Who I am?

So here we are, which came first: the chicken or the egg? I suppose the question, “who am I?� is a bit cliché but I don’t mean it in a vague or purely existential way; I really want to know what makes me, me. Do I really exist?

Seeing that I am almost 30 I suppose I’m too old to try and find myself…yet I am still far too young for a midlife crisis. Either way, I still struggle with this deep, inner desire to discover who I really am. The longer I struggle with this the more I realize how intimately connected it is to another question, “do I have any value?� Perhaps a topic I can save for later.

So, am I the 10-year old little boy who would steal whatever money he could find to buy cigarettes at the corner store? Am I the 16-year old kid who excessively abused drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of everyday life? Am I the 28-year old young man, husband, father, churchgoer, tither as I now appear to be? Was I any of these? Am I all of them? If my identity is now found in the things I do “right� then it must also be found in the many things I have done “wrong�. Perhaps it’s neither.

Maybe I am no more a “Christian� than I am an “addict�.

I suppose asking, “which came first: the chicken or the egg?� is the wrong question altogether. Hopefully, at some point in the midst of this vicious, circular reasoning I’ll stop trying to figure out which preceded the other and question whether the chicken or the egg exists at all.

Now when I had questioned my existence earlier you thought I was being melodramatic but it’s a valid question, especially for a Christian. After all, doesn’t scripture say, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me� (Gal. 2:20a)? Is Paul being poetic or does he mean what he says? It would seem that as one who has accepted the sacrifice of Christ, Paul is no longer a part of the equation. He ceases to exist. Jason ceases to exist. All is Christ.

I am not a liar, a sinner, a whore. I may have been these things but that is a moot point because now I am dead. In my wake are two forces struggling over the members of my body: sin and Christ. That’s really all that remains. Do I cease to exist? Am I inconsequential? Paul has provided us with that information as well, for as he states “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus� (Eph. 2:6).

So when asked who I am I must answer, “I don’t know – yet�. One day the Christ in me will return home and become one with the me in Christ. Then everyone will know who I am.