In this episode of The Denison Forum Podcast, Dr. Mark Turman and Dr. Ryan Denison continue their conversation around their new book, Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. Together, they examine the deep cultural confusion surrounding identity and the consequences of building our sense of self on shifting foundations.
From race and gender to worldview and insecurity, they explore the powerful influences shaping how people define themselves—and why those definitions often leave us feeling unmoored. What happens when we reject the biblical view of who we are? And what hope is found in rediscovering our God-given identity?
This timely and thought-provoking conversation reveals how embracing the truth of Scripture leads to a more rooted, resilient, and purpose-filled life.
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Topics
- (01:12): The predominance of identity questions
- (03:46): Foundations of identity: Immutable characteristics
- (12:08): Worldview and identity formation
- (20:12): Insecurities and identity
- (22:27): The role of fear and faith in identity
- (24:20): Self-identifying and the quest for true identity
- (31:24): Conclusion and resources
Resources
- Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters
- What does the Bible say about identity? – Part 1
- Identity Simplified Resource from Christian Parenting
About Dr. Ryan Denison
Ryan Denison, PhD, is the Senior Editor for Theology at Denison Forum. Ryan writes The Daily Article every Friday and contributes writing and research to many of the ministry’s productions. He holds a PhD in church history from BH Carroll Theological Institute after having earned his MDiv at Truett Seminary. He’s authored The Path to Purpose, What Are My Spiritual Gifts?, How to Bless God by Blessing Others, 7 Deadly Sins, and coauthored Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters and has contributed writing or research to every Denison Forum book.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of The Denison Forum Podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.
Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.
Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
[00:00:00] Dr. Mark Turman: Hi, this is Mark, host of the Denison Forum podcast and executive Director of Denon Forum. Thank you for following and being a part of our conversations here at the Denison Forum podcast. This is actually part two of a conversation I had with Dr. Ryan Denison, our senior editor. For theology. He’s also my friend and coworker and co-author of a resource that this podcast is about called Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. The conversation of identity is such a hot topic. We wanted to write this book and to do this podcast to help you. To understand what the Bible says and what God has given us in a new identity in Christ. We hope that if you haven’t listened to the first part of our conversation, go back one episode and pick that up.
And you can also listen to the final part of the conversation here in this second episode. And if you want to check out the book, you can find it at denisonforum.org, and we hope that that will be an equipping and strengthening resource to you and to others as you walk with Christ. God bless you. Thanks for following us.
Ryan, as, as we get into this second half of the book and we start talking about some of the things that you uncovered relative to if you don’t accept the biblical invitation in terms of the formation of your sense of identity, you’re still gonna be pursuing one. Why do you think. This has become such a predominant question of who am I, what is my identity?
How do I come to a sense of self? Why does there seem to be such incredible stories of confusion? Around many ideas that seem to be just give, you know, they were just taken for granted seemingly and not so long ago, period. Why do you think there’s so much confusion, so much doubt about our sense of self?
[00:02:02] Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah. I think a lot of it just goes back to this idea that we’re very aware of all the things we wish we had, of all the things we wish we could be. And I think part of that is just. Almost unavoidable when we reject the idea of who God created us to be, when we try to find our identity in ourselves, in our own gifting and our own characteristics.
So many of these things echo the, the traits that God built into us that were meant to find in him. And I, I really do think it goes back to kind of what we talked about in the previous part where there is something within us that. Can’t get away from that identity in God. We can try and reject it, we can try and replace it, but we can’t escape it.
And a lot of the problems we see in the culture with the rejection of kind of just so much of the things that used to be kind of the ways that we understood who God created to be or the ways that we understood our identity, the way we defined ourselves trying to make these new foundations goes back to that idea of just, it’s a, it’s taking something that God intended to be part of who we are.
And trying to make it the foundation of who we are, and that just doesn’t work.
[00:03:07] Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. It leads, leads to sometimes very deep levels of not only confusion, but also real heartache, real pain. It does as you lay this out in the second half of the book that. If we don’t choose to come to God to accept and recognize his reality and his accessibility the world is offering us other options for the construction of our identity, our sense of self.
What are some of the most predominant opportunities that the world puts in front of us that you lay out in, in terms of options?
[00:03:46] Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, I, I think the first is probably, and the most foundational, I think, is trying to find our identity in what I call immutable characteristics. There. It’s those things.
