Quotes About Identity

God meets us in our individuality because God wants to fulfill that individuality. God wants us to follow and serve in and through that individuality. God doesn't seek to annihilate our uniqueness as we follow Christ. Rather, Christ-following leads us to our truest self.

God sometimes calls people to a cause not born of their own abilities or most superficial desires. But his call is always absolutely congruent with our destiny, our truest self, our identity and the shape of our being.

there are many false ways of achieving uniqueness. These all result from attempts to create a self rather than receive the gift of my self-in-Christ.

We should never be tempted to think that growth in Christlikeness reduces our uniqueness. While some Christian visions of the spiritual life imply that as we become more like Christ we look more and more like each other, such a cultic expectation of loss of individuality has nothing in common with genuine Christian spirituality. Paradoxically, as we become more and more like Christ we become more uniquely our own true self.

The mystery of the Christian gospel is that our deepest, truest self is not what we think of as our own separate self but the self that is one with Christ. This is the reason that the self that embarks on the journey of Christ-following is not the self that arrives.

Thomas Merton puts it this way: "Life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire."2

We are all called to Christ-following and loving service of God and neighbor. But the specific call that is rooted in your unique identity, gifts and personality will be found as you come to know both God and self in Christian community.

Jesus' understanding of his vocation came out of wrestling with God, himself and the devil in the solitude of the wilderness.8 Resisting the temptations to a false self based on power, prestige or possessions, Jesus chose his true identity as the deeply loved Son of God.

We all dream of home," said Mrs. Szince. "We dream of a place where what we are is right, where what we can do is the right thing.

Moments like this make me glad I am a man." "Playing with snakes and poisons does not appeal to you?" "Not the least." "Come, you've been in battle. That cannot be much better. What is it like to stand in the front rank, thrusting your boarding pike at some hulking wild-eyed berserk trying to slash you in half?" "That is when I wish I was a woman," he replied primly. At least Love did not lie.

Though they do remain within the Muslim communities, they often face persecution because of their steadfast assertion that they are Isai Muslims, meaning they are followers of Jesus (literally, Muslims who belong to Jesus).

When we fail to see that our culture, even our Christian expression of our culture, is not the same thing as the gospel, we may identify those who practice their Christian faith differently than we do as aliens and enemies.

I am truly my mother's son.

The future will be dense with computers. They will hang around everywhere in lush growths, like Spanish moss. They will swarm like locusts. But a swarm is not merely a big crowd: Individuals in the swarm lose their identities; the computers that make up this global swarm will blend together into the seamless substance of the cyberspere.

What is your name?" Why?" So I can mark your grave...

I think I exist, therefore I exist. I think.

Somewhere there exists all the possible variations of all the possible people I could be. I could be any of them- but I cannot be all. I can only be one of the variations. I will be the variation of myself that pleases me the most.

My body may be male or it may be female, but I am neither — I am me.

Our where determines our who," Reg Saner once wrote.

There's nothing fragile about this one. That ain't a fragile nose or mouth or chin, and yet it's female, more female than them fragile-pretty types who look more like ornaments than girls.

What are other people to us? Material. The stuff of our work. Whom do we love more, the girl or the portrait, the thing we've made of her? We artists, we're not quite human, are we? We love no one.

When people ask what I do, I say: "I'm a teacher." or: "I proofread legal documents." or: "I hand out jalapeño humus dip at Trader Joe's." I say, to myself, mostly: "I'm alive, motherfucker. What else do you want?"

What we are witnessing is the rise of those forms of popular culture that office workers can produce and consume during the scattered, furtive shards of time they have at their disposal in workplaces where even when there's nothing for them to do, they still can't admit it openly.

We are projects of collective self-creation.