Where Do You Put Your Worth? A Quick Tour through Identity

Lately I’ve noticed how, in ordinary life, we play a quiet game of presentation, choosing which bits to show so we look a little like the person we hope to be, and how our feelings rise or fall with others’ responses. We shape ourselves based on the perceived expectations of those we care about. In a sense, under all our identity talk sits a quiet question: what makes me valuable?

And that’s a moveable feast. In the classical world, a free Athenian citizen’s standing was set by his birth and place; his worth was found in living virtuously for his city and household. In medieval Europe, the self was framed by one’s station before God and within the estates (priest, noble, or peasant); worth was a received dignity shown through faithful vocation. By the Enlightenment and Industrial age, the locus of identity shifted to the rational achiever, with worth measured by productivity, intellect, and professional standing. Today, identity is a story to be told and a performance to be seen; worth often follows authenticity, affirmation, and attention.

When a culture’s core values shift, the way we understand and shape our own identity shifts with them. History suggests our way of doing identity isn’t inevitable. The metrics move.

The aim isn’t to go back to a particular past era, but simply to recognise that the ruler we use to determine value will be linked to how we determine our identity. What we measure with is often more determinative than the outcome.

If wider culture can drive identity, church culture can too. Who the church says we are—what it sings, reads, hears and prays—will be shaping who we think of ourselves as and what we think is most valuable. If we prize what the world thinks of us, that judgement will shape our identity and our way of life. If we think that how God sees us is most important, then that’s what will define and drive us.