Identity and Authenticity (introduction) · Chapter 1: Transformational Knowing of Self and God · Epilogue: Identity and the Spiritual Journey

Start with a tulip. In the opening pages of The Gift of Being Yourself, Benner points out that a tulip simply is what it is. It never wonders whether it is a good enough tulip. People are different. We think, weigh options and doubt ourselves, and so, Benner observes, identity is a struggle unique to human beings. Simple authenticity is hard for us.

He also notes something many readers will recognize: lots of adults sometimes feel like frauds. In his telling, the masks behind that feeling were first adopted to avoid vulnerability. Maybe you learned early that being funny kept people from looking too closely. Maybe being capable felt safe, or being agreeable kept the peace. The mask worked, so it stayed.

Then Benner makes his proposal. Beneath the roles and masks, he says, each person has a distinctive true self in Christ, a self God has loved into existence, and that self alone supports authenticity.

Now bring that to Ephesians 2:10: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

Look at the order. Just before this, Paul says salvation is a gift of grace, not a result of our works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Only then does he talk about good works, and he describes them as something God prepared beforehand. We do not build ourselves and then show God the finished product. God makes, and we walk.

The Greek word behind "workmanship" is poiema. It is where we get our word "poem." It points to something crafted with care, a made thing that carries the skill of its maker. Notice too that "created in Christ Jesus" is something done to us, not something we do.

Paul is writing to believers together here ("we"), so don't make the verse say more than it says. It does not hand you a personality profile. But it does speak to the question underneath a mask. A mask is a way of building an identity by performance: be impressive, be useful, be unbothered, and then you will be somebody. Ephesians turns that around. You already are something, God's own handiwork, and the good you do comes after.

That is not an easy shift. Masks protect us, and we usually put them on for reasons that made sense at the time. You don't need to rip yours off today. You only need to notice it. Where do you reach for it? What does it say about you? What does it protect you from?

Today's job is small and honest. Name one mask, then read Ephesians 2:10 slowly beside it. Ask which one it is: a self you are building, or a self you are being given.

Here is a question to try before anything else today: what is the single most important thing for your existence? Benner asks readers this, and he argues that most Christians answer in terms of God alone. The self gets left out.

His claim is that knowing God and knowing yourself are interdependent. He says this is an old understanding in Christian theology, one he connects to voices such as Augustine and Calvin, and that the contemporary church has largely forgotten it. When the self is left out, he argues, the result is a piety with a gap between appearance and reality. To illustrate, he describes a prominent pastor whose carefully crafted public self collapsed in moral failure, a lie that grew from self-ignorance. Benner ties this to Jesus's warnings in Matthew 15:14 and 18:6 about leaders who cause others to stumble.

Test that claim against Scripture. Psalm 139:1-6 is a good place, because David is thinking about God and himself at the same time: "O LORD, you have searched me and known me!"

Notice who is doing the searching. David doesn't begin with a self-inventory. He begins with being known. God knows when he sits down and when he rises up. God discerns his thoughts "from afar," knows his path, and knows his words before they reach his tongue. David feels hemmed in on every side, and then he says this knowledge is "too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it."

Two things follow. First, God's knowledge of you comes before your knowledge of yourself, and it is far bigger. Second, your own self-knowledge has limits. You can't see everything.

Does Scripture still ask us to examine ourselves? Yes. Lamentations 3:40 calls God's people to test and examine their ways and return to the LORD. Paul tells the Corinthians to examine themselves (2 Corinthians 13:5). And David ends this same psalm by asking God to search him (Psalm 139:23-24). So Scripture does not treat looking at yourself as unspiritual. But watch the pattern. The examining happens in God's presence, with God invited to search, and it aims at returning to him. Self-knowledge is never the finish line. Nearness to God is.

That also helps with the two verses Benner points to. In Matthew 15:14 Jesus speaks of blind guides leading the blind into a pit. In Matthew 18:6 he gives a stern warning to anyone who leads little ones astray. A gap between how we look and what is true doesn't stay private. It reaches the people who trust us.

