to identity formation, and questioning anyone's "self-made self" is often considered a threat or attack. Prompted by his own past crisis of identity, Brian Rosner challenges the status quo by arguing that, while knowing yourself is of some value, it cannot be the sole basis for one's identity. He provides an approach to identity formation that leads to a more stable and satisfying sense of self. This approach looks outward to others—acknowledging that we are social beings—and looks upward to God to find a self who is intimately known and loved by him. How to Find Yourself equips readers from a variety of backgrounds to engage sympathetically with some of the most pressing questions of our day. - Challenges the Status Quo: Examines and critiques expressive individualism—the leading strategy for identity formation - Gospel-Centered: Identifies an approach to identity formation in Jesus's life story and God's personal knowledge of his children - Accessible: Helpful for a wide audience of laypeople, students, and church leaders - Foreword by Carl R. Trueman: Opens with a message from the author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

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“With remarkable clarity and helpful analysis, Brian Rosner provides a template for understanding the expressive individualism so prevalent in the West. Rosner does so in an irenic way that makes this book approachable to those caught up in individualist approaches. It will be a helpful primer to some of the more important conversations people have at each other today—and it can help us to start talking with one another instead.”

Ed Stetzer, Professor and Dean, Wheaton College

“What a solid and needed book! How to Find Yourself is about locating yourself not in the privatized world of your own self-constructed identity but in the social and divine contexts in which people live, made as they are in the image of God. In a modern world filled with loneliness and dislocation, this book connects you with life as it was designed to be lived with others. It sees life in the world for the challenge it often is, including the faults of what we do to one another, but it does not hide from the responsibility we all have for making it that way and from the opportunity that a connection to God and care for others has for making it better.”

Darrell L. Bock, Executive Director of Cultural Engagement, The Hendricks Center, Dallas Theological Seminary

“How to Find Yourself gives readers a roadmap to the stories that compete for our affections. And Brian Rosner reveals the gospel as the compass that shows the way home. If you want to understand this cultural moment, pay close attention to this book.”

Collin Hansen, Vice President for Content and Editor in Chief, The Gospel Coalition; Host, Gospelbound podcast

“How do I ‘find myself’? For many today, this question is both puzzling and provocative. How does it involve my sexuality, my ethnicity, my family, my country, and my very soul? For Brian Rosner, this is not merely academic but deeply personal. As he exposes the shortcomings of looking only inward, he answers these questions from sociology and, above all, the Bible. This volume is a countercultural but profoundly helpful contribution to the topic of identity.”

Richard Chin, National Director, Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students; author, Captivated by Christ

“How to Find Yourself powerfully confronts one of the most pertinent cultural issues of our time—namely, personal identity. Rosner writes with clarity and verve, synthesizing the best current research and scholarship. The book reveals the numerous shortcomings of the dominant cultural narrative of expressive individualism, which encourages us to ‘find ourselves’ through looking inward and becoming who we ‘really are.’ Powerful though it is, there is a deep poverty to this idea, which leaves people—particularly younger generations—profoundly dissatisfied. How to Find Yourself turns to an alternative and far richer story. Paradoxically, rather than belonging to ourselves, it is precisely in losing ourselves that we can find our identity, by belonging to the story of God’s people, based on the life of Jesus Christ. Providing insights from his own deeply moving story, Rosner shows that this countercultural path offers a way of finding ourselves that gives meaning to our suffering and is a call to serve others. How to Find Yourself will challenge you to assess your most foundational assumptions about who you are.”

Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History, Western Sydney University

“The personal restlessness, dissatisfaction, and cultural mayhem produced by our attempts to find and identify ourselves from within, without external reference points, is deeply saddening. Once, we assumed that our identity related to the greater purposes of a higher being. Increasingly now, we favor starting with the idea that we can be our own gods, providing our own morality, reason for being, purpose, and direction in life, only to find that we are grievously inadequate to the task. Brian Rosner writes with the quiet authority of a deeply informed mind, keen observation of the human condition, and the warm understanding of personal experience of that condition. The result is a highly valuable book that offers wise counsel on combining a right personal reflectiveness with the wisdom of the ages as a better way.”

