If someone asked you how you identify, what would they be expecting you to say? I suspect that, in this era of history, they would be expecting something about your sex at birth or about your gender identity.

But why limit our answer to matters of sex and gender? Why not, “I identify as a white male, born in the 1950s, with unusually large feet, an active (sometimes overactive) mind, a wife of 46 years, three sons, three daughters-in-law, and six grandchildren.” Why not identify as a guitar-playing, book-reading, music-loving man who enjoys treks in the outdoors, fishing in the Canadian wilderness, golfing (when on those rare occasions I hit a ball somewhere near the fairway), who owns Jesus as teacher, savior, and Lord?

Identity is more than fingerprints, facial identification, ethnicity, sex, and gender. Identity is who I think I am and who I don’t yet realize that I am. Identity is how I have come to understand myself in the light of my joys, desires, sorrows, and suffering.

I read once that our sense of identity is largely in place by the time we are tweens, even before ideas of sex and gender have fully settled in on us. And once we have an identity, we will fight like tigers to keep it—even if it is leading us to make terrible decisions that are ruining our (or other people’s) lives.

I just sat through a workshop titled “Identity Evangelism.” The presenter made sure that we knew that challenging a person’s identity – he was talking about sexual orientation and chosen gender – is counterproductive when it comes to evangelism. Instead of lecturing people, he said, we need to listen to them, love them, and introduce them to Jesus.

I thought the presenter made his point well. He wasn’t suggesting that we compromise biblical standards, but that we follow Jesus’s example. But I wished he could have gone further (time did not allow it) to talk about the larger frame of identity into which issues of sexual orientation and gender fit. For identity is much more than sex and gender (though you’d never know it from watching TikTok videos or listening to podcasts).

The forging of identity begins early, perhaps even in the womb. We begin getting a sense of ourselves early on. By the time we are preschoolers, we are identity-making machines, and the process continues throughout life.

One of my early memories has to do with walking to school. I started kindergarten before I turned five. I can remember standing in our kitchen, crying. I didn’t want to walk with my brother to school, which was two blocks away, because I was sure I would be late. To this day, I hate coming late to an appointment.

When I was young and my dad was still drinking, I learned how to be invisible. I can remember my mother hushing my brother and me and saying (as if she were afraid), “Be quiet or you will wake your dad!” I learned to think about my surroundings, to see where trouble might lie, and to take steps to avoid it.

Because life was dangerous, I learned to be hypervigilant, which led me to see myself as an excellent driver. I see the car that’s just entering the on-ramp a quarter mile ahead of me. I gauge its speed and know it will enter my lane about the time I pass by. I also note that there is a car in the left lane a quarter-mile behind me and that he is closing the gap between us. I realize that he and I will reach the on-ramp simultaneously.

I also see myself as an introvert who enjoys being with a few close friends but is wearied by large crowds. I see myself – but am I right? – as someone who will take responsibility when it is necessary and even when it is costly. I think of myself as an outsider, a person who hates fads, thinks clearly, and acts judiciously.

I see myself as much more than a white heterosexual male. Of course, I may be wrong about some of the ways I see myself: Am I really a clear thinker? Am I a guy who acts judiciously? Perhaps my thinking is not as clear as I imagine. Perhaps my actions are sometimes injudicious. Whether or not my identity fits, seeing myself in these ways it shapes my actions and my emotions, for good and for bad.

If you want to convince me to convert to Catholicism and begin your pitch by stomping on my identity – “You are not a clear thinker. All you Protestants are muddle-headed” – you will not get far with me. My identity – even if I have completely misunderstood it – is just too important to my sense of self, of worth, and of safety for me to tolerate your attacks on it.

And yet, when Jesus warned (repeatedly) that the person who loves his life or soul (Greek: ψυχή) will lose it, while the person who loses his life for his sake will find it, it sounds like he is talking about losing our identity. Is this what Jesus had in mind? Would he rob us of our identity?

He will not rob us of our identity, but he will relieve us of a mistaken identity, one forged in the fires of a deeply disordered world, so that he might bestow on us our true identity, and the new name that goes along with it (Rev. 2:17). This is the richest of gifts: the gift of ourselves—our true selves.

And yet it is a painful gift, for we are deeply invested in our current identity. We have fought for it. (Most of our fights, I suspect, are about protecting identity.) We do not know who we are without the identity that was forced on us by nature in its bondage (Romans 8:21), by parents (in their bondage) by the taunts and praises that have come to us, and by our own choices.

Imagine that a baby has been kidnapped and raised under a false name. It is, however, the only name she has ever known. (There are many examples of this kind of thing—just google it.) When she tries to enlist in the service, she learns that she is not who she thought she was. An investigator uncovers her real name and reunites her to the parents who have loved her and sought for her throughout her life.

But now, she has a problem. To accept the change is to reject the false parents she thought she knew, to reject her way of life, to reject her identity. She will need to learn who she really is. She will need to accept an identity that does not seem to fit her at all. If she does this, she will lose herself – the only self she has ever known.

There are real life examples (Kamiyah Mobley is one, but there are many) of people who cannot accept their true identity and cling to the old, false one. This is our battle too. Will we give up our identity? If we do, will we be nobody, a ghost, a Sartrean nothingness? Can we accept our new identity as Beloved, as Brother or Sister, as Child? Will we learn to see ourselves, our neighbors, and our world through the lens of our identity as Jesus’s person, God’s beloved?

Poised between two identities, we are faced with the decision to repent, which is so much more than turning from our sins. It is a turning from our identity, a losing of ourselves (our soul, our ψυχή) in order to become someone new, someone different, someone formed “after the image of their creator” (Col. 3:10). Someone we were always meant – and have always longed – to be.

This is why repentance cannot be a one-and-done thing. Our old identity is layered like an onion, like Eustace the dragon in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It keeps us trapped in a false self. We must relentlessly choose our new identity in Christ. This is a daily choice—and a lifelong battle. This is what the Bible calls sanctification.