Wander onto a college campus these days, and you cannot miss the zeitgeist. The single most important thing to know about any person you meet, any speaker you hear, or any author you read is that person’s identity. “I identify as…” has become a ritualistic phrase, rattled off in the same bored tone that characterizes formal expressions of gratitude in mass-market fundraising letters. (“Thank you for all you do for our cause. Please send us a check.”)
Imagine the question on a form: “How do you identify yourself?” The first reaction could well be that there is not enough space on the form to list all the aspects of your person that make up your identity. “When I was young, I owned a plastic model of a pteranodon.” (The one in this picture! Google is amazing—it took me two minutes to find a picture of something I owned 45 years ago and have not seen since.) I am not sure anyone will think that is an important part of my identity, but it truly is something that distinguishes me from others who might be a lot like me but were not so blessed.
So, instead, imagine you can list only six aspects of your identity. Which do you choose? Now, imagine you have to pick one, the one thing that is the most important part of your identity.
According to Kevin Emmert in The Water and the Blood: How the Sacraments Shape Christian Identity, if you are a Christian, then not only should you have listed that as the single most important part of your identity, but you should have listed it as the only thing even when you were allowed to have a list of multiple overlapping identities. Another way of putting it: if you are a Christian, intersectionality is out, and unisectionality is in.
Emmert drives toward this conclusion via an exploration of baptism and communion, the water and the blood of the title of his book. These sacraments of the Christian church are not merely pro forma rituals of the Church; they are the “means of grace,” the “instruments through which God makes himself known and communicates his goodness to us.”
“Baptism reinforces the truth that our identity is not self-generated or determined ultimately by our own personal narratives and achievements or by our failures, mistakes, and unmet expectations. Nor is our identity reduced to the basic elements that distinguish us from others, as significant as those may be. Rather, our identity as persons in Christ, no less our very existence, is a gift from God, determined ultimately by Christ’s life story and his accomplishments.”
As Emmert explains, both baptism and communion shape the Christian identity because they are the means by which God joins with us in putting to death our old identity and giving birth to our new identity. “The baptismal font, therefore, is not just a tomb in which our old selves are buried and left to rot but also a womb from which our new selves emerge.” Baptism marks the birth of a new identity; one is born again (to use the well-worn phrase) into a new family, the Church. The old self, and whatever identities it had, are put to death, and the new self is born with a new identity.
Communion is the continual repetition of baptism. Once again in the presence of one’s family, the Church, Christ’s death and resurrection are reenacted in bodily form. Christians consume Christ’s flesh and blood, literally reenacting your grandmother’s phrase “You are what you eat.” Death to the old self; resurrected in Christ. That is the message of both baptism and communion.
The Water and the Blood often wanders from a focus on the sacraments into a broader discussion of Christianity. The final chapter, for example, reads like a sermon on 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (ESV).
From these wanderings, it becomes obvious as the book goes on that Emmert’s concern is only in part explaining “how the sacraments shape Christian identity.” His real concern is Christian Identity itself. This is most obvious when he explains what it means to become part of the church:
“To be an ecclesial being is to be committed to the church, to participate in the life and work of the body, and to live in communion with other persons united to Christ. Fundamentally, this entails making the church the primary people group with which we associate.”
Unfortunately, it is easy to misunderstand what Emmert is saying there. I am a Christian and I am a college professor, so I spend time associating with Christians and with my colleagues and students. Which should be the primary people with whom I associate? There are many Christians who assert that in order to be a faithful Christian, one must spend more time with Christians than non-Christians. Even if there is some concession to the need for employment, obviously one’s social life should primarily be at church activities. Churches fill the week with “opportunities” for Christians, where “opportunities” really means “things you need to attend unless you want everyone questioning the depths of your faith.” This is a rather superficial approach to the Christian life.
But when Emmert emphasizes “make the church the primary people group with which we associate,” he is not talking about it being the place we spend the most time. He means something deeper.
“When a man and woman bind themselves in marriage, they vow to forsake all others, meaning that their spouse is their first commitment and that all other relationships are measured by their marital union. So it is with our union and communion with Christ and his body. The world offers us endless counterfeits of the communion we were created for. Political parties, false religions, activist groups, social clubs—the list could go on—promise a sense of belonging and thus self-understanding, but they promise more than they can deliver and thus, in the end, offer us nothing at all.”
Again, it is unfortunately easy to misunderstand what Emmert is saying. Is joining a social club really akin to committing adultery? Is feeling like one belongs in a political party or activist group the same thing as breaking one’s marriage vows to forsake all others? If I say that I belong at my job, does that mean I have abandoned Christ?
I don’t think that is what Emmert is saying. (And, I think I am reading him accurately and not just charitably.) Think about the question this way. Compare the following two accurate statements I could make about myself:
1. I am a Christian who works as a college professor.
2. I am a college professor who is a member of the church.
Both true, but the change in emphasis is notable. If I am reading Emmert correctly, then the primary message of his book is that if the first statement is true, then the second statement should feel like it is an error.
The statement “I am a Christian who works as a college professor” is a way of shaping my identity as a college professor. I am not a college professor who is merely incidentally a Christian. On the other side, when I participate in the life of a church, does the statement “I am a college professor who is receiving communion” seem like the focus is a bit off? Being a Christian shapes the way I do my job as a professor. Being a college professor is incidental to the way I take communion.
This is what the Identity Game gets wrong. Everyone recognizes that all the aspects of my identity are not equally important. But when we think about what is the most important part of our identity, we should realize that if we profess to be Christians, there really isn’t any other aspect of our identity that is on the same level. I am a Christian Former Owner of a Plastic Dinosaur. That seems like a strange way to assert my identity. I am a Christian College Professor should seem equally strange. One of these things is vastly more important than the other. Much better is “I am a Christian who works as a College Professor.” That gets the emphasis right. My identity is Christian; everything else is something incidental about me.
Extending Emmert’s argument into society writ large has enormous implications. When you look at the church in America today, you see many people proudly proclaiming their Christian Identity, but often with an equal partner in the Identity. Christian Nationalist. American Christian. Progressive Christian. Open and Affirming Christian. Far too many people are in desperate need of grasping the importance of Emmert’s book. The Water and the Blood are what shape our identity. What unites all those who have joined the church in baptism and participate in the church in communion is more important than what divides them. Indeed, compared to that thing that unites the church, what other incidentals matter at all?
Related Posts:
Schaeffer, Francis The Church Before the Watching World “The World is Watching the Church”
Ortlund, Gavin Humility “Finding Joy Through Humility”
(Legal codes have rituals too. One of which is to say: I received a copy of this book from Crossway so that I could write this review. Some rituals truly are empty and devoid of any importance.)
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