John Anderson, Former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia

How to Find Yourself

Why Looking Inward Is Not the Answer

Brian Rosner

Foreword by Carl R. Trueman

How to Find Yourself: Why Looking Inward Is Not the Answer

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Spencer Fuller, Faceout Studios

First printing 2022

Printed in the United States of America

Some content in the introduction and chapters 1, 4, 8, 11, and 13 are taken from Known by God: A Biblical Theology of Personal Identity by Brian S. Rosner. Copyright © 2017 by Brian S. Rosner. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.

Some content in chapter 10 is take from Brian Rosner, “Justice,” in NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible edited by D. A. Carson. Copyright © 2018 by Zondervan. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.

Some content in the introduction and chapters 2, 10, 11, and 12 is adapted from Brian S. Rosner, “Identity Angst: Narrative Identity and Anglican Liturgy,” in Making the Word of God Fully Known: Essays on Church, Culture, and Mission in Honor of Archbishop Philip Freier edited by Paul A. Barker and Bradley S. Billings. Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers, www.wipfandstock.com.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked HCSB are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®, copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Holman CSB®, and HCSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked NASB® are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked PHILLIPS are from The New Testament in Modern English by J. B. Phillips © 1960, 1972 J. B. Phillips. Administered by The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. Used by Permission.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-7815-1 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7818-2 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7816-8 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7817-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rosner, Brian S., author. | Trueman, Carl R, other.

Title: How to find yourself : why looking inward is not the answer / Brian Rosner ; foreword by Carl R Trueman.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Subjects: LCSH: Identity (Psychology)—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Self—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Individualism—Religious aspects—Christianity.

Classification: LCC BV4509.5 .R6635 2022 (print) | LCC BV4509.5 (ebook) | DDC 248.4—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021045822

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021045823

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-06-30 10:44:34 AM

To my children, their partners, and my grandchildren:

Elizabeth, Emily, William, Toby, Phil, Gabbie, Eloise, and Ivy.

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction: Stranger in the Mirror

Part 1: Looking for Yourself

1 Looking Inward

2 A Collective Identity Crisis

3 Five Tests of the Good Life

4 Ancient Texts and Modern Preoccupations

5 Looking Elsewhere

Part 2: You Are a Social Being

6 Social Identity

7 Known by God

Part 3: You Are Your Story

8 Narrative Identity

9 The Story of Secular Materialism

10 The Story of Social Justice

11 The Life Story of Jesus Christ

Part 4: The New You

12 Losing Yourself

13 Finding Yourself

General Index

Scripture Index

Foreword

Today, there is perhaps no more pressing a topic than identity. Whether we are speaking about race, ethnicity, or sexuality and how they shape political discourse, or about our own personal sense of self and how that informs our day-to-day lives, the question of identity is omnipresent, all-pervasive, and deeply influential. And yet this is historically unusual: one can look long and hard in literature prior to the 1960s and find little or no discussion of identity in the manner in which we think of it today. And that in itself is significant for it is only when something can no longer be assumed, when it becomes something about which we imagine we have some power of choice, that it becomes a source of reflection and debate.

So it is with identity. In times past, a relative static social order and comparatively stable institutions—for example, nation, church, family—meant that personal identity was something we were given, something over which we had little or no choice. But in a world of flux and change, such as that which we now inhabit, such solid external markers of identity no longer provide us with the framework for understanding ourselves. At the same time, and perhaps in part as a response to this, the question of identity has been further complicated by the prioritizing of feelings and psychology as determinative of who we are. To the question, Who are you?, there now seems for so many people no easy or straightforward answer.

This is particularly pressing for Christians. Not only are we Christians called to maintain that human identity is ultimately rooted in the fact that we are made in God’s image; we are also called to relativize any competing claims to offer identity in light of that fact. In a world where so many identities now set themselves in direct opposition to traditional Christianity, that makes our situation even more complicated.

