Everyone has a sense of identity, of who we are as individuals. Identity is something that is constructed over time through our varied life experiences. It is both a conscious and subconscious activity as we observe the world around us and our relationship to it. This identity construction is an ongoing activity, and you cannot stop it. The choices you do have about your identity will reflect varying degrees of psychological health or sickness. Your sense of identity is almost always rooted in your relationship and orientation to other people. Christian Scripture speaks to this psychology, and gets at it right from the first pages of the Bible. Here’s what one author has to say about Cain and Able, the brothers found in Genesis 4.

Cain was confronted with God’s measure of what truly matters and what is truly great. Since he could not change the measure and refused to change himself, he excluded both God and Abel from his life. Cain’s identity was constructed from the start in relation to Abel; he was great in relation to Abel’s ‘nothingness.’ When God pronounced Abel ‘better,’ Cain either had to readjust radically his identity, or eliminate Abel. The act of exclusion has its own ‘good reasons.’ The power of sin rests less on the insuppressible urge of an effect than on the persuasiveness of the good reasons, generated by a perverted self in order to maintain its own false identity. Of course, these reasons are persuasive only to the self. God would not have been convinced, which is why Cain keeps silent when God asks, ‘Why are you angry?’ (Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, pp. 95, 96).

There’s a lot to consider in that quote. In reflecting upon it, here are some initial questions you might ask yourself:

• What kind of person do I tend to want to please or impress? Why?
• What kind of person do I tend to look down on or disdain? Why?
• Who is my hero?
• Who is my nemesis?
• Is there a person in my life that I’ve chosen to exclude? Again, why? What was it about that relationship that revealed something about you that you didn’t like?
• Do I realize just how much of my identity is shaped and defined by how I think of myself in relation to other people?
• Is it possible I’ve constructed an unhealthy (false) identity based on flawed reasoning to justify what I really wanted? Could I be living a life that’s based on falsehoods I’ve convinced myself of?
• Will I let other people challenge me on this, or will I exclude them from my life if they get too close to the truth (evidenced by the fact that I will get uncomfortable and defensive the closer they get)? And then, after I’ve excluded them, I’ll have to remind myself of all the reasons it made sense to do so. I will stay isolated from close relationships of this kind since I’ve convinced myself of my own reality.
• What kind of person would I really be like if I could be free of these unhealthy attachments?

There are more of these kinds of questions worth asking, but for now, let me challenge you to read Ephesians 2:1-10. The Bible knows you must have an identity, and that it will be formed in relation to other people. But the Bible’s remedy to unhealthy, sinful attachments to people is to form your identity in relation and orientation to Christ. Once Christ has raised a person out of their spiritual death, and adopted that person into the family of God, a Christian must continue to grow in his understanding, relationship, and orientation to Christ. Doing so will form a stronger, healthier identity—one that is less and less dependent on others for affirmation and validation, and is free to be his true self. This is just another of the many benefits that come from being in union with Christ.