Unbound: Freedom in a Digital WorldSample

The line from the hit Disney movie Moana expresses our culture's current concept of identity formation well, “be who you are on the inside!” I know it's easy to pick on Disney, but so often the plots of their movies demonstrate perfectly the cultural myth that we are intentionally forming our identity by discovering who we really are. That used to mean figuring out who we were born to be, but now it has shifted to choosing who we want to be. These are bigger issues than we can address in this study. Yet, our fascination with these issues often stems from a base-level misunderstanding of the way our identity is constructed.

Our identity is always being shaped and formed. It doesn't exist out there somewhere to be grasped. Instead, it is being passively formed all the time by our friends, family, culture, politics, etc. A thousand influences in all directions, swirling over us like water over a rock, always carving us out.

This is so vitally important to understand because it emphasizes the importance of who we allow to passively form us and how we allow them to do that. Buying our first smartphone might not seem like that big of a deal, yet that little device in our hands with the wrong apps and web pages is forming our identity. Watching pornography influences who we are as people. It affects us just as much as constant news feeds and Twitter updates. We cannot engage with these things without being formed by them. To a certain extent, we cannot control what is forming us. So we might be inclined to just throw our hands up and give in to all of it.

Still, I think Paul in the passage for today gives us healthy direction for passive identity formation. He reminds us that it's okay to be passively formed. It's in our passive identity formation that we become God's chosen people through the work of Christ into compassion, tenderness, mercy, and, most of all, love! Indeed, we learn how to love through passive formation, hopefully first cultivated by our parents and siblings.

As a part of God's church, Paul also encourages us to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts as a part of the message of Christ and to "let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts” (v. 16).

Paul calls on us to surround ourselves with Christ’s body, his church. In his church, the peace and message of Christ passively form us into his image. By surrounding ourselves with brothers and sisters in Christ, we unknowingly begin to take on more and more of Jesus’ character, his identity. His language fills our songs and teaches our hearts gratitude.

Church attendance has been treated with such flippancy and disregard by God's disciples lately. Mostly because I think we greatly misunderstand how important the church is for passively forming our identity as Christians. God chose his church as the way to form us, and we dare to say we can do it better on our own without committing to his church.

Practice passive identity formation today by committing yourself to one thing in your church. Maybe this is to attend weekly from here on out, or maybe it's to lead a small group or to volunteer in some other way. In some practical way, commit yourself to God's image bearers, his holy people.