So treat Benner's claim as a question worth wrestling with. If you left yourself out of your answer about what matters most, what did that leave unexamined? If looking inward tends to turn into harsh self-attack for you, a pastor or counselor can help you do it safely.

Benner closes by arguing that being fully human means recognizing Christ as the deepest truth of your being and living toward union with God. In this epilogue, Christ-in-me is the heart of identity, and he challenges the sense of separateness that usually grounds how we think of ourselves. He also treats the self as the place where God is met, not as God.

Big claims deserve a close reading of Scripture, so slow down with Paul's one verse, Galatians 2:20, and take it a phrase at a time.

“I have been crucified with Christ.” Paul begins with something that has already happened to him. The self-made life has met its end.

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Here is the Christ-in-me language, stated plainly by Paul. Christ is not only beside him or ahead of him. He lives in him. Paul says the same thing elsewhere: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

“And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.” Watch what Paul keeps. He still says “I.” He still lives “in the flesh,” in a body, in real days. And he lives by faith, which is trust aimed at someone.

“Who loved me and gave himself for me.” The verse ends with a personal love: Christ loves, Paul is loved. Union and relationship sit in the same sentence. That is Paul's pattern, and it appears again in Jesus's picture of the vine and the branches, where abiding in him is how branches bear fruit (John 15:4-5).

The self-as-place idea also finds a footing in Paul. He tells the Corinthians their body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). A temple is where God dwells; it is not God.

Now the honest part. Some evangelical critics, such as the CANA evaluation, question Benner's Jungian-style psychology, his use of the Enneagram, and his Christ-in-me framing, and they read the expanded epilogue as drifting from Scripture. You don't have to settle that debate by taking a side in a hurry. You can ask something simpler: when this book uses a phrase, can I find it, in its own context, in the Bible? Where I can, I receive it with thanks. Where I can't, I hold it loosely and ask a pastor or wise friend.

The verse itself is enough for today. Christ lives in you, he loves you, and he gave himself for you. Live by faith in him.

This is the last session, so today we pull the threads together. Start by rereading the book's introduction, chapter 1 and the epilogue. They are the opening and closing frames of Benner's argument, and Romans 12:1-2 fits them well.

The introduction begins with a simple observation. A tulip just is what it is. People think, weigh options and doubt, so being genuinely ourselves is harder. Benner adds that many adults sometimes feel like frauds, wearing masks first picked up to avoid being vulnerable. Now listen to Paul: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind." A mask is a small act of conforming. It shapes us to what others will approve of. Paul's alternative is not a better mask. It is renewal from the inside.

But look at how Paul starts: "by the mercies of God." Before he asks for anything, he points to what God has already done. That fits chapter 1, where Benner argues that knowing God and knowing yourself depend on each other, and that Christians often leave the self out. He says leaving it out produces a gap between appearance and reality, and he points to a prominent pastor whose carefully crafted public self collapsed in moral failure. Jesus warned about leaders who cause others to stumble (Matthew 15:14; 18:6). A faith that skips self-knowledge can look strong while hollow underneath.

Then Paul asks us to "present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God." Notice what is offered: bodies, the actual person, not a polished image. You cannot offer a self you refuse to look at. Self-knowledge, then, is part of worship. Paul even says that by testing you may "discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Knowing God's will and knowing who you are go together here.

The epilogue pushes toward the deepest layer. Benner argues that being fully human means recognizing Christ as the deepest truth of your being and living toward union with God. He treats the self not as God but as the place where God is met. Read that alongside Paul's own words about Christ living in him (Galatians 2:20) and Christ in you as the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). Hold his claims up to Scripture as you read, as Paul would want.

So here is your assignment. Write a short prayer that holds both halves together: God, who you are, and me, who I am before you. A simple pattern: name something true about God's mercy, name something true about yourself you have been hiding or neglecting, and ask for renewal. If looking honestly at yourself stirs up heavy shame or painful memories, bring that to a pastor, counselor or trusted friend, not only to your journal.

Then choose one practice to keep. Not five. One. Transformation tends to come through small things done again and again.