And granted there’s a lot in our, a lot of people in our culture that would reject the idea that these are immutable. But I, I think the Bible speaks very clearly to the fact that they are, but things like race, gender, sexuality so many of these things that. Part of how we understand our part of how we understand ourselves when we make those the foundation, they just.
They can’t hold up because they were made so you’re talking
[00:04:20] Dr. Mark Turman: about, you’re talking about things that we’re born with that don’t, essentially don’t change, right?
[00:04:25] Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, yeah. Character trait that we don’t have any say in. And I think part of the reason that that’s an issue is because God created us to find ourselves, like we talked about in the first part, about how God created us to find our identity and the fact that we’re created in his image and that con concept and.
So God did make us, God wired us and designed us to base our identity on a foundation that has nothing to do with what we bring to the table. And I think when we reject that, there’s still something in us that needs to find and assign that level of significance to a characteristic like that. And so that’s why I think, but the problem is that there are no other characteristics that humanity shares.
Outside of that, we were made in the image of God there. God created us with diversity of race, diversity of gender, and when we take any of the either of those and try and make those foundational, then it necessarily puts us in competition with others because if this. Is meant to be how I under if, if my race, for example, is meant to be foundational to who I am, then I’m going to necessarily try and derive my sense of value from it.
And if other people don’t share that quality, then that’s gonna make them less valuable in my eyes. Not because it’s, I, I think it’s something we can fight against, something we should fight against, because I think scripture shows that it’s wrong. But I do think it speaks to this idea that. When we reject the I, when we reject the one thing that all of humanity shares as that foundation, it necessarily puts us in competition with others.
And I think so many of the issues with racism, sexism just inequality of any of most different forms come from this. I come from that basic rejection of basing our lives on the fact that we’re made in God’s image.
[00:06:10] Dr. Mark Turman: So let me see if I, I’m tracking with you. I’m, I’m trying to imagine somebody listening to us and trying to track with this.
So if I understand you right, tell me if I’m on the right track, which is God offers this, this really big truth that we are all made in his image, and that being made in his image includes a lot of different characteristics that we share. But if we reject God fundamentally and this kind of full orbed concept of being a part of the image of God, all of us, then, then we basically create a vacuum where some other.
Characteristic or trait has to come in there and become predominant. Either you’re a man or you’re a woman, or you’re short or you’re tall, or you’re from this race or ethnic group or from that part of the world. Something comes rushing in there and gets elevated beyond its proper scope and scale, I would say.
Is that a reasonable way of saying it?
[00:07:12] Dr. Ryan Denison: A hundred percent. Yeah. And I do think so much of it goes back to again, just that idea that we, we need to accept the fact that we can’t escape, that God wired us to base our identity on some foundation that’s outside of ourselves on some foundation that we didn’t have any say in.
And I think that’s that’s meant to be God and nothing else will work because again, there’s nothing else we all share other than the fact that we were created by God in his image.
[00:07:41] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it, and confronts us again with this with this need for humility. A hundred percent. Because if it’s something that you had nothing to do with, it was simply that you were born with it, then it’s not something that you achieved.
I. And therefore can be a claim of of reward or benefit. So a lot of people wonder, I know I have and, and this is what I really appreciate and learn from, from reading through your work on. We always wonder where do all of these isms come from? Racism and sexism and all of it. But it’s, it’s really tied into.
This warped understanding of pulling out a characteristic or two or three characteristics and not holding on to. This fundamental biblical characteristic of being made in the image of God, is it that’s, that’s the source you’re pulling out, right?
[00:08:33] Dr. Ryan Denison: Absolutely. And I think that’s part of why you, we’ve seen toleration become sort of like the highest moral, the highest morality we can achieve.
Because on some level, if we’re not, if, if we’re basing our identity on something that is fundamentally and always will be qual we can say that. Every race is equal, and we are all equal in the eyes of God, but. If we’re not, we’re at the same time. We’re not all the same. And so when that’s the case, when we build our lives on something that we, on a characteristic, on a character trait, we don’t all share, then learning to, to tolerate and to the extent of saying it’s diversity kind of loses a lot of it the.
The purpose, which God created it, which was to amplify his creation and help us understand that even though we, that we all share this common characteristic and within that God built diversity into all of this. But when we lose sight of that tolerance really does become kind of the best we can give the culture.
And what we lose out on in that is that God calls us to something so much better than tolerance and such a higher quality.