Any Christian response must address, first, the nature of contemporary thinking about identity and the self. Then, second, it needs to look at how identities are actually formed. Yes, we tend to think of identity as a monologue: I am exactly who I tell myself I am, and I make the choices that contribute to that. But in reality, identity is always a dialogue: the choices I make are shaped by the people and the institutions with which I have connections; I, like you, am a relational being whose identity cannot be isolated from the network of social relationships in which I exist. And third, it needs to set these two dimensions—the monologic and the dialogic—in the context of biblical teaching. Clearly, the Bible contains introspection—look at many of the Psalms—and also places a premium on interpersonal human relationships, but it also sets both within the context of the great, objective existence of God and the truth of the gospel story. The key is to see how that story should inform how we think about selfhood and identity today.

In this volume, Brian Rosner does just that. Even as he critiques many aspects of modern identity, he seeks to build connections between how we think and how the Bible indicates we should think. This is not polemical, but it is not soft on what is wrong in our era. Nor is it heavy sociology or theology, but rather it is substantial and engaging, pressing on an issue—perhaps the issue—of our day in a clear and thoughtful manner. And Brian has that rare gift of being able to communicate deep biblical insight in prose that does not drag or confuse but rather engages the reader and helps us to see ourselves more clearly. This is a fine volume that punches far above its weight. Pastors, teachers, youth leaders, parents, and thoughtful Christians everywhere will find it a worthwhile and edifying read.

Carl R. Trueman

Grove City College

Preface

This book is about your favorite subject: you! Personal identity is a subject of unprecedented interest in our day. It has never been more important to know who you are. It has also never been more difficult. That conundrum lies at the heart of this book. My interest in the subject of personal identity goes back to my own crisis of identity in the mid-1990s. It is an intensely personal book, both for the author and the readers.

This is my second book on personal identity. Known by God: A Biblical Theology of Personal Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017) concentrates on the Bible’s teaching about the subject. This book looks more directly at our cultural moment and the identity angst that seems to have engulfed our age. It was written with two convictions: many people find personal identity to be a subject that is confusing and confronting; and the gospel story offers a better way to find and be yourself than the one currently offered by modern society.

Every author knows that humans are social beings and that sole authorship is a ruse. This book began its life as the 2017 New College Lectures at the University of New South Wales. I am grateful to New College for the privilege of delivering the lectures and for an enjoyable week during which my ideas were challenged and revised.

Ridley College has been a great context in which to develop the ideas of this book. The gospel-shaped community of faculty, staff, and students is warm and cheerful, and it upholds the highest academic standards. I finished the book during a semester’s study leave in the second half of 2019. I appreciate the board’s generous support and encouragement of the increasingly scarce species of scholar principal.

I owe a debt of gratitude to many other people who helped in writing the book, too numerous to list in full. The standouts include Gina Denholm, whose keen eye helped me to knock off many of the rough edges, and the team at Crossway for their fellowship in the gospel and consummate professionalism. Kevin Emmert’s work as editor was impeccable. My wife, Natalie, continues to be my most forthright critic and principal encourager.

Thanks are also due to Carl Trueman for writing the foreword. Having overlapped with me in the 1990s at the University of Aberdeen, Carl was around at the very beginning of my wrestling with questions of identity. His own book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020) appeared too late for me to take into account in this book. Fortunately, our books explore different aspects of the subject. If Carl’s is about the roots of the modern self, mine looks at the fruit and points to a better place to plant yourself.

My hope and prayer is that How to Find Yourself will help many people experience the joy and comfort of looking for their identity in the right places and discovering that their true “identity is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3, my translation).

Introduction

Stranger in the Mirror

“Be who you are and say what you feel.”

Dr. Seuss’s eponymous Cat in the Hat

“Be true to yourself.”

Everyone from Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, Beyoncé, and Michelle Obamato Steph Curry, Donald Trump, and every student Body President

“Who am I? Lonely questions mock me.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer1

Knowing who you are and being true to yourself have never been more important than in the twenty-first century West. They are seen as signs of good mental health and wellbeing, and the keys to authentic living and true happiness.

