"Identity" - Student Impact 5/4/2011

I’m going to start tonight by stealing an example from Pastor Stu over at Water’s Edge Church. I was recently watching their Easter Service (It was held in the Hampton Convention Center and it was pretty crazy. They had people doing trampoline acrobatics on stage during worship!) and Pastor Stu began by describing an article he had recently read, which announced the arrival of a new kind of junk food. Now I love junk food, despite how skinny I am! I like mint chocolate chip ice cream, soda, and especially potato chips. Especially, especially “Doritos.” So I thought I too would check it out. The article contained a link to the website, and this is what you see:

 

One of the top guys from “Doritos” was hired to run a “Baby Carrot” company. He came in and decided he wanted to revolutionize the way you thought about baby carrots. And so they’ve given the baby carrots a new slogan: “Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food.” A rock song plays when you get on the website with some guy shouting “Baby carrots, extreme!!!” You can download it, I think. There’s even a commercial you can watch where a model seductively chews on some baby carrots. And lastly they repackaged them; the bag in the middle looks like “Cheetos” and the bag on the right looks like some of those fancy organic snacks.

But the one that really bothers me is the bag on the left. It looks just like a “Doritos” bag and the last thing I want to see after popping open a “Doritos” bag is a bunch of slimy carrots! They are trying to change how we think about and see baby carrots. In other words, they are trying to change the identity of baby carrots by making them “modern” and changing the appearance of the bag. But ultimately they haven’t changed the identity of the carrots. They are still selling the same product they always have; inside the bag you still find baby carrots.

Tonight we are going to be discussing “Identity.” Identity is the many ways in which we define ourselves. It relates to our self-esteem (how much we value ourselves), our self-image (how we think about our appearance), and our self-perception (how we think other people view us). It relates to what roles we fill (son, daughter, brother, sister, student, athlete, club president, the “funny guy”). And it relates the how we want others to see us.

There is a clear distinction between the ways in which the world wants us to construct identity and the way that God wants us to construct identity. And hopefully you are already starting to see the connection between what the “Doritos” guy is trying to do with the baby carrots and our own constructions of identity.

But before we start we are going to watch a video. In this video you will see two teams passing a basketball. One team will be wearing white and the other team will be wearing black. Your task is to count the number of times the team in white passes the basketball. Now there is a gender difference in accuracy; one gender does better at this than the other. I’m not going to tell you which gender, but after the video we’ll see if it’s true. So let’s (quietly) watch the video.

Did you see the gorilla the first time? (75% of people will not see the gorilla.) What?!? How could you not see a gorilla??? It’s a gorilla, for crying out loud! You don’t just see gorillas walking around all the time! Why didn’t you see it?

You didn’t see it because I tricked you into not seeing it. When I was giving the instructions, I took advantage of some of your psychological automated responses. Obviously, psychological means cognitive, or in the brain, and automated response means that it is something that happens automatically as a result of something else happening.

The psychological automated response I took advantage of is called “Selective Attention.” Selective attention is where you concentrating on one thing in the environment while ignoring other things. So when I told you to watch for the team in white, your brain automatically starting to view white things as important and nonwhite things, or black things, as not important. That why, when the gorilla came on the screen, you did not see it. Your brain was only looking at white things and it refuses to recognize the gorilla as something worth noticing.

I strengthened this process by “priming,” or influencing, you to be more invested in the task. In other words, when I said that there was a gender difference (there isn’t btw) you started to think of your masculinity or femininity as dependent on how well you did on this task. So I tricked you into caring more than you would have cared normally.

Culture takes advantage of these same psychological automated responses. It primes us to have selective attention. But just like the video, culture does not give us the big picture, nor does it want us to have the big picture. It blinds us to the gorillas in culture. This is especially true in the formation of identity. Culture wants us to ignore the big picture and only focus on certain things when forming our identity. We’ll see this more later.