[00:09:38] Dr. Mark Turman: I really want you to unpack that for us because as, as we hear so often that tolerance is the ultimate value of the day. And should be kind of like the virtue that trumps all other virtues is this engagement and, and exercise of even what you might call a tolerance muscle.
Why is tolerance just insufficient as the rule of life? If I can say it that way.
[00:10:04] Dr. Ryan Denison: Because I, I think on some level it’s built on the idea that there is, there’s a structure where the, I’m tolerating. If you say I’m tolerating you, no one wants to be tolerated. We wanna be loved. We wanna be appreciated.
That’s right. We wanna be accepted for who we are. On a level that imbues that with. A level of just blessing and accountability that just tolerance can’t give us because to endemic to that, I kind of based in that idea of tolerance is this notion that if I tolerate you, it means that I there on some level, it means that I have the choice not to.
And it does kind of set. I think John Leland, I quote in the book, he kind of sets up this idea that. At its core tolerance is the message that, because I’m, yes, I’m better than you, but I still tolerate your existence. Because I’m not gracious is kind of, heavily paraphrasing there, but that’s kind of the idea he gets after.
And I think that’s why we see our culture just still struggling so much with this, where tolerance really is the best they can give. And so of course they’ve upheld that as the highest goal. But as Christians, we know that God has called us to something more. God has called us to a level of love and a level of blessing that goes so much beyond tolerance because it’s, those are all things he can give us, but when we reject that tolerance is kind of the best we can give each other, and that’s just a fun, that’s just less than the life God has called us to lead.
[00:11:34] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and we, we might all agree that that tolerance is better than intolerance, but it’s a pretty low bar when it comes to the contrast of understanding that God has something much more beautiful in mind. In this, it really is. This huge concept called love love and respect and honor that that tolerance is such a low bar compared to that in many ways.
So one way of trying to build it is through these immutable characteristics that get outta whack, and one of them gets elevated or magnified, amplified. More than it should. What are you Lay out a couple of others. One of those being worldview that a, a worldview can become a mechanism by which we try to create our identity.
So give me a, a, a simple working definition of worldview. Where does a person get a worldview and how does it play into some people’s attempts to build their identity?
[00:12:29] Dr. Ryan Denison: I think part of what makes it so tricky is that most of us don’t set out to develop a worldview. It just kind of evolves naturally based on the influences in our lives.
And I think that’s why so much of it’s culturally based is the different sources that kind of pour into us end up shaping the way we see the world. And when that’s the bible, when that scripture than our worldview is likely to reflect God when we can do what Paul writes about where we, you know, accept.
The mind have our minds transformed by the Lord. It’s like that’s how we get a worldview that aligns with God how the rest of the culture apart from God. Gets their worldview, and Christians are very prone to this as well. I, I don’t wanna make it sound like it’s an us versus them kind of thing. This is something that all of us are gonna struggle with because all of us have different forces kind of pouring into us and different sources of influence and, but so much of it goes back to, especially as it relates to identity, this idea that we’re likely to see ourselves from the worldview we adopt.
And so if the world’s view we have is based on what the culture says in terms of priorities, especially for the things we should be pursuing, those are likely to be how we wrap our identity up is how well are we achieving the goals that we feel like we’re meant to. And. When those goals are aligned with God because we have a biblical worldview, then we’re likely to build an identity based in Christ.
When those goals are identified, are more identified by the world, then we’re likely to adopt a more worldly identity. And we, so much of it goes back to the worldview being the thing that shapes our understanding of how well we’re achieving the things we think we’re supposed to achieve. And I think that’s really kind of where it comes into identity as well.
[00:14:09] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s a really great call out because so many times when I hear people talking about worldviews, different worldviews, their worldview they’re, they’re usually talking about it as something external to them. And that’s a great call out, that the way that you quote unquote see the world, which is kind of inherent in the, in the word itself, a worldview is actually very significant, very influential to the way you see yourself in the world, right?
It is. And, and, and you very, very rarely have I heard anybody talk about that, that as you’re talking, even if you are out explaining, if somebody were to ask you how do you see the world? And you started unpacking some of that, you would actually be saying a lot about yourself and about how you see yourself in the world.
As you would about all the other people and pieces that you see in the world, right?
[00:15:04] Dr. Ryan Denison: A hundred percent. And part of what makes it so tricky is that because it becomes the primary lens through, we see the world, we’re naturally inclined to believe it’s correct. And so it gets, when you establish a worldview, it gets really hard to change it unless something just kind of breaks it.