The topic of personal identity is of unprecedented interest. The terms “personal identity” and “identity formation” were barely in use before 1960; they now appear frequently in a wide range of disciplines and literature. Whereas once the advice to “be yourself” was rarely heard, now it is commonplace.2

Of course, to be yourself, you have to know who you are. Most people today believe that there is only one place to look to find yourself, and that is inward. Personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. All forms of external authority are to be rejected, and everyone’s quest for self-expression should be celebrated. This strategy of identity formation, sometimes labelled expressive individualism, is the view that you are who you feel yourself to be on the inside and that acting in accordance with this identity constitutes living authentically.

Yet, ironically, knowing who you are has also never been more difficult. Scores of people today feel anxious and uncertain about their identities. A myriad of factors weighs against having a stable and satisfying sense of self. Living our lives in the separate compartments of home, work, and leisure can produce superficial relationships. Multiple careers and relationship breakdowns can lead to confusion over some of the most basic of answers to the question of who we are. Questions over gender and sexuality have sprung up like never before. And defining ourselves via social media is fraught with dangers and can even lead to projecting an inauthentic self. Ours is a day of identity angst.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of our cultural moment is that the current approach to finding yourself doesn’t appear to be working very well, either for individuals or for society as a whole. Many people in our day, including me, find questions about identity to be confusing and confronting. Anxiety, depression, narcissism, anger, and resentment are all on the rise. And happiness, by any measure, is actually in decline.

In this book, I do three things. First, in part 1, I investigate the issues surrounding questions about identity formation in our day. What is driving the move to look primarily inward to find yourself? How novel is this approach? What are the benefits of looking inward? Does it lead to the good life? Are there other directions in which to look?

Second, in parts 2 and 3, I consider some of the other places we look to form our identities—to the people around us and to the societal narratives we inhabit. Again, I look at these and ask, What are the benefits? Are there any downsides? Do they offer us what we are longing for? Do they lead to a good life?

And third, woven throughout the whole book and culminating in part 4, I present and commend an alternative way of developing personal identity, one that has been followed by millions of people for thousands of years. It’s the one promoted by the Bible. Is this way now hopelessly obsolete? Is it a viable alternative to today’s dominant identity formation strategy? Does it lead to a good life?

A book on personal identity is, by definition, deeply personal, both for the author and the reader. As it turns out, my own experience of a painful identity crisis some twenty-odd years ago caused me to think again about my own identity and led to me to dig deep into the subject.3 I’ll share my story throughout the book.

The big goal of this book is not just to think about a trend in Western culture but to help you think about yourself: Who are you? What defines you? What makes you, you? Most importantly, where are you looking to find yourself? If you are a Christian, I hope you’ll learn to embrace your identity by looking in the right places. If you are not a Christian, I invite you to consider a different way to be yourself.

1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft, ed. E. Bethge (Muenchen: Christian Kaiser, 1964), 243; my translation.

2 These statistics are summaries of word searches using Google Ngram Viewer.

3 My first book on the subject, Known by God: A Biblical Theology of Personal Identity, Biblical Theology for Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2017), is a more technical book of biblical scholarship and less focused on our cultural moment. I recommend it to readers interested in further material on personal identity in the Bible.

Part 1

Looking for Yourself

Looking Inward

“[People today believe that] when you are figuring out how to lead your life, the most important answers are found deep inside yourself.”

David Brooks1

“Modern freedom and autonomy centres us on ourselves, and the ideal of authenticity requires that we discover and articulate our own identity.”

Charles Taylor2

Natalie and I were married in 2004, and we took our honeymoon on Mana Island, a Fijian island in the South Pacific. A tropical paradise, it was a great location for obvious reasons: sun, sand, beaches, hammocks, exotic food, water sports, tennis, fishing. What’s more, coming from our own life in urban Australia, we found the cultural contrasts fascinating to experience. From the food and the local language to the means of transportation and the music and singing, everything was strikingly different. Two things in particular stood out to me: the attitude toward time and the pace of life. During that short stay, we shook off the Western obsession with “being on time.” Our gaits also slowed considerably, in part due to the warming sun and high humidity, but mostly by example and imitation. Returning home, it was difficult to readjust. I still miss walking at that Fijian island pace.

