Often when I go and speak with parents on this topic of identity formation, I’ll have dads and moms come up to me afterward and say something like this: “That’s why we’ve got to get back to the good ‘ole days when kids obeyed their parents and did what they were told.” Makes sense, right? Everything in our society would be better if our kids just listened and obeyed us. If they took their identity cues from their older, wiser parents.
But wait, Tim Keller says, “In the past vast numbers of people were locked into a given social status in extremely hierarchical societies where peasants were to stay forever poor simply because it was thought that one’s identity was one’s role in society. These hierarchies were justified as reflecting some cosmic order of spiritual and moral absolutes.”1 Not only that, but what if children are growing up with bad parents, abusive parents, absent parents, and so on? Do we really want children looking to them to form their core sense of who they are? There’s no stability and security in that dynamic.
So while traditional identity might be the one that sounds most appealing to many parents because it relies heavily on your ability to control your child’s sense of identity, that is far too much power for any flawed human—even a wise, loving parent—to wield.
Similarly, the modern identity formation process is fraught with problems too. Think of the six problems discussed below as six potential pathways of interaction that you can have with your child about issues of identity.
1. Problems with the modern identity construct
The modern process of identity formation is incoherent.2 What I mean by that is this: if your identity is ultimately found by going into your feelings, you will be left with confusion and incoherence. Our feelings, while good, are not reliable enough to stake our entire identity on.
If we build our entire sense of who we are on our feelings, our identity will be incoherent on any given day when our feelings about who we are do not align with who we want to be.
For instance, there are many days I wake up and don’t feel like going into work.
On April 15, I don’t feel like being a taxpayer.
On any given day, I don’t feel like being a husband, father, employee, friend, etc.
Conversely, on some days I wish and feel like I could be an NBA superstar or some New York City billionaire. However, just because I feel like I am those things—or should be—does not make it true or a reality. (Trust me, you do not want to see me play basketball.)
If my identity was primarily built on my feelings, I would be an incoherent mess! What happens if you can’t make sense of your feelings? What happens to your children if they can’t make sense of their feelings? How does that impact their sense and understanding of who they are?
2. The modern identity formation process is crushing
Not only is the modern identity formation process incoherent, but it is also a crushing burden to bear for the individual. In a traditional identity setting, the broader goal as it relates to society is for us to fit in: Don’t make a fuss if you don’t get what you want, just go with the flow. In contrast, modern identity pushes us to stand out.
No longer can a person be average or normal. Every child is told they must stand out and be special, unique, and one of a kind. I’m a longtime subscriber to TIME magazine. Every year they release issues throughout the year along the lines of “Top 100 Most Influential Adults” or “Top 40 Young People Under 40” and so on. The idea being TIME selects and curates people across the globe doing amazing work. As an adult, it’s aspirational and inspiring. But what happens when the media starts spotlighting the most amazing children in the world? Then we move from aspirational and inspiring to crushing and overwhelming.
Consider Cash Daniels, age thirteen and self-styled environmental activist:
Daniels spends several hours every week cleaning up cans and bottles in the rivers with other teen environ-mentalists in Chattanooga, TN. Together, they have collected more than one ton of aluminum cans, nearly 1000 cans a week for a year. . . . he co-founded a club called the Cleanup Kids with his best friend, Ella Grace, a fellow home school student who lives in Canada. The two met at a three-day bootcamp in Vancouver called Ocean Heroes and now video chat almost every day. Together, they decided they will encourage kids to pick up 1 million pounds of trash across the globe before the end of the year.3
Now, please hear me rightly: I’m all for caring for our planet and stewarding it well. But listen to the conclusion that Cash reaches toward the end of the article: “But in truth the burden to save the planet has landed on children like him. ‘Kids may be a small percent of the population, but we’re 100% of the future,’ he says. ‘And we can save the world.’”4
Think back to when you were thirteen years old. What were you doing? I venture a guess that it’s nowhere near what thirteen-year-old Cash Daniels is doing!
Articles like this, while reminding us of some of the wonderful and amazing things children are capable of doing, also remind us of the crushing burden of self-identity that can be placed at the footstep of the individual. The allure of determining one’s identity brings with it a corresponding burden that is not easily discerned. Determining and maintaining our identity is a heavy load we were not meant to bear, and our children were definitely not meant to bear.
