I originally gave this talk on Oct. 22, 2024 to the student body at Wheaton Academy.
Good morning everyone; it’s a pleasure to be speaking to you. I understand that you’re currently in the midst of a chapel series on what it means to be created in the imago Dei, that is, in God’s image. This is a question of identity. Everyone asks questions about identity: who am I? Where did I come from? What does it mean to be human? Who are “my people”? These questions are inescapable.
I’m here today to warn you about identity theft. You have an identity. If you are a Christian, you hopefully have a Christian understanding of your own identity. But other ideologies, other religions, and other worldviews will tempt you to see yourself differently. They are trying to steal your identity and are trying to sell you a false one. Watch out! Don’t let that happen! So how can we do that? How do we prevent identity theft?
Identity and metanarrative
Let’s start by talking about identity and metanarratives. A metanarrative is a big, overarching story about reality. It gives us a way to make sense of our universe and our place in it. It tells us who we are and what reality is like.
For example, listen to this story:
In the beginning was God, who is good, holy, loving, and just. God created the universe and he created human beings in his image. But the first human beings sinned, rebelling against God and incurring his judgment. So God sent Jesus to die for us so that we can be reconciled to him. One day, Jesus will return to restore the world, to punish sin and to rescue all who trust in Him.
That’s one story. That’s one metanarrative. Here’s a different one:
In the beginning was the universe. The universe is matter and energy and nothing else. Over billions of years, human beings evolved on our planet as the result of random chance plus natural, evolutionary forces. There is no good or evil, right or wrong. One day you will die and cease to exist and eventually the entire universe will decay into lifeless emptiness.
This is a different story about reality and our place in it and it will shape how we think about our identity and what it means to be human.
Here’s a third story:
In the beginning was the One Divine Soul. But somehow, the One became Many. Human beings are fragments of the One who have forgotten that they are Divine. When individual human beings die, they are reincarnated. The goal of life is to escape this endless cycle of reincarnation so that, eventually, you can be absorbed back into the One where your individual consciousness will be extinguished.
Again, this is another story about reality and it will give us a different conception of our identity.
You probably recognize that the first metanarrative comes from the Bible, the second from atheism, and the third from Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. But, today, I want to focus on a fourth, non-Christian metanarrative that has grown increasingly popular in the U.S. over the last two decades. It comes from a discipline known as “critical theory” and it goes something like this:
In the beginning, there was oppression. The ruling class imposed their values on culture to justify their own power and privilege. But through their lived experience, oppressed people came to see the reality of social injustice. So we should defer to them, dismantle oppressive systems, and work to reach the promised land of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This story is everywhere in our culture and if we accept it, it will deeply affect our views on identity.
Now, I don’t have time to delve into the intricacies of critical theory today. If you’d like more documentation about it, you’re welcome to stick around and ask me questions. However, for the rest of this talk, I’d like to contrast the ways that critical theory conceptualizes our identity with the way that Christianity conceptualizes about our identity.
My main takeaway is this: don’t be a victim of identity theft! Don’t let critical theory steal your identity. Hold fast to what the Bible teaches. Only then will you know your true identity, your true value, and your true hope.
So let’s look at one big question and then four subquestions. First, the big question: is my identity primarily vertical or horizontal? And then four subquestions: is gender created or constructed? Is ethnicity peripheral or central? Is the fundamental human problem rebellion or oppression? And is the fundamental solution to that problem redemption or activism?
Let’s start with the central question: is my identity primarily vertical or horizontal?
Identity: vertical or horizontal?
The very first verse of the Bible starts with “In the beginning, God created…” According to the Bible, this is how we should understand everything. Everything was made by God and for God, including human beings. Look at Gen. 1:26. God says: “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” Gen. 1:27 says: “God created mankind in his own image.” First and foremost, then, we are God’s creatures. That is our primary identity. Some people are men; others are women. Some are married; others are unmarried. Some are rich and some are poor. Some are young and some are old. Some are healthy and some are sick. Some are able-bodied and some are disabled. But all human beings are made in God’s image.
But once you take God out of the picture as the primary source of our identity, then our primary identity has to come from somewhere else. In the case of critical theory, our identity comes from the demographic groups to which we belong. In particular, critical theory divides society into oppressor groups and oppressed groups and your identity is deeply connected to your social location as an oppressed person or an oppressor. So if you’re a man, you are part of an oppressor group; if you are a woman, you are part of an oppressed group. If you’re white, you are part of an oppressor group; if you are a person of color, you are part of an oppressed group. If you are a heterosexual, you’re part of an oppressor group; if you are LGBTQ, you are part of an oppressed group.
