Katie and I were watching the below episode of Pints with Aquinas last night and, starting around the 1:00:47 mark, Matt Fradd and Kim Zember begin talking about labels. The episode below is fantastic and I strongly recommend watching the entire thing, but if you don't have two and a half hours, just watch that section from 1:00:47 to 1:06:50 (if you just press play, it will start in the right place).

I try to be a critical listener, and when Kim Zember gave her view on not accepting any identity outside of Jesus, I found myself incredibly resistant to this idea. However, after thinking about this for a few minutes, I realized she made a very valid point and it actually helped me understand and put into words some of the problems I've been experiencing with this website since re-launching it in 2021.

When I started this website back in 2004 and through the highest point of this site from 2005 through 2009, my identity was rooted in being a patriotic, conservative Republican. I mention this in the video where I talk about patriotism while building a wooden American flag. In that video, I mentioned that my identity has become more rooted in my faith than politics for a few different reasons. Honestly, I wish I had been able to time travel to watch this Pints with Aquinas interview before recording the audio for my flag video now, because Kim Zember's commentary on identity and labels has helped me come to a more clear realization of what I was grasping for back in 2019.

If you had asked me between 2004 through 2009, I would have told you my faith was important to me. I had a couple of really profound religious experiences during that time that truly reaffirmed my faith. In reality though, even though I might have denied it, if you look at my writings and actions, it is clear to me now that being "Conservative" was more important than being "Christian." I think I accepted a great many titles, something I've continued to do until last night when I saw this interview and had some time to reflect on it. I was a conservative. I was Christian. I was a traditionalist. I was an artist. I was a web designer. I was a blogger. I was a terrorism analyst. I was a veteran. I was a patriot. Truthfully, I was proud of all of these titles.

Of course, being "proud" of anything should be a red flag that something is wrong, but I don't think I was in a place to accept that yet.

Around the time that I began actively supporting Marco Rubio for President in 2015, I began to realize something was different in me. Even though I really wanted Marco Rubio to win the GOP nomination and crush Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, I never managed to find the same zeal for his candidacy as I had for Huckabee's 2007/2008 campaign. At the time, I narrowed it down to two problems: First, my job required me to be gone from home for 12-13 hours a day; and second, I was learning humility through a toxic (now annulled) marriage. Another factor was that, while I still considered myself a "Conservative", it just wasn't as important to me anymore. In fact, a lot of what was important to me a few years earlier was no longer important to me, although I still identified myself that way. As a result, I felt like I was a washed out version of my old self when I was slowly being forged into a better son of God.

In the interview, Kim Zember talks about how all that matters is that we're a son or daughter of God. And she's right! But I think what's missing from the conversation is the damage other labels can do when we build our identities around them and they start to no longer apply. For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me because I still identified myself as a conservative, but I wasn't as conservative as I used to be. I considered myself a terrorism and intelligence analyst, even though I hadn't been able to do that work for a few years due to an expired security clearance. I considered myself a straight A college student, even though I graduated back in 2011. These titles were no longer descriptive of who I was, so I felt like I was losing my sense of identity. When I re-launched this website with this web design back in 2021, I was seeking to recapture something that I had lost. However, it was something that I had surrendered to God and just didn't realize what it was yet.

Thanks to Kim Zember, I've finally figured out that none of those titles were ever important. All that matters, as she says, is that I'm a son of God!

A son of God who still leans conservative, but is not conservative. A son of God who values tradition, but is not a traditionalist. A son of God who runs this website, but is neither a webmaster nor blogger.

This has been incredibly liberating for me, but there are still some things I need to work out. For example, I am a Son of God married to Katie, but is it wrong not to identify myself as a husband? When one of us dies, I will cease to be a husband, so I shouldn't root my identity into this, but it seems unethical and borderline dangerous not to accept this title. Likewise, I am a Son of God who served in the Air Force, but is it wrong to identify as a veteran? Even when I die and the country eventually dissolves as all empires eventually do, I don't think I will ever not be considered a veteran. While the titles of "husband" and "veteran" are not nearly as important as "son of God", I do wonder if by accepting these identities that I am failing to fully embrace my identity as a Son of God.

I suspect the answer to this question is that "Husband" is a "Role" or "Vocation" less than an "Identity." Likewise, although the title "Veteran" does apply to me, it's honestly not that important to me. What's always been important to me are the people I served with, not that I served. Being a veteran is perhaps a status or achievement. Regardless, of these questions, I still feel liberated!

Moving forward, I want to try changing my vocabulary to say "I am" less and "I will" or "I have" or "I [verb]" more. Saying "I am" carries a ton of weight and responsibility, especially for Christians, that I think we fail to appreciate far too frequently.