That Was Many Lifetimes Ago

Let’s say you see a photo of your friend as a kid with no context—no family members or familiar scenery. Would you recognize them? Probably not. But what if your friend comes to you holding her second grade class picture?

“There I am,” she says, picking out her face on the second row of the mini-bleachers.

You squint at the little girl. “Of course,” you say. Who else would that be?

You’re seeing a microcosm of identity formation. Your friend has become someone new, and yet it’s still her.

Take another example. You’re sitting with Grandpa Al and one of his college classmates comes over.

“You wouldn’t believe the pranks Al used to pull,” he says. “He used to cause all kinds of mischief, didn’t you?”

Al laughs. “That was many lifetimes ago.”

You know what he means. It’s not that Grandpa Al thinks he’s been reincarnated several times since his twenties. But he is a different person. And it’s not just circumstances. It’s not just the new hip. His mind, desires, values, his way of seeing the world—it’s transformed so that if he were to Benjamin Button his way back into his twenty-year-old body, he would go on to live a completely different life. He had a different identity when he was twenty than he does now. Yet there is continuity.

Your identity is going to change many times over the course of your life. The longer you live, the more the biblical idea of being transformed into yourself should make sense (2 Corinthians 3:18). You will have lived more lifetimes. And whether or not it’s true, you will believe that you now have a clearer grasp on your identity than you did during a previous “lifetime.”

The question that matters is whether your current identity is in any way better? Just as getting older does not necessarily entail maturing, so solidifying your sense of self doesn’t mean it’s a better self.

The expression “seasons of life” captures this relationship between aging and identity. Summer and winter bring different clothes, routines, and entertainments. But neither summer nor winter can make you a better person. Seasons of life provide a general contour to what your identity will look like in that season, but have no intrinsic power to improve it.

How can you know whether your identity in this season of life is better? It cannot merely be because you’ve had more birthdays. What if your is identity trapped in some horrid reincarnation cycle, doomed to experience a Michigan winter over and over, while your body gradually decays? Or what if you missed some alternative identity route that could have brought you into a lifetime of San Diego sunshine?

Many people waffle between a baseless assumption that yes, of course their identity today is better than ever, then swing into pangs of anxiety that they already left their best life behind, or maybe they walked right past that door.

Amidst this pressure, God gives consolation to his children. He guarantees your identity is growing, with one simple condition—keep sticking with him. Through His Spirit, you have been becoming who you are. “I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I am the one who helps you’” (Isaiah 41:13). God leads you in paths that you don’t know are there and wouldn’t choose if you did. He does it for your best.

As a Christian, you have a new life, but it’s not the sort of limited lifetime you hope to make the best of before it fades and gives way to the next. It’s a radical break with the old lifetime of sin to begin a new lifetime that keeps being renewed (Romans 6:8; 2 Corinthians 4:16). The way you live a lifetime of steady identity growth is by growing your trust in the One who’s given you life from the beginning (Psalm 139:13).

My book on Christian identity formation is scheduled to come out April 1. Read here why I wrote it.

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