And I think that’s part of what we see in the Bible with God’s discipline is him having to remind us. In a way we can’t escape or otherwise explain that there’s something in the way we’re seeing the world that’s wrong or there’s something in the way we’re seeing ourselves that’s wrong and needs to change.
But it really is sometimes when you get a firmly established worldview, it can be really hard to tell the ways that it’s not biblical just because it becomes naturally the way even that we, through the search, we read the Bible and so much, it just is collective.
[00:15:53] Dr. Mark Turman: When you’re thinking about worldview as a way of framing and forming your identity is it is it the sense, I kind of lost my train of thought here, but is it, is it the sense that our sense of identity and as it comes through our worldview that you hear?
What I’m thinking about is you hear so many people. They go through experiences of trauma or disruption and their sense of identity just gets in many ways destroyed. And you sometimes you hear wonderful, beautiful stories of how they reconstruct their quote unquote worldview. So maybe this is a question I’m trying to get to.
Is it inherent in our quest for identity and particularly how we involve worldview, that that there’s something in us that needs the world to be cohesive. We need it to make sense, and that’s why building your story from a worldview is attractive to us. Does that make sense?
[00:16:59] Dr. Ryan Denison: I think it does, and I think there’s a lot to that.
And it goes back to what we were talking about before with there are aspects of our identity that God hardwired into us that we can’t escape even if we reject him. And one of those is that we are meant to see the world as he does. We’re meant to allow him to be the lens through which we view our lives.
And so when we reject God as that lens, we still have to put something else in his place. And I think that’s why so much of how we see the world does become foundational to how we see ourselves. Because it, it just becomes that lens for us. And I mentioned God’s discipline before. A lot of times the only thing God has to do to discipline us is let us face the consequences of our actions and of our own choices.
And I think part of the reason that so many of these other world use so many of these other immutable characteristics. End up failing is that they’re less than who God created us to be and they don’t work. And so when they don’t work, they will eventually fail. And the choice we have when that happens, and I think it’s part of God’s redemption, is that he can use those to help us cycle back to him.
But again, we have free will. We don’t have to do that. And I think a lot of what we see in our culture is when one thing fails, they just go on to the next lesser option and move on. And it, it’s like we can recognize that. Something was insufficient, but not necessarily why. And I think that’s kind of what makes it so hard at times to adopt a biblical worldview, is that it does mean grappling not only with the fact that our previous world G was flawed, but that it was, it was flawed in ways that our, that we can’t change our, it was flawed in ways that like.
It was flawed in ways that really kind of bring that back to us. ’cause we, we chose it to an extent and I think that’s hard for us to grapple with. It kind of goes back to that humility idea that we were talking about before.
[00:18:47] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. And just make, it’s always kind of astounded me, why, if people understood the story of Christianity, if they understood the story of, of Jesus in God’s grace.
Why wouldn’t everybody believe? You know, why, why, why would, why didn’t everybody believe a long time ago? If you really understand the, the clear and simple truths of. The story of the Bible and the story of God’s grace and that type of thing. It just, why? Why wouldn’t you believe is is kind of my question.
But anyway, that’s hundred percent. That’s maybe a topic for another day.
[00:19:20] Dr. Ryan Denison: And one thing I would say to that, to that point though, is that at the end of the day, I think there probably are just. Two basic worldviews. There’s either Gods one with God at the center or one with us at the center. Hmm. And I think that’s kind of why all the, it’s so tempting when we have a worldly worldview when it falls apart to seek something else other than Gods is that we can rebuild without having to change our foundation of it being based on us.
And I think that’s kind of a lot of, goes back to, again, that basic core identity of what’s, what’s your foundation? Is it who God created you you to be? Or is it who you want to create yourself to be?
[00:19:55] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. So while, so worldviews if you, if you pick a Christian worldview can be helpful if you pick a worldview that doesn’t have God in the center, as you said, it can lead you down all kinds of, of really wild and, and disappointing.
Places of, of understanding yourself. The last one you talk about are our insecurities. So sometimes we elevate a characteristic or a small group of characteristics that we had nothing to do and we try to form our identity mostly or solely out of that. Sometimes we do it with worldviews. What do you mean by building a world or a sense of identity out of insecurity?
[00:20:31] Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, a lot of that goes back to a, I think a basic disconnect between mistaking what we want versus for what we need. And I think ’cause insecurity is largely built out of an awareness that we lack something we think we deserve or something that we think we need. Especially on the need side of that.