This leads to the idea of “Hegemony.” Hegemony is “the process by which social order remains stable by generating consent to its parameters through the production and distribution of ideological texts that define social reality for the majority of the people.”

Now, that’s a really long, roundabout way of saying “Culture convinces us that culture is important and worth being a part of and it does this in many different ways." Culture tells us that culture is important in television, movies, music, magazines, etc. For example, many of these cultural outlets show us celebrities or describe certain ways of living and convince us that being like those celebrities or living in that way is the ideal. But the only way we can know how to be like celebrities or live that lifestyle is if we pay attention to and plug into culture. In their lyrics, rap stars tell us to act like them. But we only know how to act like them if we listen to their music.

The best way culture can convince you that culture is important is by making your identity dependent on the culture. Once your identity is based in culture, it is only logical that you will want to continue to support culture, because you are essentially supporting yourself. And you will ignore the gorillas in culture, the bad things, because to accept them would mean accepting those things to be true about you as well. We see this in virtually every aspect of culture, whether it’s advertising or business; they each selfishly want a chunk of your identity, because having that guarantees your support. When Miley Cyrus sells perfume, she is taking advantage of the desire young girls have to be identified as popular. When Donald Trump sells ties, he is taking advantage of the desire men have to be identified as rich and powerful. (The production of identity as a product is called “Proprietorial Humanism,” if you care.)

Let’s look at an example in politics (an area that’s not often thought of as being part of culture). We are all familiar, at some level, with the issue of abortion. Both sides of the issue want to be thought of as the moral champions of the issue. “Pro-lifers” will say, “Would you identify yourself as a good person? Yes? Well then you’re on our side, because abortion is murder and a good person will always oppose murder.” They want us to identify with them, so that we will act on their behalf. Likewise, “Pro-choice” advocates will say, “Would you identify yourself as a good person? Yes? Well then you’re on our side, because we protect the freedom of women everywhere to do what they want with their own bodies and a good person will always support freedom.” They want us to identify with them, so that we will act on behalf of their cause.

But neither side is ever going to give you the big picture. They don’t want you to know about their “Inherent Interests.” Pro-choice advocates are never going to mention how much money abortion doctors make, because that conflicts with how they want us to see them. And there are inherent interests in every side of every issue in culture.

Culture wants our identity. And it doesn’t want our identity because it values us as individuals. Culture is selfish. It wants our identity because it values us as money-spending customers and obedient servants. And so it wants to blind us to its gorillas and influence us to think of culture’s way as the best way.

This is not some conspiracy theory. People from television don’t get together with people from television and advertising and magazines and music and politics and business to plot out how they can trick the American people next. Rather, it’s just the tendency for social movements, for culture, to be self-serving and self-producing. And we all somewhat realize this is going on, especially our “technology-native” generation. We realize that there are outside forces fighting for our attention and our identity. But most of us fail to realize exactly how subtle and persuasive culture can be.

Culture’s persuasion is incredibly powerful and is most evident in our perceptions of beauty. So we’re going to take a quick look at what some cultures have convinced its citizens is normal and worth identifying with. First, let’s journey to China…

 

A while back in China, it was desirable to have small feet. They didn’t care so much about their hair or makeup, but if you had small feet, guys were lining up around the block! In fact, the Chinese people were so influenced by their culture’s identity of beauty that they would bind the feet of their children, essentially breaking their feet in half and causing half the foot to grow underneath itself. Onto a few other cultures…

In historic Europe, corsets were once very fashionable and if you wanted to identify yourself with the idea of being attractive, you wore a corset, as most women during the time did. However, as a corset slimmed their midsection, it also decreased digestion, causing many women to be malnourished, caused permanent damage to the spine, and most prominently caused broken or fractured ribs. We think that’s dumb, but the culture they lived in convinced them that wearing a corset is necessary for others to see them as attractive. For them it was “normal.”

