Uncovering Our Identity Means Digging Deeper: A Review of “Identity” by Eric Geiger

We live in an age of amorphous self-awareness. Most people float around without any clue who they are or what they are doing with their lives. I see it most evidently in young women, but it is cropping up all over the place. It’s the reason that marketing is so successful and the reason anxiety is so ubiquitous. It’s found not just among the average person, though, it’s found among the average Christian. Though we are “identified with Christ,” the church, all too often, has no clue what that means. we lack awareness of our identity. This is a subject I am trying to study more this year and with that in mind I turned to find resources. Sadly there are not many books written on self-identity from a Christian perspective. Perhaps it is the owing to the major backlash against the self-esteem movement, but for whatever reasons Christians don’t talk about this much. I was thankful, then, when I discovered that Eric Geiger had written a book specifically about it. I enjoyed the book, but sadly it is a very surface level introduction to the subject. Most of the conversation in the book revolves around general discussions and generic applications. It lacks in both detailed exegesis and theological development. I liked the book, but sadly I fear our culture’s identity problem is so big that we need something much deeper than Identity gives us.

Geiger begins with a fair disclaimer. “First, I want to be up front on the angle I am taking. I am not writing from the perspective of a biblical scholar or a theologian” (18). Geiger is executive pastor of Christ Fellowship in Miami, FL and co-author (with Thom Rainer) of Simple Church. He is certainly not poorly trained or poorly prepared to write a book on this. In fact he articulates well his encounters with countless Christians who struggle with identity issues, and states plainly that this study has helped him much. He also warns readers not to read this book quickly to meet some quota. He urges us to “Read one chapter at a time. Reflect on that aspect of your identity for several days before you launch into the next chapter” (19). I confess, I didn’t do that. Perhaps the book would have different value if I did, but at the present I suspect not. The book is written at a popular level. It is clearly written to be made accessible to the average person. But the content seems a bit on the shallow side and underdeveloped. Popular is good, but we need something deeper. Accessible is good, but only if it add something to our Christian walk.

The book is light on exposition. Geiger is basing all the content off of 1 Peter 2:9-11. In each chapter he is looking at one aspect of how this verse shapes our identity. But there is no discussion, however, of what is going on in the context of 1 Peter that should shape our understanding. And in each chapter there is little exegetical/theological work done to help develop the idea. So when he says we are “priests” to God, there is some discussion about what the Old Testament priests did and there’s the very valid and great point of how we have access to God at any moment. Beyond such points however, I am still not sure, from this book, what the information of my “priesthood” is supposed to mean? And is “having access to God” all that Peter meant when he wrote that phrase? I certainly think it means much more, and the context of 1 Peter tells us that. The discussion that Geiger offers us is very shallow.

The application too seems generic. He asks a series of questions in each chapter (in addition to the study questions at the close of each chapter) to help generate our application of the idea. But these too don’t seem to be very helpful. So he asks, “What if we made our vehicles mobile versions of the Most Holy Place so we could drive in the presence of God? What would that look like in your life?” (69) I confess I don’t know and the question feels so strange and hard to grasp in tangible ways that I just want to toss it aside and keep reading.

Perhaps, I am being too harsh. Perhaps, I need to just spend more time reflecting on the content of Geiger’s book. He seems like a genuinely concerned pastor. Geiger is a decent writer. He has loads of funny stories and analogies, but that is part of my disappointment with the work as a whole. It is full of funny stories and analogies. These take up most of the content in the chapters. Little exegesis, little theology, lots of stories. It’s hard to know what to do with the content that he provides because there is so little development of it. Christians continue to have a very real identity problem today, I see it on a nearly weekly basis in my counseling sessions. And what we need as a church is not more popular fluff, but more deep theological development. Uncovering our true identity is going to mean digging much deeper.