And if you look at so much of, if go back to the garden and Eve. Satan tempted them by convincing them that they deserved to be equals with God, and as a result, the idea that, I mean, they were right. To, I mean, Satan wasn’t lying when he said God would not make them equals, and so they’d have to take into their own hands.
Like they were, they were right in so far as that was true. Where they were wrong is they believed that they deserve to be like God. And I think on some level, a lot of our insecurities are based on that mistaking kind of what we think we deserve or what we think we need for things that we just want. Whether it’s wealth, social, standing, there’s so many things that.
The world is very good at convincing us we deserve, or we’re entitled to that. God’s word says that. I mean, those may be blessings that God decides to give us, or blessings that he enables us to, to achieve for ourselves. But when we mistake them for needs, I. Don’t get them. It can feel like God has failed us.
Or it can feel like we can’t trust God to, to meet our needs going forward. And if we’re trying to build an identity based in on our relationship with God and we have doubts as to whether that relationship is worth pursuing, then it’s gonna make it really hard to commit to it. And I think so. I think that’s part of the role that insecurities play in that is they just, they create in us this.
Need to build something that we can control and something that will meet the needs that we feel like we’re entitled to, and where those are different from what the Bible says, we’re necessarily gonna come up against God’s will for our lives.
[00:22:27] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And such a, such an important conversation, Ryan, explain a little bit how our sense of insecurity shows up as fear.
We talk a lot in our ministry about the, the tug of war in every one of our lives between fear and faith. But talk about how this sense of insecurity and the framing of our identity around and through our insecurities, how even on just a daily basis, it shows up as a choice between fear and faith.
[00:22:59] Dr. Ryan Denison: I think a lot of it goes back to there’s just something, there’s, there are things about our lives that are. Beyond our control, and to the degree that we can feel like we can legitimately trust those to God, it gets easy to have faith to as soon as doubt starts to creep in that God is gonna meet those needs, then fear follows pretty quickly after that.
And so fear. I think comes into competition with faith and, and by fear. I think it’s important to say that that’s not necessarily the emotion of being afraid. I don’t, the Bible never tells us or commands us how to feel in any given situation, but has lost to say with what we do with those feelings.
And so I think where fear plays into insecurities is where we choose to believe those fears or we choose to believe them rather than respond in faith. And ’cause at the end of the day, faith is a choice. Whether do you want to trust God? Are you going to trust God? And that’s not something at times it can feel like it’s almost too much for us, that it’s outside our hands, but it never really is.
I mean, we always have that option of believing that God is who he says he is, believing that we are who God says we are, and then building our lives based on that faith. But fear necessarily will erode at that if we allow it to become the primary lens through which we’re seeing our situation.
[00:24:11] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah.
Yeah. So important. It really comes down to where life happens on a day by day basis. Ryan, let me, we have a few more minutes before we wrap out. Let me, let me take this out maybe to a kind of a bigger macro view for a minute. So many times you’ll hear, you just hear this as part of our common language today where it says that somebody is self-identifying.
Mm-hmm. Talk about for a moment, the just if, if you really sit down and think about it that the idea of creating manufacturing our own identity has an aspect in which it’s legitimate, but also has a very deep and profound reality. That it’s just ridiculous that any human being or group of human beings would try to create their own identity.
Can you unpack that? What I’m after here is, is, there’s actually really good news and freedom if you answer this question right about where do I go get an identity. I.
[00:25:12] Dr. Ryan Denison: A hundred percent because you don’t have to look very back very far under your own life or human history to find ample examples of how we really kind of suck at deciding who we’re meant to be.
It just so many problems come from that that basic rejection of who God says we’re meant to be. And it, it really, I think it speaks to humanity’s. Capacity for suffering to an extent that we can endure that much when so much of it is unavoidable by simply accepting, by simply putting, taking ourselves off God’s throne and putting him back on it.
Or recognizing that he is our king, that he is our Lord, and accepting who he says we’re meant to be. But that means that we. Kind of also embrace the fact that we’re not God and it speaks to just how powerful that temptation is, that we would rather suffer through all the ways that creating our own identity goes wrong, rather than turn to the Lord for something that is so much better and something they offer so freely.
Again, I don’t wanna make it sound like that’s an easy choice. It, it, I think it, it should be, but the actual day-to-day of it, I mean, I’ll, I’ll be the first to admit it’s not easy for me. I have to remind myself of that necessity every day. And even after spending the better part of 18 months talking, thinking about this issue, I still have to remind myself of this.
