{"id":32564,"date":"2016-07-05T15:34:23","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T19:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=32564"},"modified":"2016-07-05T15:34:23","modified_gmt":"2016-07-05T19:34:23","slug":"when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"When identity is bound up in a lie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My older daughter\u00a0made a bunch of new friends her first year of high school. One of those friends had a tragic secret. She was dying. It wasn\u2019t painful, or contagious, but she had a rare genetic condition \u2014 an inexorable degenerative disease that meant she probably wouldn\u2019t live to see 30.<\/p>\n

This was heartbreaking for my daughter, but her new friend made her and the others in their little group promise not to tell others about this sad secret. She just wanted to be treated like a normal teenager, she said, and when people learned about her situation they always started acting weird and treating her differently, and that wasn\u2019t what she wanted during her few precious remaining years of youth and relative good health. So the friends agreed to keep this secret, and to bear the burden of it with her.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until several months later that my daughter began\u00a0to develop suspicions, and to feel terribly guilty for entertaining them. She\u2019d begun to notice certain inconsistencies in her new friend\u2019s story. She Googled her friend\u2019s condition and confirmed that it was a real thing, consistent with her friend\u2019s story, but maybe also consistent with what anyone might learn from Googling. Beyond that, some of the details began to seem off. She hadn\u2019t asked about them in a hostile way, but she had been confused and had asked her friend to help her understand. This prompted angry tantrums from the friend, and so my daughter would apologize, tearfully, only later realizing that her questions still hadn\u2019t been answered.<\/p>\n

Eventually, after more than a year, the story fell apart entirely and my daughter and the others in the group came to realize the awful truth about the lie they\u2019d all believed for so long. They confronted their friend with all the evidence they had collected and that produced only the kind of enraged denial that such interventions often produce. The girl insisted that her story was true. It was it was it was<\/em>. And they were all terrible people for not believing her, and for treating\u00a0a dying girl so cruelly. She stopped speaking to all of them.<\/p>\n

This is when I heard the whole story from my daughter, who was furious and heartbroken and hurt. We talked about how her friend really was sick, just not in the way she\u2019d been led to believe. (As it turns out, all the doctors appointments she\u2019d told them about had been for a different kind of doctor.) This hadn\u2019t been merely some attention-seeking adolescent fib that had snowballed out of control. It was more than that.<\/p>\n

My daughter wanted to go back to her former friend \u2014 to tell her that she loved her, no matter what, and that that would be true no matter what her real story might be. I told her that I wished it was that easy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s never that easy when identity is at stake. Identity means survival<\/em> is at stake. It\u2019s safer to cling to a lie \u2014 even if we know it\u2019s a lie \u2014 than to allow\u00a0the destruction of who and what it is that we\u2019ve always believed ourselves to be.<\/p>\n

And but so, I was reminded of that friend and that whole saga yesterday when the Christian rapper Lecrae posted this on Twitter<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"LeceawTweet\"<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a forceful point, vividly expressed \u2014 echoes of Douglass<\/a> and of King\u2019s \u201cpromissory note<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s also an obvious and undeniable point. But it was too much to take for many of Lecrae\u2019s white evangelical fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cDone supporting you bro,\u201d one pious Christian wrote, \u201cyou make everything race issues lately instead of a gospel issue. You promote guilt instead of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is simply stirring the pot,\u201d said another.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is borderline unpatriotic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s freedom in Christ. I guess that ain\u2019t enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was also, of course,\u00a0the usual panoply of white denial: What about blacks<\/em> who owned slaves? What about Irish<\/em> slaves? That was a long time ago, things are different now, etc., but all given a church-y, sanctimonious sheen of spiritual lamentation over seeing this musician they admired captive to the sin of bitterness.<\/p>\n

The comments responding to Lecrae\u2019s tweet are a remarkable snapshot of American evangelical theology, spirituality and culture. They\u2019re also a window into white evangelical identity<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Lecrae\u2019s tweet threatened that identity. And things are never easy when identity is at stake.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor those who want to save their life will lose it. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s never that easy when identity is at stake. Identity means survival is at stake. It’s safer to cling to a lie — even if we know it’s a lie — than to allow the destruction of who and what it is that we’ve always believed ourselves to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen identity is bound up in a lie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's never that easy when identity is at stake. Identity means survival is at stake. It's safer to cling to a lie -- even if we know it's a lie -- than to allow the destruction of who and what it is that we've always believed ourselves to be.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When identity is bound up in a lie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It's never that easy when identity is at stake. Identity means survival is at stake. It's safer to cling to a lie -- even if we know it's a lie -- than to allow the destruction of who and what it is that we've always believed ourselves to be.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-07-05T19:34:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2016\/07\/LeceawTweet.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/\",\"name\":\"When identity is bound up in a lie\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-07-05T19:34:23+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-07-05T19:34:23+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"It's never that easy when identity is at stake. Identity means survival is at stake. It's safer to cling to a lie -- even if we know it's a lie -- than to allow the destruction of who and what it is that we've always believed ourselves to be.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"When identity is bound up in a lie\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"When identity is bound up in a lie","description":"It's never that easy when identity is at stake. Identity means survival is at stake. It's safer to cling to a lie -- even if we know it's a lie -- than to allow the destruction of who and what it is that we've always believed ourselves to be.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"When identity is bound up in a lie","og_description":"It's never that easy when identity is at stake. Identity means survival is at stake. It's safer to cling to a lie -- even if we know it's a lie -- than to allow the destruction of who and what it is that we've always believed ourselves to be.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/","og_site_name":"slacktivist","article_published_time":"2016-07-05T19:34:23+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2016\/07\/LeceawTweet.jpg"}],"author":"Fred Clark","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fred Clark","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/","name":"When identity is bound up in a lie","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-07-05T19:34:23+00:00","dateModified":"2016-07-05T19:34:23+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47"},"description":"It's never that easy when identity is at stake. Identity means survival is at stake. It's safer to cling to a lie -- even if we know it's a lie -- than to allow the destruction of who and what it is that we've always believed ourselves to be.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/07\/05\/when-identity-is-bound-up-in-a-lie\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"When identity is bound up in a lie"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/","name":"slacktivist","description":""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47","name":"Fred Clark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Fred Clark"},"description":"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}