How to Find Yourself: Why Looking Inward is Not the Answer, by Brian Rosner. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022. 224 pp. $17.99.
Brian Rosner is Principal of Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia. He previously taught at the University of Aberdeen and Moore Theological College. He also wrote Known by God: A Biblical Theology of Personal Identity (Zondervan, 2017) along with an in-depth study that supports the volume under review.
The author examines expressive individualism, the approach to personal identity which looks primarily inward. He proposes an alternative: to look inward but also upward to God who owns you as well as backward and forward to your personal journey with God. This is how identity is formed through Scripture’s guidance rather than public opinion.
Four chapters support the book’s message: looking for yourself; you are a social being; you are your story; and the new you. The author explains the current identity crisis: “This strategy of identity formation, sometimes labelled expressive individualism, is the view that you are who you feel yourself to be on the inside and that acting in accordance with this identity constitutes living authentically” (16).
What are the main principles of expressive individualism? They include: the best way to find yourself is to look inward; the highest goal in life is happiness; all moral judgments are merely expressions of feeling or personal preference; forms of external authority are to be rejected; the world will improve dramatically as the scope of individual freedom grows; everyone’s quest for self-expression should be celebrated; and certain aspects of a person’s identity—such as their gender, ethnicity, or sexuality—are of paramount importance (24). This worldview has become a strategy for forming personal identity.
The author aims to look closely at the entire enterprise of identity discovery and projection from the perspective of the Bible. He observes the imbalance in this strategy for identity: “One striking effect of expressive individualism, of looking inward to find yourself and defining yourself in those terms, is that some markers have been elevated above all others. Markers that are in the minority will often be all-important to people’s identities: things like ethnicity or nationality, sexuality, non-cis genders, disability, or being a certain age” (35). But elevating one marker to an identity is dangerous. We are more than one marker and identifying ourselves or others with only one can easily turn to social stigmatizing. What is more, taking this struggle for identity to our social media networks exacerbates the problem by publicizing it. Is it any wonder that some are driven to suicide when public response to our myopically formed identities goes all wrong?
Reflecting on Larry Siedentop’s tour de force, Inventing the Individual, Rosner says in an understatement, “The Bible had something to do with the very idea of the individual” (59). He adds, “You could almost argue that the whole storyline of the bible is set up in a way that describes, critiques and replaces the self-made self” (61). He continues:
The Bible knows the human condition…. Not only does the Bible address the subject of personal identity in general but, uncannily, it also discusses something approximating expressive individualism. Identity formation is actually a fundamental theme in the bible. You could almost argue that the whole storyline of the bible is set up in a way that describes, critiques, and replaces the self-made self (60–61).
Where do we look for our notion of identity formation? At creation, God gave man and woman an identity by creating them in his image. For this reason, “Human beings are afflicted, or perhaps blessed, with a nostalgia for the garden, a painful yearning for our perfect past” (75). This notion often comes out in our popular music. It should not surprise us that the theme song of the Woodstock festival in 1969 expresses this quest as, “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden” (Joni Mitchell). While it might be easy for us to dismiss this strange urge to figure out who we really are so that we can decide what we should do, we should not be surprised for this is the stuff of worldview.
The author repeatedly and rightly asks throughout the book, “Does it lead to a good life?” (three times on p. 17). He points out in response: “happiness, by any measure, is actually in decline” (16). He concludes that, although looking inward can be helpful to us in identity formation, left alone and in the version being critiqued, it does not lead to a good life.
Where does this conversation leave Christians who see some of the problems with expressive individualism but are not sure what to replace it with? Rosner contends:
Whereas wanting to make the most of your talents and opportunities as well as taking some pleasure in your achievements is only natural, pride can easily lead to a consuming desire to stand out from the crowd and to a neglect of or indifference to the needs of others…. And the recognition that God has marked you out means that you should feel less concerned about making your own mark (106).
In fact, “those who are known by God intimately and personally are well-equipped to deal with the questions of existence, ego, ethics, enemies, and enjoyment and have deep resources from which to draw in responding in positive ways to life’s challenges” (110).
We should be grateful for Brian Rosner’s clear thinking and bold applications driven by Scripture in response to the God who loves us and owns us. This reviewer highly recommends the book for every Christian trying to sort through who they are and what they should do with their lives.
