The question “Who am I?” has thrust itself to the forefront of my attention at three periods of my own life.

Period One

When I left high school, a Christian teacher gave me a farewell present of Die­trich Bonhoeffer’s famous book The Cost of Discipleship. Among the additional pieces it included was his poignant poem “Who Am I?” It is deeply self-reflective, probing, and honest: Is he really the person whom others admire for his poise and dignity when he himself experiences hidden struggles?

Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing
My throat, yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance. . . .

There is something honestly biblical and Christian about such self-probing. The Apostle Paul knew this contrast between the internal and external realities of life. Bonhoeffer’s final resolution is, like Paul’s (1 Cor. 4:1–5), altogether healthy: “Whoever I am, Thou knowest O God, I am thine.”

Period Two

I encountered the same words “Who am I?” a couple of decades later, in the discovery that they were the most commonly used title for poems written by high-school students. The question was not so much self-consistency but the quest for maturity. There was nothing surprising about this—nor necessarily unhealthy. The teenage years are times of personal growth in self-knowledge: What are my gifts and aspirations? What kind of character am I becoming? What do I want to do with my life? What, and who, will be really important to me? All these are questions that our experiences invite us to ask, think through, and answer. They are part of the process of healthy maturation.

Period Three

But when the question “Who am I?” is asked today, although the words remain the same, the tone and the nuance have changed dramatically. By and large, the question today is not one of mature self-examination or an expression of personal growth but a question of self-invention. Frequently it has become genderized and sexualized. Now the refrains sung by the siren voices of the world sing to young sailors beginning their journey on the sea of life are:

You can be anything you want; you alone choose your identity.

While you alone must choose, we will tell you what your choices are and define the field of discussion—although, of course, you can choose to be and self-identity as you please; there is total self-autonomy.

And fundamental in your choice is the question of your decision about the gender and sexuality you will choose for yourself. That will almost entirely define you and dominate your thinking.

And among other things, we are informing you, dogmatically, that answering this question will involve your considering the possibility that you have been born in the wrong body.

In addition, by way of warning, be aware that to regard our parameters as misguided or erroneous or, worse, to deny their validity is to commit sin. It is a transgressing of our norms that we will seek to silence. Breaching them will require your re-education by our people and expose you to marginalization and perhaps complete exclusion.

While it is not yet said quite so universally and boldly, our societies have been moving in the direction of silencing the biblical view of human nature. We need to understand that inevitably when there is no place for God in our thoughts, a right understanding of man as made in His image will also be rejected. Nietzsche-like, would-be thought leaders implicitly cry out, “If there is a god, how can I bear not to be that god?” and—in fulfillment of Romans 1:32—will urge others to share their distortions to make them seem “normal” and eventually normative. (“Equality” was never the goal.)

This modern mythology is eerily reminiscent of the experience of Odysseus (Ulys­ses) and his crew in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. The hero sails past Anthemoessa, the island of the Sirens, who by the sheer attraction of their flattering voices have so often lured unthinking sailors to destruction:

Whoever sails near in ignorance and hears the Sirens’ voice, never returns . . . [;] the Sirens beguile him with their clear-toned song, as they sit in a meadow, surrounded by a huge heap of bones of mouldering men . . . whose . . . skin has shrivelled.

The ship and its crew are saved only because Odysseus has his men stuff their ears with beeswax. And while he is willing to be exposed to the Sirens’ voices, he has himself strapped to the mast lest he be captivated by the sound and direct his ship toward disaster. The myth of the Sirens has become a reality in our time. Whole churches have been beguiled and are fast becoming “bones of mouldering men.” What has brought us to this?

The Loss of the Biblical Perspective

Whenever the biblical world-and-life-view is downplayed or lost, opposition to it flourishes.

It was already clear half a century ago that Christians had lost the biblical view of self. One index of this was the flurry of books from Christian publishers addressing the question of the Christian’s self-image in reaction to the pop-cultural views sweeping the Western world. It was implicitly assumed in these works that Christians were unfamiliar with how to think of themselves biblically. Relatively few evangelical Christians thought of themselves in terms of the imago Dei; perhaps fewer understood that what was in view in justification and adoption, regeneration and sanctification, was the restoration of that image through union with Christ. Only a minority of evangelicals thought of themselves as “in Christ,” despite the obvious dominance of the concept in Paul’s theology.

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