Identity

Today my family and I went to see Wreak it Ralph.  As someone who grew up loving the trips to the arcade to pump quarters into games like Q-Bert and Pac Man and the obvious reference to Ralph being like Donkey Kong.  Like all Disney movies, Ralph is essentially about finding your identity.  Without ruining it for you, let me describe the plot.  Ralph plays a guy who wreaks buildings (see the genius in the title).  But Ralph grows weary of being the bad guy.  One of my favorite lines in the whole movie is when an evil wrestler dude tells Ralph, "Just because you play a bad guy does not make you a bad guy".  You'll laugh once you see the movie.  So, Ralph decides to try to be a hero in another game and eventually meets up with another character who is trying to figure out who she is too.  If one character searching for identity is good, two must be twice as good!  Like Simba in the Lion King or Ariel in the Little Mermaid, eventually all Disney characters find that happiness is embracing who you are, even if it is not perfect.

Trying to find our identity today is huge (and the movie makers at Disney know it).  While once it was mainly an issue for teenagers or for those in college; today identity is a huge topic for all of us.  It is not just Disney who knows this.  Apple does too.  Don't like who you are?  Just wait for the new incarnation of the ipod or iphone to remind you that you are an apple gal.  Don't like who you are?  Just swipe the credit card and buy a new shirt or shoes or something, especially if you can get it on sale!

Now to be clear, I get caught up in this all the time.  Before I went to some continuing education classes this summer I went out shoe shopping so that they would match the ensembles I wanted to wear...I certainly did not want to be that guy with the uncool shoes.  Andrew Root at Luther Seminary teaches about how our identity used to come from family, but those days are over.  Then our identity used to come from our jobs, which was on life support since the economic crisis of the middle eighties and now might be officially done with the recent economic downturn.  Now, our identity seems to come from what we can consume, which might ring true especially during this Christmas season.  There is countless pressures to buy right now.

I know I struggle, like Ralph, with my identity from time to time.  And yet, I also want to resist thinking that my identity comes primarily from what I consume.  I'd rather think that my identity comes from Christ consuming me in such a way I find the peace, hope, joy and love that makes me whole.  In fact, rather than just thinking that, I would love to have my identity in Christ coming from how I live.  I see these weeks leading up to Christmas as a time to let that be a spiritual practice so that as the dwindling days of 2012 give way to the new year of 2013, I would keep on living an identity as a follower of Christ.

May the traces of God's grace help assure you that you are loved by God, not for what you buy or car you drive, but because by the waters of baptism you belong to God.  And that is who we are and whose we are.

Blessings!