Postmodern “Identity”: When Make-Believe Becomes Delusion

They have mouths and speak not; they have eyes and see not. They have ears and hear not; they have noses and smell not. They have hands and feel not; they have feet and walk not: neither shall they cry out through their throat. Let them that make them become like unto them: and all such as trust in them. (Psalm 113: 5-8, DR)

The prophet and king David wrote these lines in condemnation of idolatry and the folly of thinking man-made things contain life or even the potential for life. Idolatry is the Satan-inspired mockery of Truth, especially as that Truth is manifested in the Incarnation. St. John the Evangelist is the teacher par excellence of the natural and supernatural realities of the Incarnate Truth, Jesus Christ.

The idolatry of our time is “identity.” Identity is the next step beyond pretending, confusing playing a role with ontological essence. All cultures through time have understood that some people pretended to be what they were not. Sometimes the pretense was ignored, other times winked at, but sometimes it was punished for transgressing boundaries. The common factor is that everyone knew the transgressors were pretending. 

Think of Shakespeare’s uses of one sex pretending to be another. That device played to the audience’s comic sensibilities. Or, to use an example from more recent times, consider The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a landmark in deviant cinema. The main character, played by Tim Curry, does not claim to be other than a “sweet transvestite.” In other words, he is a man who dresses up in women’s clothing. Of course transvestitism is unhealthy, but nonetheless it retains a tenuous connection to biological and cultural facts.

Deviancy’s next step into identity idolatry rejects facts in favor of total relativism via individual truth claims. Transgression is out; confusion and assertions of personal infallibility are in. The obvious example here is the explosion of transgenderism, in which, like alchemists of old, people claim to actually transform one thing into another. But I want to consider the idolatry of identity. Two prime examples are Barack Obama and Kamala Harris.  Deviancy’s next step into identity idolatry rejects facts in favor of total relativism via individual truth claims. Transgression is out; confusion and assertions of personal infallibility are in. Tweet This

It is one of the outrageous and sad lies of our era that the Left, for all its purported love of diversity, actually crushes real differences in its pursuit of power. Barack Obama is celebrated on the Left—but not for the real, incarnational facts about him. Born to a white mother and black Kenyan father, Obama grew up in the U.S. state most unlike others (Hawaii) and in Indonesia. Instead of charting his career as someone proudly biracial—to help heal wounds in our culture—and someone positioned to understand the changing world that America is increasingly facing in the Pacific and Asia, Obama chose to simply will himself to be black. 

He began attending a black church, married a black woman, moved to Chicago with its history of strong (and sometimes corrupt) black politics, and changed the way he spoke to sound more “authentic.” Instead of a unique individual with gifts to share, he became “America’s first black president,” even though he had no connection to America’s black history.

Harris seems to be following the same idolatrous playbook. The daughter of a black Caribbean father and an Indian mother, she spent some of her young life in Montreal. She could have presented herself with that interesting and multifaceted story; but, like Obama, she chose instead to jump on the black American bandwagon. She is now almost always identified as “black” or “a woman of color.” 

It is true that there are parallels between Caribbean and American history. (Several Caribbean nations are leading the effort to obtain reparations from the United Kingdom for what they say are the lingering effects of slavery and colonialism.) Caribbean ancestry has played a role in the biographies of leaders like Colin Powell. Likewise, Indian identity seems to be having a moment, at least in Republican circles, with individuals like Harmeet Dhillon, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Usha Vance. And yet, Harris has chosen to downplay that part of her incarnational reality.

Because of the falsity of their identities, Obama and Harris seem phony, insincere, and lacking in core beliefs to many people. I remember having a recurring discussion with a neighbor. He firmly believed that presentation was the key to change. That argument was understandable in his case because he came from a dysfunctional family background and had worked hard to attain some level of success. But he was still a scrappy guy from Staten Island, however hard he tried not to be. My counterargument was that real change had to come from within and that essential change can never work from the outside in. Not to get overtly political, but Obama and Harris coincide with my neighbor’s views, while J.D. Vance espouses mine.

We serve the God Who Is. Jesus neither pretended to be someone else nor did He accept false assertions He was a Samaritan or demon-possessed. Our God is not a “God of becoming” or whatever other nonsensical titles liberals want to use. He is the God who knows us because He made us, and the only change He seeks for us is to become new creatures in Christ. Note that the new birth does not eradicate our personality or place us in a different racial group. God’s reality stands athwart hubristic efforts to change reality, represented by Harris’ inane catchphrase, “What can be, unburdened by what has been,” risible in its implicit denial of history and personal characteristics. Apparently, her college coursework never included any Thomistic philosophy.

The forces of chaos want us to believe in deliberately misleading stories of will to power, untouched by supernatural grace. Where have we heard that story before? “You shall become as gods.” Sound familiar?

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]