And I, I think ’cause there is something in us that just wants to, there, there’s a level of. Control. I think that comes with determining your own identity that is very attractive. And that can be hard to, hard to ignore. And Satan’s really good at finding different ways to give us the same temptation in this regard as well.
And I think that’s kind of the other thing is just Satan, this never really gets better because Satan doesn’t let it get better. Mm-hmm. And I think God also wants to redeem this by using it as one of the things that will continually keep us. Reminding continue reminders of our reliance on him, of our need to rely on him.
But yeah, self identity, self creating your own identity, just, I don’t know of anyone who looks at that objectively and says they’re good at it, but we still try. And I think that speaks to the level of the prity within all of us.
[00:27:21] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and I think, you know, we could probably all start naming examples of people who are on either side of this, right?
They appear some people that have essentially rejected God, rejected Christ appear to have created some form of really satisfying identity. The Book of Psalms talks about this in a number of ways. People that seem to have it all wired without God. But kind of a general description of them would be that they’re posing.
It’s not real and ultimately it collapses, but. They can go at least for a while looking like they’ve got it all together. And then somewhat more. In our current culture, we see a lot of people, particularly young people, who are just withering under the weight of trying to create an identity. And we’ve talked about that on our podcast.
We’ve talked about books like The Anxious Generation that. You know, social media has played a huge role oftentimes negatively in helping young people to try to answer this question of identity, try to form up who they are, and there’s a whole generation of people that are now on this journey of forming an identity through and with the assistance of technology.
Of them are struggling with that. It’s, it’s it’s a, it’s an influence we haven’t seen before, at least not. At this scale and this accessibility so well, folks, and I think part we’ve talked a lot. Yeah, go ahead. If I could say
[00:28:48] Dr. Ryan Denison: one, I was just gonna say, I, I think part of the reason that that’s is becoming such a big issue, especially for the younger generations and part of God’s redemption of kind of where our culture is, is that identity didn’t used to be something we thought as much about.
And I think it used to like. In past decades, we were, you were able to go through life and if your identity wasn’t based in Christ, it wasn’t based in who God told you to be, you might never really understand why that was a problem or the ways in which it was. But I think part of God’s redemption of, you know, all the L-G-B-T-Q stuff especially kind of just to use that as an example, is it.
It has elevated the identity conversation to a level of foundational importance that I think it was always meant to have. We just didn’t really recognize, and I think part of how God’s redeeming that is you are seeing, especially in the younger generations, they’re, they’re wrestling so much with this, but they’re also, I think, understanding that all the world’s answers don’t work.
And not all of them, but a, a larger percentage are genuinely open to talking about religion, to looking to God in ways that hasn’t been true for generations. And I think part of that is just the, all the ways in which we’ve tried to build false identities, our identities other than on who God says we are ha are starting to crumble and they’re crumbling so publicly and so spectacularly that I think it’s, it’s kind of reinforcing that this doesn’t work.
We’re seeing some parts of the culture double down on it. But I think you’re seeing a whole lot more look at it and go, okay, this is just broken. And all these it’s just a lie that we can build our identity on all these other false traits, on all these other things that are meant to be part of who we are, but not the whole of who we are.
And I think that’s kind of the lie that we’re starting to see just become so evident is this idea that anything other than our relationship with God is sufficient. I. And so I think it’s kind of an exciting time to be having this conversation. An exciting time for just so many to be engaging with this subject is that I really do think God can do some spectacular things that would’ve been much harder had we continued on in a culture that minimized the importance or significance of identity or at the very least, took it for granted.
[00:31:00] Dr. Mark Turman: No, that’s a good word and a good word of hope for us to end on that when we get to the end of our rope or the end of our road and it causes us to turn around and start looking for God and for a real answer, a better answer, then that’s a good place for us to be. And we hope that that is, I. In many ways a catalyst to the kind of spiritual awakening that we pray for and talk about from time to time here at Denison Forum.
Ryan, thank you. It has been a fun project for us to work on together and I hope that it is a good resource, the book that we would point you to. That we put together is who am I, what the Bible says about identity and why it matters. You can get it at our website, denison forum.org. You can also get it at all of the various book distributors and we hope you’ll pick it up.
It’s not a long read, but we hope it will be a helpful read to you as well as this podcast being useful to you as well, and we’ll see you next time on the Denison Forum Podcast. Thanks for joining us. God bless you.
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