3. The modern identity formation process is enslaving
Modern identity promises autonomy, freedom, and self-assertion. It proudly and loudly proclaims, “Be whoever you want to be.” But is that true freedom? Keller writes, “Defining freedom this way—as the absence of constraint on choices—is unworkable because it is an impossibility. Think of how freedom actually works.”5 In what way is this kind of freedom impossible? Think with me for a moment about freedom specifically when freedom is faced with conflicting choices and options.
This past summer our family went to Michigan where we have vacationed the past six or seven summer with dear friends of ours. The highlight of the summer vacation is what we lovingly refer to as “lake day.” The day where we rent a boat and spend the day on one of Michigan’s lovely lakes boating, swim-ming, and tubing. When we get in the boat and begin to head out into the lake, there are signs everywhere that tell us what speed our boat can go. This is done because the wake caused by our boat could cause a number of issues for nearby boaters and swimmers.
Additionally, as our families want to go tubing, we have learned that we get the greatest enjoyment out of speeding along the lake in the inner tube when we observe the necessary restrictions on how close we can get to the edge of the lake—because of the speed the boat is going, the design of the boat itself, and the safety of the riders. Note that the restriction actually maximizes freedom and enjoyment, not the other way around.
This hit home in a particularly poignant way just earlier this week for me as I visited my medical doctor for an annual checkup. My doctor noted that my blood pressure was consistently registering higher than she would like it. Along with a prescription medication, she also advised me to alter my diet, specifically limiting certain foods. Friends and family that know me, know I love anything salty or fried. (I confess that I’m a sucker for chips and French fries.) Coming out of the doctor’s office, I am faced with a choice. I could eat whatever I want because it’s my life, but I would be making a choice that would limit my health, my longevity, and ultimately my desire to grow old and see my children grow up, get married, and have children. The choice then is a fairly easy one for me: limit my freedom in one area so that I can experience freedom in other areas.
Similarly, modern identity promises freedom, but what it tends to do in the end is enslave the individual to the whims, wishes, and approval of the self and a watching world. While it trumpets freedom, it ends up trapping the individual in a prison of their own making. It’s simply not realistic to always say yes to your desires and feelings. But that is what the modern identity formation process does. It puts the individual at the center of their universe.
4. The modern identity formation process is fragile
Although the modern identity can appear to offer positivity and strength, it is also surprisingly fragile. Think with me about this scenario: Sammy is a seventh grader at her public school. As she comes into her first period class, her teacher, Mr. Hall, passes out a letter to the class. In the letter, Mr. Hall announces to the class that Julia is trans, and is asking the class to now use his preferred name—Bobby—and preferred pronouns—he/him. This comes as a surprise to Samantha, who sits next to Julia (Bobby).
Later in the week, as Samantha is chatting with a friend, she mentions Julia’s name. Her friend immediately corrects her, “Samantha! Don’t you remember, Julia is Bobby now. We need to respect and affirm his new identity.” Samantha blushes and hastily exits the conversation. Later that night at dinner she brings up the situation with her parents. Her parents listen and empathize with her predicament but are similarly confused as to how to proceed.
The next morning in class, Julia (Bobby) leans over to Samantha and whispers, “Hey, I heard you were using my old name. I really don’t like that. Please use my new name and preferred pronouns.” Later that day, Mr. Hall asks Samantha to stay after class, and he too relates that he has heard that Sammy is still using Julia’s name and feminine pronouns. He reminds her of the announcement he read earlier in the week, and tells her, “We really need to respect Bobby’s new identity and choice. When you use his old name and feminine pronouns, that’s really harmful to him.” Samantha nods, gathers up her books, and hurries out of the classroom.
What is happening here? If modern identity is something you choose, who cares what other people think about you? After all, isn’t that their choice to make? Why impose the burden of affirmation of your identity on others if you yourself authenticate and determine your own identity?
But you see, therein lies the problem. Because in modern identity you determine who you are and then go out into society and demand acceptance, affirmation, and approval. But when that identity is not immediately affirmed and used (especially by Christians, for instance), there is significant pushback. Raising questions is deemed hateful and bigoted. Modern identity produces a need for external affirmation and validation.
5. The modern identity formation process is performative
Traditional identity was of course performative—you were expected to do certain things to gain the approval of your family and society. But the modern identity process is particularly per-formative. One must constantly perform before an audience for affirmation. The process begins with digging deep into our feelings to determine who we are, and then going out into society and performing said identity. At this point, society is required to offer not just affirmation for our chosen identity but engage in activism and endorsement as an ally.