As this experience showed me, many aspects about who we are and how we behave are determined by the culture in which we are immersed. Culture is that invisible force that influences the ideas, customs, and social behaviors of a particular people or society. Often, it’s only the visitors to a culture who notice its pervasive power. Or it is those members of a culture who after having spent time in another culture, come back to their own and see things in a whole new light. Some of those, like taste in food, music, games, and holidays, are consciously determined and easily changed. But many others are unconscious, difficult even to think about, let alone change.

Edward T. Hall likened the effects of culture to an iceberg.3 Some aspects of a culture are overt, in clear view above the waterline, so to speak. But most are hidden deep below the surface, forming the bulk of the iceberg: our concepts of time, friendship, fairness, and justice; styles of nonverbal communication, facial expressions, eye contact, and gestures; approaches to raising children, decision making, and problem solving; and attitudes toward different age groups, competition, authority, work, and death. For most of these, we take our views and approaches entirely for granted and can scarcely imagine any alternative.

In this chapter, I want to look at the very bottom of the cultural iceberg: the way we “do identity” in the postmodern Western world.

The Self-Made Self

You don’t need to look far today to notice that personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. A gym near where I live advertises itself with the slogan: “Be Fit. Be Well. Be You.” A new apartment complex around the corner, offering high-end luxury design, carries the byline: “An Unlimited You.” People think about themselves constantly, it seems, and with high expectations!

High schools are also in on the act. One school’s marketing gave this advice to its current and prospective students: “Be Inspired. Be Challenged. Be Excellent. Be You.” The goal for every pupil in our day, we might say, is to leave school singing the most popular song from The Greatest Showman: “Look out ’cause here I come.” A veritable anthem for Millennials and Gen Z, the lyrics speak of unapologetically marching to your own drumbeat and proudly announcing to the world who you really are.

Popular culture regularly taps into this preoccupation with self-knowledge and self-expression. Think of the several decades-long success of Madonna—singer, songwriter, actress, and business woman—who embodies this approach to identity. Madonna is famous for regularly reinventing not only her music but also her image. Not surprisingly, her sixth major concert tour was styled the “Reinvention World Tour.” Personal identity today is all about self-definition and self-expression.

“In the past, an individual’s identity was more established and predictable than it is today. Many of the big questions in life were basically settled before you were born: where you’d live, what you’d do, the type of person you’d marry, your basic beliefs, and so on. It’s not that there was no choice whatsoever. Rather, the shape of your life was molded by constraints that limited your choices.”4 Today, we are open to any and every possibility. We take for granted the obligation to find and define or even invent ourselves for ourselves.5 The advice heard frequently in many contexts is to “be true to yourself,” “follow your heart,” “be yourself,” and, the most recent and hippest version, “you do you.”6

People today increasingly have what sociologists call the “buffered self,” a self defined and shaped from within, to the exclusion of external roles and ties. We find our true selves by detaching ourselves from external influences like home, family, religion, and tradition, and thereby determine who we are for ourselves. The buffered self contrasts with the “porous self,” which is the approach of most collectivist societies—in parts of Asia and Africa, for example—whereby external social ties and roles are determinative for identity. With the porous self, you find yourself as you move into your roles in family and community. Self-determination, rather than being a principle for nations at the end of the First World War, is now the responsibility of every individual.

Self-definition is thus the culturally endorsed route to identity formation in our day. Today, we have a do-it-yourself self or a self-made self, which looks only inward to find itself. Academics call this expressive individualism.

The major tenets of expressive individualism can be summarized in seven points:

The best way to find yourself is to look inward.The highest goal in life is happiness.All moral judgements are merely expressions of feeling or personal preference.Forms of external authority are to be rejected.The world will improve dramatically as the scope of individual freedom grows.Everyone’s quest for self-expression should be celebrated.Certain aspects of a person’s identity—such as their gender, ethnicity, or sexuality—are of paramount importance.

The seven points form a coherent worldview, tell a compelling story, and, most importantly for our purposes, set out a strategy for forming personal identity.

