We live in a highly identified age. Do you remember the movie, Catch Me If You Can, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks? It was so easy for Leonardo to fake being someone else. Today it's different. You need ID cards, drivers license, tax file number, social security number. Numbers and photos, passwords etc. No more acid washing cheques or wearing a pilot's uniform to change your identity.
Yet, after thinking about it for a while, I am convinced that we have got to get a grip on who we really are. In amongst all the energy and confusion of life, who am I? When you step back and ask that question that answer doesn't seem quite so black and white as getting out your driver's license.
[Warning Mode] This is not about religion. It is about who you are in this expanding universe and who you are in this mass humanity that you were born into. [Exit Warning Mode]
I am my father's son. No way to get into this world without him. Logon on to ancestry.com and check out my family history and I can find out who I am as far as my physical family is concerned. That's the easy part. I have a passport that informs me (and those nosey custom's officials) about my country of origin. That reminds me. Must apply for a British passport.
But I am more than a Little and an Australian. I am a child of this universe. But does that say anything about who I am? It all depends on whether this universe was created by someone or came about by random non-personal forces. Why?
It's like whether you are progeny of a mother and father or by genetic splicing. (It's not the same, just like it.) Who I am is totally different if I see myself as Denis' son or as a laboratory process. It changes who I am and how I look at myself.
The two choices I can see (there may be more but I have yet to recognize them) is that I am either a child of a creative active of a being who is of a higher order than me (call it God) or of creative coincidence of the elemental forces (call it whatever you want, it's not talking to you).
I am either a child of God or a chemical process. Which one I believe will change who I think I am. Which one is real determines my true identity.
[Argument Mode] How can non-personal give rise to personal? How can non-conscious "create" conscious? How can non-living give life to the living? How can non-loving (or any relational dynamic) give birth to the loving? How can non-George create George[Exit Argument Mode]
I am either a child of God or a child of the elements.
Who are you? More on this in later blogs.
