Every once in a while you see an ad or get some mail that warns you of identity theft and offers some protection against it. This form of identity theft involves some nefarious individual gaining access to one of more important numbers that identify you in the marketplace—drivers license, social security number, address, phone number, email, bank account, credit card and more.
This is disconcerting, as it should be. If some person you don’t know has access to your personal information and is posing as you for their financial gain—and your loss or even ruin—then you feel significantly violated and angry.
This is why there becomes a need to protect yourself. We are warned against “phishing” and other scams intent on getting you to unwittingly give away your financial and legal identity.
But the same is true of another form of identity—social or spiritual identity. Sadly, and oddly, many people are falling victim to scams in this arena as well and willingly relinquishing their true identity to falseness.
One of these false identities is perpetuated by the scam that the whole world falls into a dichotomy of “oppressor and victim.” Deceiving people into thinking they are a victim robs people of their identity as someone who is both capable and responsible. I wrote about the problems of this false-dichotomy and the spurious arguments associated with a one-sided view of DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion—in a previous post.
I would also recommend the episode of Matt Walsh’s ‘Real History” series about civil rights, which logically and empirically demonstrates that minority populations in our nation’s inner cities were significantly better off before policies followed the flawed notion of victim identity. Another good resource is the Woodson Center, named for the late civil rights pioneer Robert Woodson, which stesses common sense solutions to poverty based on ability and responsibility vs victim mentality.
A protection against this kind of identity theft is to see yourself as an individual with your own merit, and do not allow someone who does not know you to assign you to a broadly defined and irrelevant group. An individual is unique and not merely a member of a category.
Another devious form of identity theft is that of sexual identity. In spite of theological and biological clarity, there is an organized effort to deceive people into thinking they are not the gender that the are. Much of this attempt to steal identity is often behind the backs of their parents.
What’s most puzzling in all of this is the fact that some who are not victims of this identity theft feel compelled to “affirm” the change in identity. To gain a self-satisfaction of being caring, they offer faux compassion to affirm that someone is oppressed or that their gender does not actually match reality, regardless of their chromosomes or the fact that God created humans with two genders, knowing each person while they are in the womb. It makes no more sense than “affirming” the criminal who has stolen someone’s financial identity. What’s most sad about this form of identity theft is that people would rather be randomly popular on social media than intimately loved by God,.
A final form of identity theft happens to people like me who dare to speak of such cultural issues and raise a red flag. Our identity theft culture has bred cancel culture and gaslighting as well. I will be—and have been—framed as a white, evangelical, straight male (all true) with some sort of phobia and full of hate (not true). I actually am rational and speak out in love. People should know who they really are, as designed by God. Knowing who you are in the eyes of God is positive, true and unchanging. There is a good book on this topic: “Identity Theft: Reclaiming the Truth of Who We Are in Christ” that gives hope and addresses other forms of false identity.
There is a dichotomy when it comes to identity. It is not oppressor-victim. It is oppressor-redeemer. Satan oppresses and possesses people to think what is a lie—that they are a victim, that they are the wrong gender. But God, who created all, is truth. People are loved, have potential, and their identity is in relationship to God, not other people or human culture. As Paul reminded residents of Galatia in his letter to them: “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Galatians 3:26).
Anyone today can also see themselves in the light of the sacrifice of Jesus and be a son or daughter of God. That’s an identity that can’t be stolen, and lasts for an eternity.