The key point, and the one that gives the subtitle to this book, is the first one. A survey in 2015 found that 91 percent of adults in the United States agreed that the best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself.7 Everything else flows from this conviction. The thinking is that to look anywhere else than inward would bring you under the control of those who wish to oppress you, would risk you not realizing your full potential, and, worst of all, would mean that you would not be true to yourself. That is the message coming loud and clear from every direction in our contemporary world. Francis Fukuyama writes, “Modern understandings of identity hold that we have deep interior spaces whose potentialities are not being realized, and that external society through its rules, roles, and expectations is responsible for holding us back.”8

Philosopher Andrew Potter argues that “when it comes to personal fulfilment, many of us subscribe to the idea that the self is an act of artistic creation.”9 Sociologist Anthony Elliott agrees: “We respond to the instability of globalization . . . by reinventing ourselves.”10And Dale Kuehne observes, “In the iWorld [meaning the individualistic postmodern world] identity is something we are instructed to select or create. If we don’t like or aren’t comfortable with who we are, we are encouraged to remake ourselves in whatever manner we are able and science will allow.”11

One of the best-selling songs of all time is sung by Elsa, a character from the movie Frozen. It is something of an anthem for Generation Z, being viewed on YouTube over 1.5 billion times: “It’s time to see what I can do / To test the limits and break through / No right, no wrong, no rules for me / I’m free!” As Tim Keller explains, the song’s sentiment is

a good example of expressive individualism. Identity is not realized, as in traditional societies, by sublimating our individual desires for the good of our family and people. Instead, we become ourselves only by asserting our individual desires against society, by expressing our feelings and fulfilling our dreams regardless of what anyone says.12

The corollary of knowing yourself is the advice to be true to yourself, which these days is about the most helpful thing you can say to someone. In 2008, filmmaker and photographer Andrew Zuckerman interviewed “some of the world’s most eminent elders,” the likes of Nelson Mandela, Madeline Albright, Billie Jean King, Judi Dench, the Dalai Lama, and Buzz Aldrin. A series of five books, entitled simply Wisdom, captured their images and their advice. When you open the first book, you find a distillation of their sage advice in large bold script on the first double page. It reads, “Nobody can teach me who I am.”13 When it comes to knowing and becoming who you are, the ball is squarely in your court.

A key driver of expressive individualism is the desire to live more authentic lives. To be true to yourself “captures the fullness of our commitment to authenticity as a moral ideal.”14 This is reflected in the way that personal autonomy is now the final word in almost every ethical debate. Whether the issue is gender, sexuality, abortion, or assisted dying, the preservation of individual choice is primary. As Leslie Cannold observes, “The central moral value in a modern multicultural society is autonomy, the right of individuals to determine the course of their own lives according to their own needs and values.”15

The Benefits of Looking Inward

Much of this book concentrates on the shortcomings of looking only inward to find yourself. However, it would be a mistake to critique the movement of expressive individualism without also understanding its appeal and the attractiveness of its basic values. As Charles Taylor puts it, when evaluating the movement, we must distinguish its “higher ideals” from its “debased practices.”16 My main objection to expressive individualism is the exclusivity it attaches to looking inward to find yourself; as I go on to argue in this book, there are other equally important places to look.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with looking inward. Personal exploration is commendable, and self-reflection acknowledges the gains of living an examined life. The alternative is far from attractive. Indeed, the movement of expressive individualism is, in part, a reaction against a 1950s culture of conformity, which is believed to have “crushed individuality and creativity, was too concerned with production and concrete results, repressed feeling and spontaneity, and exalted the mechanical over the organic.”17

Expressive individualism is also driven by the admirable desire to see many marginalized groups in society affirmed as full members and given appropriate dignity. Many individuals with identity markers different from the mainstream, even in relatively harmonious multicultural societies, long for recognition and acceptance. Other groups are attracted to the movement for the freedom it offers them in terms of life choices. Many argue that expressive individualism has won some major social gains.

