identity amnesia and replacement

The quotation below is from Paul David Tripp's most recent book, Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God, 2004. I bought it...well...because I've entered midlife. Yes, I am between 35 and 55! But even though this is a book that specifically addresses midlife issues, it has direct relevance for all who want to learn better how to apply the gospel. So below you will find a little sample that I think you will find very applicable regardless of your age :-).

“You and I are always living out of some sense of identity. The way we answer the ‘who am I?’ question will have a huge influence over all that we say and do. It should not surprise us that high school athletic activities would morph into identity issues. Nor should it surprise us that the struggles of midlife are struggles of identity as well. When you begin to understand this, it becomes enormously helpful in finding your way out of that dense midlife fog. Think about how much of the drama of the biblical story is tied to identity. There is a real way in which the fall of Adam and Eve was about forgetting who they were. They were creatures of God who attempted to take on a whole new identity. Much of the drama of the Old Testament is focused on whether the Israelites would live inside of their identity as the children of God. Would they be wooed by other identities and end up worshipping the idols of the surrounding nations? In the same way, the drama of the later New Testament is about whether the church of Jesus Christ would understand and live out what it means to be ‘in Christ,’ in the middle of a world that trumpets many other identities.

"The biblical story is a story of identity given, identity lost, and identity restored. God wants you to know who you are and to live out the practical implications of the identity he has given you in Christ. That is why Scripture is constantly telling us who we are. As sinners we all tend to suffer from some form of identity amnesia. This is what Peter describes in 2 Peter 1:8-9. He says that there are people who know the Lord but are ineffective and unproductive in their knowledge of the Lord. Such a person is 'nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed form his past sins.' Peter is coupling this blind unfruitfulness with the issue of identity, essentially saying, 'Your lives are not productive because you have forgotten who you are.' I am persuaded that identity amnesia in the body of Christ is doing much more damage than we might assume.

"The problem with identity amnesia is that it gives way to something even more dangerous: identity replacement. If I have forgotten who I truly am, that identity will fail to shape my reponse to the people and situations that I encounter, and I will fill the identity void with something else” (Paul David Tripp, Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God, pp. 267-268).