For critical theorists, your status as an oppressed person or as an oppressor dictates what you know, what kind of authority you have, and even your moral status.
For example, a straight white male is privileged and therefore blind to the reality of social injustice. He is tainted with the stain of white supremacy, and patriarchy, and heterosexism. In contrast, a disabled black lesbian is marginalized and therefore can better understand the reality of social injustice through her lived experience. As a result, the straight white male should defer to the inherent authority of the disabled black lesbian, especially when it comes to understanding racism, sexism, and heterosexism.
I’ll explain why this perspective is wrong and unbiblical in a moment. But, for now, let’s simply note that critical theory and the Bible answer the question “what is the primary source of my identity?” in two mutually exclusive ways. The Bible says: “Your primary identity is vertical. Yes, you are white or black or male or female. But, ultimately, your identity comes from God. You are, first and foremost, one of God’s creatures, created in his image to love him and obey him.” Critical theory says: “Your primary identity is horizontal. You relate to yourself and to other people primarily as members of various oppressed or oppressor groups locked in a battle for dominance.”
Critical theory’s view is just as antithetical to Christianity as the view that “you are nothing but atoms and molecules.” Or “you are a little god.”
Gender: created or constructed?
Let’s unpack this contrast a bit more. How else does critical theory steal your identity? Look at Genesis 1:27: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” According to the Bible, God made mankind male and female. Both man and woman are created in God’s image and therefore possess inherent value and dignity. But man and women are distinct. They are not interchangeable. They are not mutable. Our sex is imprinted on the DNA of every cell in our body.
In contrast, critical theory in general, and queer theory in particular, insists that male and female are social constructs. Yes, they might admit that biological sex is real. Some people have XY chromosomes and others have XX chromosomes. But gender and sex are different. Sex is biological. But gender is a social construct. Gender is a category that human beings created to oppress certain people deemed “female” and to a advantage certain people deemed “male.” And because biological sex and gender are independent, unrelated categories, a person can be “transgender” meaning that they can have a male biology but can identify as a woman or that they can have a female biology and identify as a man.
Indeed, the gender binary itself is oppressive. The idea that we can force people into certain rigid gender categories is a form of social injustice. True freedom can only be achieved when we have dismantled the gender binary and the very idea of fixed gender categories.
But here, critical theory is again completely incompatible with the Bible. In Genesis 1, not only does God create the category of biological sex, he also ordains gendered social categories. In Gen. 1:24, we read “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Jesus himself quotes this verse as the basis for his views on marriage and divorce. Here, God ordains not just the biological categories of “man” and “woman” but also the social categories of “husband” and “wife” and “mother” and “father.” The biblical view is that the social category of “male” and “female” (call it “gender” if you want) is rooted in the biological category of man and woman.
So don’t let critical theory steal your identity. God made you a man. God made you a woman. Even if you have a Disorder of Sexual Development and have been categorized as “intersex”: God created you. Your body, everyone’s body, even with its flaws and brokenness, is a glorious gift of God. Delight in it. Rejoice in your gender. It is good. Don’t despise it or reject it.
Ethnicity: Peripheral or central?
Next, is our ethnic identity peripheral to our identity or is it central to our identity?
We all have an ethnic identity. We all belong to one or more particular people groups with a shared culture, language, and history. Is that evil? No. It also is good. It isn’t wrong to have an ethnic identity. The apostle Paul was Jewish. He delighted in his Jewishness. He called the Jews his people.
Yet is our ethnic identity central to who we are? No. In Philippians 3, Paul writes: “If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews.” He has an ethnic identity. He owns it. It’s part of him. But he continues: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
The Bible insists that our ethnic identity must be radically demoted in importance when compared to our shared identity in Christ.
In Gal. 3:27-28 he writes: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slavenor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
In Col. 3:11 “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.”
Again, the Bible doesn’t argue that these ethnic categories do not exist or that they’re sinful. Rather, it insists that they may never come between us and other Christians. What we share in Christ infinitely outweighs our ethnic differences.
In contrast, critical theory -especially critical race theory— make our ethnicity central to who we are. It absolutely erects barriers between “oppressed” ethnic groups and “oppressor” ethnic groups, barriers that Christ tore down.
