Fake ID

Just a few months into my career as a pastor I found myself burying a friend who had committed suicide. He left behind a wife and children and a community who felt guilty for not recognizing the signs of his deep depression. Perhaps most shocking of all about the incident however were the details he shared in his suicide letter which outlined the situation that drove him to such a drastic, and final, solution. My friend claimed his suicide was not a way out of his depression, or financial struggles, or tied in any way to poor moral choices. Instead, he told us, in no uncertain terms that his suicide was the only way to free himself from his addiction to online gaming. Recently CNN produced an investigative piece on the growing issue of online gamming addiction in the country of Korea. The video is worth 10 minute

s. http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/08/tech/gaming.series/korea.html#cnn_gmsrsstoryntro One of the interesting lines from the video is a statement a psychologist makes about what drives so many Koreans into cyber world. In a word, he believes it is a search for “identity” (skip to 8:20 on the video for full discussion). In Korea’s strict class society youth feel that they are unable to break free from social expectations based on education and wealth, and chose to live, as much as 18 hours a day, in a virtual reality instead where their identity can be re-created without social pressures to conform. The search for identity is hardly unique to Korean youth. I have watched countless students (largely, males) during my years of college ministry, with great potential, squander their lives by staring blankly into a lit screen for the majority of their day in an attempt to escape reality, and responsibility. But online gamming is only one of the potential vices people reach for when trying to establish a sense of identity. Recent reports on the man, Wade Page, who opened fire at a Sikh temple this week in Wisconsin, revealed that he was a white supremacists and a member of a popular hate-rock group. Writing about the impact that music such as Page’s has had on the movement Devin Burghart, author of "Soundtracks to the White Revolution," noted that, “Bands like Page's are instrumental to bringing disaffected teens into the movement. They're isolated individuals, often with behavioral problems, perhaps problems at home who are looking for a new familial bond as well as a sense of identity and belonging." Identity. It drives the clothes we wear, the movies we watch, the friends we gather with, the cars we drive, the people we love, the people we ignore, the people we hate. And many people today feel that their personal identity is not theirs to choose. It is being dictated to them from every website, billboard, magazine, Facebook post and advertisement. Every moment in every day we are being told, “buy this and be free”…”wear this and be loved”…”drink this and be accepted.” For many, all too many, there are only two choices, submit or rebel. Increasingly, whether it is through online gaming, pornography, gangs, drugs, or suicide, many are choosing to escape and to rebel. But there are also many who have discovered, and who are discovering, that there is a third option, letting your identity to be shaped by the one who made you. The only one who truly knows you. In his letter to the Corinthian church the apostle Paul once wrote, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” (NLT) Paul’s words indicate that being known by God is in the present tense. We are already fully known people. Even when we are uncertain about ourselves, we are known, and known fully by the one who breathed life into us and wants to rescue us from all of our empty pursuits to rescue ourselves and our vain attempts to submit, escape or rebel against the hollow definitions of purpose and success that the world offers. If you are on a search to “find yourself,” let yourself be found by the one who made you.