Authenticity as a moral ideal is also commendable, especially if the alternative is a blind conformity to external demands that can lead to hypocrisy when people fail to own key aspects of their life. It is much better for a person to inhabit an identity that they own and can fully appropriate for themselves; there is something to be said for feeling comfortable in your own skin. Psychologists generally regard authenticity as a basic requirement of mental health: “Authenticity is correlated with many aspects of psychological well-being, including vitality, self-esteem, and coping skills. Acting in accordance with one’s core self—a trait called self-determination—is ranked by some experts as one of the three basic psychological needs.”18

At the end of the book, I will return to these ideals and show how a Christian approach to identity formation can connect with them and deliver the desired benefits.

Evaluating the Self-Made Self

But whatever may be said about its strengths, the notion of people as discrete or buffered individuals is unusual in the history of ideas. And it’s worth pausing to ask how well it’s working.

How unique is this approach to identity? My answer is that it is close to unprecedented, a recent innovation in the sweep of human history—with one exception, which I will discuss in chapter 4. What is remarkable is the strength of commitment to expressive individualism across so many quarters of society and its unquestioned supremacy given that it is such an untested innovation.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz puts it well, if a little abstrusely:

The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural background, is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures.19

Geertz’s evaluation raises three pressing questions about personal identity.

First, is the self-made self resilient? This idea of a buffered, bounded person may hold great appeal in our society and seem self-evident, but the jury is out on how enduring a path it is to lasting and meaningful identity formation.

Second, is the self-made self working? Doubtless, the buffered self has opened the door to endless choices and possibilities. But does expressive individualism actually lead to good outcomes for individuals? Does it lead to good outcomes for society as a whole? Does it lead to what we might call “the good life”?

Third, is the self-made self incorrigible? While expressive individualism, sitting as it does at the bottom of our cultural iceberg, beneath our awareness, may seem natural to us now, its peculiarity in human history begs the question: Is it really the obvious and true way to forge a sense of self?

The consequences for individuals and society of implementing an idea as foundational as the way we form our identities will take decades to uncover and assess. We’ve been on this path for at least twenty years now. In my view, it’s time to step back and conduct an audit. That’s where our next three chapters take us.

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

1. Think of a time when you’ve had an opportunity to step outside of your primary culture. What “bottom of the iceberg” aspects of your culture did you become aware of from that experience?

2. Read over the list of characteristics of expressive individualism as described on page 24. Do you subscribe to these beliefs? Do they all ring true for you? Just some of them? How strongly do you feel about them?

3. “Be true to yourself.” What do you understand when you hear people use this sentiment or something similar? Is it good advice?

1 David Brooks, The Road to Character (New York: Random House, 2015), 21.

2 Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (London: Harvard University Press, 1991), 81.

3 Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture (New York: Random House, 1976).

4 Brian Rosner, “Looking beyond ourselves to remain true to one’s self,” The Age (website), April 2, 2012, https://www.theage.com.au/.

5 Consider the title of Sarah-Jayne Blakemore’s book on adolescence: Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain (London: Transworld, 2018).

6 The Urban Dictionary defines “you do you” as “just be yourself.”

7 David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, Good Faith: Being a Christian When Society Thinks You’re Irrelevant and Extreme (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2016), 58.

8 Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (London: Profile Books, 2019), 103.

9 Andrew Potter, The Authenticity Hoax: Why the “Real” Things We Seek Don’t Make Us Happy (New York: Harper, 2011), 3.

10 Reported by Bella Ellwood-Clayton, “Changing partners—Love actually,” Sun Herald, June 28, 2009.

11 Dale S. Kuehen, Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationship Beyond an Age of Individualism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2009), 139.

12 Timothy Keller, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Scepticism (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015), 134.

13 Chinua Achebe, quoted in Andrew Zuckerman, Wisdom, rev. ed. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2011).

14 Andrew Potter, The Authenticity Hoax, 18.

15 Leslie Cannold, “In the end, we should have faith in our right to choose,” Sun Herald, September 26, 2010.

16 Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 72.

17 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 476.

18 Karen Wright, “Dare to Be Yourself,” Psychology Today, May 1, 2008, 72.

19 Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding,” in Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion

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