Identity: Where is Your Center of Gravity?
For many years, I was a straight A student. While the fact that I was a conscientious student was good in many ways (and also reflected to some degree the gifts that God had given me), as I reflect back on this fact as an adult now, I realize that not all was always well with this state of being.
While it is certainly true that I experienced much joy engaging in the learning process for all those years (and I still do!), for too many years, I found my center of identity in my achievements. As a result, I overlooked other aspects of my life and relationships at times, and I also found that important aspects of myself remained underdeveloped.
I first began to clue into the fact that achievement was the center of my identity in college when I found that I couldn’t quite succeed in college in the ways I was used to doing previously. I did well enough, but I struggled a lot more than I ever had, and I definitely wasn’t at the top my class. Consequently, I was left in a state of confusion and angst, and I was left with the following questions, “Who am I really? What is my life about?” – questions I have been wrestling with ever since.
These are profound questions and in fact, ones that we should all be asking ourselves from time to time. My friends over at Gravity Leadership frame these questions in a slightly different way. They ask, “What is our center of gravity? Where does our identity lie?”. Just as the planets in our solar system appear to find their center of gravity in the sun and thus revolve around it, we also have a center of gravity, around which our lives revolve, whether we consciously know it or not. This center or these centers (for there may be more than one) help form our identities, and then our behaviors flow from there.
So where is our center? Where does our main identity lie? Does it rest in Jesus or can it be found elsewhere?
As sojourners of the Way, we might be tempted to say without a second thought that Jesus is our center, and while this may indeed be true, I think it is important to challenge ourselves from time to time and honestly ask if this is true. There may be other things in our lives that are competing for the center.
Read below to dig deeper.
Living Our Lives From the Wrong Center
While we may honestly believe that Jesus is at the center of our lives, decisions, and behaviors, more often than not, we find that something else really occupies the center.
The thing or things that occupies the center of our lives may not be bad things in themselves (such as family or work), yet when they take priority in our lives, they can cause havoc. Whatever our center of gravity is, we will be pulled towards that thing (or those things). Our center of gravity will dictate our behaviors, goals, and interactions with others, and these may not be in line with the vision of the Kingdom of God that Jesus has put before us.
As an example, if success really is our center of gravity, we might find ourselves using others to facilitate our success or ignoring others when they impede (or at least not help) our success. We end up using or discarding people rather than loving them as Jesus would love them. This can be true even when success seems like a very good and worthy goal, i.e., when we desire to create a successful ministry.
The problem, however, is success can never be a proper center on which to stake our lives. When we make it our center, we forgo living fully out of the Fruit of the Spirit and rather find ourselves displaying whatever attitudes and behaviors are necessary to ensure our success.
As another example, if our family is our center of gravity, we might live in ways that work to benefit our family only, without thinking about the needs of others in our neighborhood, community, nation, or world. It is not wrong to care for our family and its needs (and indeed, we have an obligation to do so). That being said, when it is our center of gravity, we can end up caring for our families in ways that are self-centered, manipulative, and even exploitative of others.
Whether it is family or success or health or money or whatever that occupies the center place in our lives, the results are problematic. When we live from the wrong center, we generally experience some alienation in our relationships with others and with God. We also experience disconnection from our deepest desires and longings – including the deepest desire which is to know and be known by God. Moreover, we often experience some kind of instability or fear in our lives because what forms the center of our identities today has the possibility of disintegrating before our very eyes tomorrow.
In truth, Jesus is the only center that will never fail us. When we are centered in Him, all else will take its proper place in our lives.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)
Re-centering Our Lives
Once we know that we are prone to find our centers of identity and life in things other than the Lord Himself, it is important that we find ways to frequently re-center ourselves. We must re-center our lives in Jesus and then re-center them again and re-center them again and again.
We must learn to embrace the truth over and over again that we are beloved sons and daughters made in the image of God and saved by His grace. This is our truest and most primary identity, not the other things we have gravitated to, whether that is money, success, sexual gratification, family life, or whatever. When we embrace our true identity, all other cares and lesser identities in our lives eventually take their proper places.
It is the need to constantly re-center our lives that makes me thankful for my own Christian tradition’s practice of doing a General Confession in church each week. Every Sunday, I have the opportunity to acknowledge ways I have gotten off-center, be assured of Jesus’ forgiveness, and re-center myself and embrace my true identity once again.
You might not have such a practice in your tradition, but you too can find ways to regularly re-center yourself. One good possibility is to engage in a regular practice of the examen. If you are unfamiliar with this practice, you can find an explanation here by Loyola press. You can also start practicing the Examen by clicking here. Below, you can find some questions to also help you in the process.
Questions to Help you Identify Your Center
When you have a some time on your hands one day, I encourage you to sit down and spend some time honestly asking yourself:
What is my center of gravity? Use the following questions to help you flesh this out. Is it Jesus, the Son of God, or does my center lie elsewhere?
Where does my main identity lie?
What primarily motivates me from day to day? What is driving my decisions, behaviors, emotions, and attitudes about myself and others?” Job? Family? Money? Possessions? Body image? Health? Leisure time? Success? Education? House and property? Sexual gratification? Religious moralism? Pride? Perfectionism? Political affiliation? The need to be in control or right? People’s perceptions of me? The need to save the day. The need to set others straight? My own need to keep up a particular self-image? Something else? (There are many possibilities.)
What is the result of making these things my center?
Am I becoming more like Jesus or less like Jesus?
Am I exhibiting the Fruit of the Spirit or the works of the flesh?
When these other things are my center, is the Gospel being proclaimed to others by the way that I live my life?
How can I re-center myself in Jesus?”