The women with neck rings will never be able to take them off because the lengthening of the neck weakens it so that it would no longer be able to support their heads; their necks would immediately snap. We think that’s dumb, but the culture they live in convinces them that having a long neck is necessary for others to see them as attractive. For them it is “normal.”

The woman with all the piercings had to endure crazy amounts of pain in order to look like she does. We think that’s dumb, but the culture she lives in convinced them that having lots of piercings is necessary for others to see her as attractive. For her it is “normal.”

And everything that culture convinces us to do or believe is not necessarily bad. But we would do well to realize that culture can make us do some crazy things that at the time we think are “normal.”

 

                        

In America, many individuals have a fascination with being incredibly skinny. Roughly ¼ of American females will struggle with an eating disorder at some point in their lives. And the number of men who also struggle with eating disorders is growing rapidly. About ½ of all homosexual males will struggle with an eating disorder.

Now, I realize that there are biological and psychological factors that contribute to these conditions. But do not think for a second that Satan is not manipulating our culture in order to trick us into believing certain things that distract us from finding our identity in God are normal or desirable.

Basing our identity in culture can cause us to do crazy things. Trying to live up to culture’s goals is impossible. We try to live the ideal that culture describes, but we fail. We are emasculated and defeminated, but the funny thing is that we don’t blame culture for setting unrealistic expectations, we blame ourselves. We think, “The reason that I’m not successful, or rich, or popular, or incredibly attractive is that I’m simply not good enough.” Many of us fail to even consider that the identity found in culture is empty and often a lie.

Don’t believe me? Check out this video…

No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted. We’ve believed in a lie.

We live in a culture that says live this way, do this, look like this, try to be this person. And we can never live up to culture’s expectations. Often because the ideal doesn’t even exist! It’s made up. If you buy this makeup, you can look like this girl. Only that girl doesn’t exist!

But we believe in a God who does exist. He loves us. He made us perfect just the way we are. And He doesn’t leave us alone and empty…

Psalm 145, “The Lord is near to all who call on Him.”

Joshua 1: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Jeremiah 29, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Romans: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?”

Psalm 139, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”

1 Samuel says the Lord sees the beauty inside of us.

Isaiah 43, “Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.”

1 John 3:1, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”

Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

No matter what you see on television, no matter what some magazine wants you to think, no matter what some boy says, no matter what some girl thinks of you, no matter how your parents treat you, no matter how you teachers trivialize you, no matter how Satan tests you, no matter how much your friends pressure you, no matter how much you are physically, verbally, emotionally, and spiritually beaten, battered, betrayed, and abused…

You are a child of God and no one can take that away. God loves you. God made you perfect just the way you are. He made you beautiful, and smart, and funny, and emotionally competent, and strong. God made you to live, and to love, and to grow and to mature. He wants you to rest in His strong arms and to find your identity in Him.

An identity in Christ doesn’t hide the big picture or conceal gorillas. An identity in Christ doesn’t have inherent interests. An identity in Christ doesn’t have hidden motives. An identity in Christ doesn’t force you to change; you come to Christ as you are. You don’t have to bind your feet, or break your ribs, or disfigure your body, or pierce your face, or starve yourself to death. All you have to do is fall on your knees at the feet of Jesus. And you'll be transformed on the inside as a child of God who is loved. And you'll be surrounded by people who love Christ too and love you as a fellow brother or sister in Christ.

Our theme for this summer is “Love in Action.” Tonight I encourage you to love yourself; not in an idolatrous way, but to love the body you’re in and the personality you have with the knowledge that Christ made you exactly that way for a reason. I challenge you to look beyond the obvious and the outside and the superficial, and to love each other for the innate value we have as children of God. You, too, are a child of God and that identity is perfectly fulfilling and eternal. No one can ever take that identity away from you. No one can ever pluck you from His hand. So find comfort in that, regardless of how culture suggests you should live or look, your identity will always be as a child of God, loved by the Father.