In traditional identity, an individual did not need to earn or perform for their identity as much as they needed to simply fill the role that had been given or passed on to them from their parents. The irony is that in the modern identity formation process, even though you choose who you want to be, you also need the affirmation and approval of people around you to affirm who you are. This helps us understand today’s need and motivation to be on social media so much. We now have unlimited and unfettered access to audiences who can affirm and approve of our chosen identity. Likewise, it’s widely considered important self-care to cut out anyone from your life who chooses not to actively affirm your chosen identity.
6. The modern identity formation process is ultimately an illusion
The final problem with the modern identity formation process is that it is ultimately an illusion. In one of my favorite scenes from The Devil Wears Prada, Andy Sachs (played by Anne Hathaway) gets taken to task by Miranda Priestly (played by living legend Meryl Streep). In the scene, Andy snickers as Miranda and her cabal of fashionistas discuss the color difference between two seemingly similar belts. Miranda replies about Andy’s sweater in a now-famous monologue, “That blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.”6
It’s not often that our culture tells us explicitly how it shapes us, so pay attention to what Miranda is saying: while Andy might think she’s making a choice for herself in choosing a certain colored sweater from a secondhand store, the color of that sweater was actually predetermined by a group of higher-ups in society. Andy didn’t make the choice at all—it was made for her.
Ultimately, in modern identity, no one is choosing their own identity as much as that identity formation process has been chosen for them through countless cultural narratives and marketing campaigns.
Perhaps an even more obvious example of this dynamic hit home recently as I was speaking at a large youth conference. A junior girl and her mother came up after a talk I gave on gender identity, and she related a story to me. Her friends asked her, “Are you gay or straight?” The abruptness of the question surprised this girl, and she hesitated in answering. Immediately, her friend jumped in and said, “Oh, if you don’t know, then you’re definitely bi.”
The girl and her mother were understandably distraught as now the rumor around school was that she was bi. This young lady didn’t have a chance to defend herself or offer an alternative; she was quickly and efficiently deemed bi because that’s what fit her friend’s cultural narrative.
The way forward
So how do we address these problems? If both the traditional and modern identity formation processes present us with such outstanding conundrums, how in the world can we ever figure out who we are, let alone guide and help our children to know who they are? The resounding answer to these identity formation processes is the good news of a gospel identity. A gospel identity meets and answers the challenges that modern identity creates:
- Incoherent: A gospel identity is coherent from the start. The truths of the gospel are unchanging and stable.
- Crushing: A gospel identity alleviates the need to “measure up” because our worth isn’t tied up in what we do, but who we are in Christ!
- Enslaving: A gospel identity is freeing—it frees you from having to do whatever it is your feelings tell you to do.
- Fragile: A gospel identity is sturdy, strong, and steadfast because it’s not built on something inside of us, but on the words of God himself to us.
- Performative: A gospel identity frees us from the trap of having to constantly perform for the approval of others because Jesus has secured our acceptance before God through his sacrifice on the cross.
- An Illusion: A gospel identity is a true reality. It places us securely within the story that makes sense of every other story.
But while the good news of an identity that is received and not achieved makes sense to us, we must also account for the reality that we are limited as parents in our ability to convey and convince our children of the beauty of a gospel identity. Our theology aids us in this in remembering that it is ultimately the Lord who opens hearts and minds to the truth of the gospel (1 Corinthians 2:14; Ephesians 2).
- Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God: Finding God in the Modern World (New York: Viking Press, 2016), 121.
- Timothy Keller, Gospel Identity Conference, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York, New York, November 17–18, 2017, https://gospelinlife.com/downloads/gospel-identity-conference; Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical (New York: Viking, 2016), 118–32. I am indebted to the late Timothy Keller for his lucid synthesis of these concepts. Much of what is related here is drawn from these sources.
- Eliana Dockterman, “Kid of the Year Finalist Cash Daniels, 13, Cleans Up Literal Tons of Trash,” TIME, February 7, 2022, https://time.com/6128595/kid-of-the-year-finalist-cash-daniels/.
- Dockterman, “Kid of the Year.”
- Keller, Making Sense of God, 101.
- Wendy Finerman, producer, The Devil Wears Prada, directed by David Frankel (20th Century Studios, 2006).
Excerpt adapted from Grounded in Grace © 2024 by Johnathan D. Holmes. Used with permission of New Growth Press. May not be reproduced without prior written permission.
Grounded in grace
Jonathan Holmes explores the five core areas of identity struggles most common to teens: sports, academics, moralism, sexual orientation, and gender confusion. He provides parents with a biblical foundation to work from and practical tools to help their teen find their identity based on who God says they are.
