My Struggles With Identity

One morning a few weeks ago I thought; I'm going to read the Old Testament book of Ruth.  Reading the story carefully and intentionally, I found it to be a careful commentary on the interplay of self and social identity in many of the story’s characters. I was so fascinated with the prospect that I watched the 1960 movie: The Story of Ruth, primarily to see how it was interpreted by the writer and director.  In my reading and the film there is no opportunity missed to describe Ruth as the perpetual outsider. She is referred to throughout the story as "Ruth the Moabite" or "the Moabite woman" or even merely "the foreigner." In fact, even Ruth refers to herself as a foreigner. Yet her seemingly permanent status as an outsider is juxtaposed with her wholehearted declaration to identify herself with a new people, a new land, and a new God. "Where you go, I will go," she says to her mother-in-law. "Where you stay, I will stay; your people shall be my people, and your God my God."

Over the years I have had struggles with identity and found it to be a complicated thing. Most recently when I have tried to identify myself with something new, something I know to be true, something given to me or chosen for myself, it seems only to be a peripheral identity.

I have read about the nineteenth century poet Francis Thompson who led the turbulent life of one caught between such dueling identities. His father wanted him to study at Oxford and become a physician, but Francis wanted to be a writer and moved to London to pursue a career. Sadly, he lost his way in drugs, and for the rest of his life he would oscillate between brilliant writer and homeless addict. He lived on the streets, slaking his opium addiction in London's Charing Cross and sleeping on the banks of the River Thames. But he continued to scribble poetry wherever he could, mailing his work to the local newspaper. The editor was immediately taken, noting there was one greater than a Milton among them, a slumbering genius with no return address. Thompson acknowledged that he was running from God, and in fact, spent his life wrestling between his identity as a child on the run and his identity as a child who had been found. Once succumbing to the pursuing Christ, he penned the famous words to "The Hound of Heaven."

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him,
down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

I realize my deepest pains have had a way of shaping who I am and what I see. Thompson's divine pursuer is one Ruth did not yet know, and Naomi could not see. Interestingly, the first time Naomi spoke directly of her God within earshot of the foreigner who pledged to follow this God, it was to say that God had made her cold and grieving. Naomi imparts that her name should no longer be Naomi, which means "my delight," but Mara, which means "bitter." "For I went out full," she says, "but the LORD brought me back empty."
Naomi's words are honest. Her grief is unfathomable, and the very meaning of her name seems a cruel irony. But she was also not seeing everything clearly. Tightly wound within Naomi's identity was her status as a widow, her status as empty. But she was not only a widow; she was not alone in her grief. She had not returned entirely empty. Naomi returned to Judah with the gift of a loyal daughter-in-law who had pledged to discover the God of Israel, maybe even as Naomi rediscovered the God of Israel again herself.

Am I a craftsman or chaplain, advocate or business owner, retiree or employed, giver or taker? How do I secure relationships as an aging father, grandfather, friend, comrade, confidant, new resident, or even customer? It has often been in the battle of my warring identities that I most clearly discover who I am. In the midst of defeat, in the presence of adversity or dejection, God is still coming to me as I am, as see myself, reminding me that I am made in the image of the divine and gives me a fresh identity. Naomi was indeed bitter, and she had every right to cast off the identity of delight in her name. Ruth had chosen a new life for herself, but she was indeed a foreigner, and was reminded of her status as an outsider at every turn. Even so, these identities would not sway the God who loved each of them.

Father, God, thank You for the book of Ruth. Thank You for revealing that You are always somewhere in the interplay of the dueling identities of my life, and in the end, You seem to inform all else. I have found You to be the One who cares for the outsider in me, the one who brings an empty man through his bitterness, the one who brings a redeeming value to my person. Moreover, thank You for being the one who would eventually bring the Messiah through the bloodline of two widows; a foreigner named Ruth and a grieving woman named Naomi, too seek and save Bill Prather and his household.