Don’t let critical theory steal your identity. Yes, you are White or Black or Hispanic or Korean or half-Indian. But first and foremost, you are adopted into God’s family through Christ with every other Christian in the world.
Sin: rebellion or oppression?
Fourth, what is humanity’s fundamental problem? According to the Bible, it is sin. That is a key part of the biblical storyline. Adam and Eve rebelled against God, ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and everything collapsed. We were separated from God. We incurred his wrath. And our hearts were corrupted and darkened and warped. And out of our corrupted hearts come our sinful thoughts and actions. In Matt. 15:19-20, Jesus said “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.”
But according to critical theory, oppression is humanity’s fundamental problem. Some groups –whites, men, heterosexual, Christians— have seized power and have imposed their values and norms on others.
But someone might ask, “aren’t these views compatible? Doesn’t the Bible affirm that oppression is sin?” Yes. But there are two major caveats.
First, what critical theorists claim is oppression is not always oppression. For example, I explained earlier that critical theorists believe that the gender binary itself is oppressive. It isn’t. The gender binary is an element of God’s creation and it is good and just for society to recognize it.
Second, all real oppression is sin, but not all sin is oppression. For instance, idolatry is sin. But idolatry isn’t a form of oppression. If I make a golden calf and worship it, whom am I hurting? No one. And yet idolatry is a grievous sin. So critical theory is wrong to collapse all sin onto oppression.
Oppression is one of many sins that flows out of the sinful human heart. But it is not the only sin or even the greatest one.
This is another instance of identity theft. If you don’t know that you are a sinner, you do not know yourself truly. You have stage-4 stomach cancer and critical theory is trying to convince you that you’re just lactose intolerant.
Salvation: redemption or activism
Finally, because critical theory has a superficial view of our problem as humans, it has a superficial view of the solution. For Christians, the problem is internal and the solution is external. The problem is our rebellion against God and our corrupt heart. The only solution was for God to send his Son Jesus to live the life we ought to have lived, to die the death that we deserve, and to rise from the dead to justify us. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” – 1 Pet. 3:18. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” – 2 Cor. 5:21 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” – Rom. 3:23-34
In contrast, critical theory believes that the problem is external and the solution is internal. The problem is that oppressor groups have created unjust systems and structures. We’re not the problem. The system is. The oppressors are. It’s outside of us. But the solution is internal. It can come from us. We can fix things. We can do the work to transform unjust systems and structures through activism. If we’re part of an oppressor group, we can divest from our privilege and stand in solidarity with the oppressed. If we’re part of an oppressed group, we can liberate ourselves. We can retweet the right tweets, use the right hashtags, do the reading, go the right rallies, vote for the right candidates, and then we’ll know we’re ok. We’ll be on the right side of history.
But that’s not true. Even if we could create a political utopia, our sinful human heart would still be in need of forgiveness and cleansing.
And perhaps this is the worst form of identity theft at all. Critical theory wants you to build your identity on your sociopolitical activism and to put all your hope in the success or failure of your utopian plans. Christianity gives you a better identity. Yes, you are a sinner. But, in Christ, you are a forgiven sinner, an adopted child of God, a son or daughter of the king. And that status doesn’t depend on your frantic attempts to “do better; be better.” It depends on the finished work of your Savior.
Conclusions
In summary, critical theory and Christianity present two mutually exclusive ways of seeing yourself, of thinking about your identity.
Christianity says that your identity is primarily vertical: you were created by God. Critical theory says that it’s primarily horizontal: you are either oppressed or an oppressor. Christianity says that God created us male and female. Critical theory says that gender is a social construct that can be changed at will. Christianity says that your ethnic identity, while good, is far less important than your Christian identity. Critical theory says that your ethnic identity is so central to who you are that it divides you from other Christians. Christianity says that you are a sinner who can find forgiveness in Christ. Critical theory says that your problems are primarily political and that they can be solved through activism.
Let me close with two take-aways:
First, you cannot synthesize critical theory and Christianity. They are in competition. To the extent that you embrace the one, you will have to abandon the other. You can’t serve two masters.
Second, Christianity is true and critical theory is false. Yes. Of course. But Christianity is also better that critical theory. It gives you a real picture of reality, a salvation, a real peace, and a real hope. It tells you who you truly are. Don’t let critical theory steal your identity. Find your identity in Christ.
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