An Identity with Weight (Part One)

We live in an identity-fixated society. Just ask our country’s marketing agencies. Their campaigns focus not upon what kind of people we ought to be—people of integrity who are committed to serving others rather than to being served—but upon a particular image that they want us to believe we must have in order to experience fulfilling lives. What, according to these agencies, do we need to get this “life-fulfilling” image for ourselves? Money, the more the better. Does our society buy into these marketing strategies? Why don’t we ask the credit card companies? VISA, MasterCard, and Discover will tell us that people are more than willing to spend money they don’t have in order to get an image that promises to provide for them what they most desperately want, namely, an identity with weight, an identity that will give them a sense of being somebody, that will infuse them with good courage enabling them to successfully endure the rollercoaster ride that we call life.

If our society cares about marketing a weighty identity that would sustain people in the ups and downs of life, it would do well to make people aware of 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:5. If we want an identity that will keep us from losing heart and will enable us to endure all the difficulties of life with courage (2 Corinthians 5:6), Paul tells us where to look in 2 Corinthians 4-5.

Earlier in this letter to the Corinthians Paul informs us that while he was in Asia he was “so utterly burdened beyond [his] strength that [he] despaired of life itself. Indeed, [he] felt that [he] had received the sentence of death” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). Paul may be describing what our society would call a nervous breakdown of sorts. His affliction was so intense, so unmitigated, that he admits to despairing of life itself (1:8). Yet, just a couple chapters later Paul says, “We do not lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:16). Something held Paul’s life in place even though he was despairing of it. What was it? The light weight promise of a shiny new vehicle? When you are despairing of life itself, hearing that all you need to keep your life from blowing away is a brand new “image-securing” Hummer would be like hearing that all you need to save your home from a hurricane like Katrina is an umbrella.

So, what is it the infused Paul’s despairing heart with weighty hope and needed courage? It was not the light weight identity that our society markets. It was the weighty identity announced in the gospel. This is what we will begin to consider in part two of “An Identity with Weight.”