The story is told that Arthur Scholenhauer, the philosopher of pessimism, was sitting one day in the Tiergarten at Frankfurt, looking somewhat shabby and dishevelled, when the park-keeper mistook him for a tramp and asked him gruffly, "Who are you?" To this enquiry the philosopher replied bitterly, "I wish I knew." A similar story is told of Marlon Brando. When asked "How are you?" he replied, "How do I know how I am, when I don't even know who I am." The writer Edward Dahlberg observed, "At nineteen I was a stranger to myself, at forty I asked 'Who am I?', at fifty I concluded I would never know. " Woody Allen put it a little differently. He said that his only regret in life was that he wasn't somebody else.

The dawn of a new millennium finds us living in an uncharted world where the major conflicts are mapped more by cultural and ethnic than geographic and political boundaries. Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntingdon, as he surveyed the post-Cold War realities in The Clash of Civilisations (1998), warned of a world "anarchical, rife with tribal and national conflicts". He saw the end of the twentieth century marked by an "eruption of a global identity crisis."

1.

For whatever reason, it seems that one of the problems many people face in today's Western society, is finding out where they fit in the scheme of things. Some 100 years ago the artist Paul Gauguin scrawled in the corner of his painting the words "D'ou Venons Nous? Que Sommes Nous? Ou Allons Nous?" ("Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going to?") He then swallowed a bottle of arsenic and prepared to die. He actually survived and carried on painting but he had, in that moment, expressed a despair that many are feeling more than ever today as they consider those three big questions.

No doubt there are many reasons for this state of affairs. One must surely be the increasing breakdown of family relationships-with growing divorce rates, increasing solo parenthood and extra-marital sex, and the blurring of sexual boundaries and the definition of what "family" really means. Most people find their first sense of identity, of really belonging somewhere, in close family relationships. However, when these no longer exist, it is no wonder that many feel lost.

2.

A second factor is the crass materialism that exists in our culture, the constant emphasis on the acquiring of things rather than our relationships with people. In a book of essays titled The Culture of Consumption, historian Jackson Lear examines the psychological effects that consumption has had on Americans, effects that are no doubt true of Western society generally. Whereas earlier Americans (when they were citizens, not consumers) were inner-directed, having their identity revolve around a higher principle, modern Americans can be termed other-directed.

Lear notes that the other-directed person is just "an empty vessel to be filled and refilled according to the expectations of others and the needs of the moment." People's identities consist of the masks they put on, masks that either make them look successful or help them get success, allowing those around them to define who they are. We have lost our separate selfhood, or at least momentarily misplaced it. Instead of finding it in our rich family heritage, or in the gifts that have surfaced in us, or in the laughter of our children, we have been sidetracked by the consumer culture's claims that we are incomplete and needy.

3.

A third factor in our computer-and-TV-driven society is the multitude of conflicting messages we are constantly receiving from so many sources. Jim Fidelibus, who has a background in philosophy, theology and psychology, and twenty years experience in counselling and related fields, says in The Death of Truth (ed. Dennis McCallum):

According to postmodern theorists such as psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, we never really achieve a stable image of who we are. In a seemingly ever-changing contemporary society with media linkages to our homes, cars, schools, and places of employment, the images we are fed-and with which we identify-are so varied and incongruent that we begin feeling like patchwork. The moment we are sure of ourselves, we hear scores of dissenting voices, no longer just from without, but now from within. To take a stand on any issue, be it related to lifestyle, career or marital choice, sexual orientation, child-rearing, religion, or politics, seems arbitrary in the light of so many voices, all of which present themselves as equally valid alternatives. And certainly, claiming "truth" for an arbitrary stand can only be seen as arrogant. So we act without any claim on truth.

4.

A fourth factor is the pervasive influence of postmodern thinking. K. Gergen in The Saturated Self put it like this:

Postmodern psychology argues for the erasure of the category of self. No longer can one securely determine what it is to be a specific kind of person - male or female - or even a person at all. As the category of the individual person fades from view, consciousness of social construction becomes focal. We realise increasingly that who and what we are is not so much the result of our "personal essence" (real feelings, deep beliefs, and the like) but of how we are constructed in various social groups.

It is no doubt that this lack of self-identity is behind much of the increasing violence in many of our societies today. Jim Fidelibus goes on to say:

The loss of self-identity has been associated with some of the most unsettling findings in the entire psychology research literature. When people's group experience diminishes their sense of self, people tend to behave in ways less restrained and more indulgent. Individuals are also carried into adopting more extreme positions, and favour more radical action than they would take independently.

Some of the most disturbing findings in this area come from the work of Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University. He conducted a prison-simulation experiment in which college students role-played guards and prisoners over a period of six days. What happened was frightening. Participants increasingly seemed to confuse role-playing and self-identity as the basest, most morbid side of human nature was exhibited. Experimenters were horrified to see "guards" take pleasure in cruelty and "prisoners" become increasingly preoccupied with escape, individual survival, and mounting hatred. The experiment, originally planned for a two-week period, had to be aborted before even one week had been completed.

So much for an analysis of the problem. Is there any solution? The purpose of this article is to assist you to find your true identity from a Christian perspective. When we look at the Bible-the New Testament in particular-we find that our identity, first as human beings and second as children of God, is something so wonderful that it is not easy to grasp its full significance. It is an identity that grows out of a relationship to a God who created the universe for your benefit, who was willing to endure infinite suffering in order that you might find your true identity, and who has a purpose for you that will be beyond your greatest dreams (1). Other philosophies and religions have their own ideas about who we really are, or who we are meant to be. Speaking from a Buddhist perspective, Buddhagosa, in Path of Purity, says, "I am nowhere a somewhatness for anyone." In Hitler's Germany, during the 1930s, many young members of the Hitler Youth would chant these simple words: "You are nothing, the nation is everything." Or, in the words of one of Pink Floyd's famous songs, "You're just another brick in the wall." However, if the Bible is true, you are something infinitely more than that. My prayer is that what follows might help you sort out who you really are.

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(1) This booklet assumes the existence of this God. If you have any problem with that, you may like to try some of the other titles in this series-perhaps Is Jesus Really God? or Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?