What we do, What we are, and Who we are

Someone I used to work with in customer care was arrested and charged with 10 counts of child porn. This news was somewhat disturbing, and it seems that is a proper reaction. Some people may even ask (unreasonably), "how could you not have known?" or "he is a pedophile, disgusting" However, when we seek the truth about situations like these, we should realize something profound. What we do, what we are, and who we are each are distinct even if partially causally related.

First, let us consider what we do. It would be shocking and almost certainly false that one could say they have never broken a commandment or failed in fulfilling that commandment. Does this make us in our identity liars, adulterers, perverters, drunks? It would seem there is something that those actions changed in us making our potential choice shift in favor of acting more like we have i.e. forming a habit.[1] It is no coincidence that people who were sexually abused tend to struggle with promiscuity. This is because the meaning of purity and its importance has been contradicted before them. Nevertheless, it is God’s grace that we turn from these ways lest they come to consume us, and it is God’s mercy that they do not consume us immediately, that we are allowed to turn from evil ways after we have seen their evil even when God has already shown us what is good and told us what is evil. To the evils, we commit be God's mercy and grace, and to the good is our gratitude for His love, grace, and guidance that the mistakes we make may not bring irreversible change to what we are. [2]

Second, sometimes our hurt can outpace our ability to process it and our psychological disposition often determines immediately how we will respond by hurdling ourselves headlong into sin or repressing it a moving gently in the direction of trying to fix the problem with other things. If we don’t find healing sin is an enemy at the door (Genesis 4:7). Any sin if pursued often enough as though it provides a good makes us into addicts, it is what we are not who we are. We always were sinners too, but that too is what we are, certainly not who we are (Romans 3:23). This is how it is true that what we are to become is yet to be revealed (1 John 3:2). Some people take their identity in what they do, one who has killed, a murderer; one who has slept around, a promiscuous person; even one who has a business degree, a corporate cog. However, this is not what the Church understands as our true identity. These things can be removed or undone by God’s mercy and one’s change of occupation. For example, the one who considers themselves a cog in a money machine need only pursue ministry to no longer be a cog in the machine of modern economics. What we struggle with because of intensity meriting a defining characteristic may be merited, but our trials do not define us in a truly helpful way either. May we never believe that what we are overwrites who we are.

Third, we now consider who we are. This is our character and deepest identity. What we let define us is the question here, but there is an aspect to identity that is objective. Objectively, it can be helpful to recognize the imprint what we do has on who we are, and it is helpful to rejoice in those concerning vocations being a father of biological children, being a mother of spiritual children, and being a missionary are all things that we do which we should consider to be equivocal-able with our true personhood. It is worth noting that our personhood in its truth only in the measure it is relational. Even the Trinity works this way. Subjectively, it is unhelpful to incorporate anything else into this space because it is always inorganic, statements like "I am a (motorcycle) biker" only have meaning if they reference a stereotype and these stereotypes tend to not point us toward God. Even the realization "I am a sinner" aims us in God's direction but it still is more what we are than who, and does not belong firstly to this category. As regards our salvation it is up to our love(s) and God to judge, because only those are capable of determining whether we are "children of the devil" or the broken but redeemed "children of God"(1 John 3:10, John 8:44). May we always see that our type and truest identity is child of God even if what do is a part of what we are and are estranged from the nature of Divine filiation.

In conclusion, we should consider that labeling someone a pedophile, even if accurate (takes something to determine), may not be helpful. Every person has a soul, and we should wince at sin for its ugliness, but we should wince harder at the idea of someone's salvation being in jeopardy because they are a child of God whom an all-good God is brokenhearted at losing to the persuasion of sin and the potentially everlasting grip of the evil one, who wishes to know us by our sins. Moreover, this loss is not isolated, the fall of one soul tends to shift all neighboring souls in that direction. A well-ordered and stable self-image always begins with being a child of God which no sin in itself can change, which always implies we are loved, and worthy of forgiveness. Who we are and we do/have done are not the same thing. What we are and who we are/become are related but also not the same thing. Maybe the next time you hear of someone being arrested for a crime you wish was not a possibility, consider that you have sins that person would probably not appreciate. Maybe instead pray for them, and understand they are someone who misunderstood in a problematic way what was truly good. Leave defining form of judgment to God and healthily lament the sin and what it makes us to be, because we are not our trials and real love does not change because of sin (1 Peter 4:8).

Written by Carter Carruthers & also available soon at Missio Dei

FN:

1. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1865.
2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1864.