I can’t remember a time in my life when I felt totally
comfortable with what was expected of me as a girl or woman in a given setting.
Whether as a little girl, as an undergraduate at a women’s liberal arts
college, or a thirty-something in a socially conservative denomination, I’ve
always felt like a bit of a square peg. Over the past year especially, I’ve
been longing for a book that would help me discern God’s calling underneath
those disparate experiences.
Made for More: An Invitation to Live in God's Image by Hannah Anderson
This is a book targeted to Christian women which actually “[calls]
women to recover an understanding of ourselves that is more basic than our
gender” (11) by recovering the basic doctrine of being created imago dei, in
the image of God. This is important because most of us spend a lifetime
searching for our identity in various roles, relationships, and attainments—all
things which have a way of changing when we least expect them to. Even when
these things are good, “we realize that they didn’t fulfill us the way we had
expected; despite having invested so much of ourselves in what we thought would
provide a lasting sense of meaning, we hardly know ourselves in the midst of it…And
the things that we once looked to for stability and identity begin to feel like
burdens and obligations instead of blessings” (19, emphasis mine). Oh boy can I
identify!
Our true identity is found not simply in who we are as
individuals (the point where our culture stops short), but in who our God is.
Because we are made in His image, we exist to reflect and represent him on
earth. This involves three things: living in dependent communion on God, living
in relationship with other human beings, and stewarding God’s creation. Because
of the fall, however, “our capacity to live in this reality has been
fundamentally corrupted” (48). When we start to build our identity around
things other than God, we begin to resemble caricatures, failing to reflect the
depth and richness of God’s nature. And when those things are threatened, we
feel like our very personhood is under attack (51). So how do we rid ourselves
of these false identities and have the reflection of God’s glory restored to
us? By losing ourselves in Christ and being indwelt by His Spirit.
Finding our authentic selves in Christ has endless
implications for our daily lives. As God reorders our affections, teaching us
to love the right things in the right way, we can begin to reflect His love to
those around us. [Great quote: “In [Christ], we discover that loving like God
does not mean finding a balance between two extremes but in discovering the
depth of what love truly is. His love is not a muted, muddied love, a milky attempt
to negate holiness with kindness, but an infinitely complex, nuanced expression
of what it means to love like God.” (82)] Our souls enlarge to image our God’s
generosity (94). We start to view education and theology as crucial to becoming
image bearers, not limiting them according to career aspirations, or gendered
concerns. We view our work as sacred, not because of the tasks we perform, but
because it images our Maker; indeed, even the most mundane work is dignified
because Jesus “stooped from glory” to serve us (120).
Some of my favorite parts of the book are when Anderson
discusses God’s providence in shaping us through the circumstances of our
lives. God has formed our personalities and ordered the details of our lives to
reflect Himself uniquely. And if we don’t understand “why” things are this way—well,
that’s to be expected: “The truth about imago dei identity is that we really
cannot measure the scope of our lives; we cannot fully understand ourselves by
this present moment alone. Discovering who God has made us to be requires both
this life and the life to come. This ‘timelessness’ of identity is the direct
result of being made in His image…Because God is eternal, we are destined for
eternal life as well.” God uses the individual moments of our lives “to bring
us into union with His own eternality” (164–165). I had never thought about my
identity in this way before, but it made me realize how near-sighted my perception
has tended to be. How freeing to recognize our limited perspective! This
knowledge, Anderson concludes, frees us to face each new cycle of life—even death,
that greatest threat to our identity—with the promise that God uses each of them
to display more of Himself in us, until the glorious day when we will be truly like
Him.
What I loved about this book is that it is biblically sound,
and rather than focusing on a handful of passages, it looks at identity in the
context of the full story of redemption. Furthermore, on that solid Scriptural basis,
Hannah Anderson has a gift for expressing doctrinal truths in a clear and
digestible way. Concepts like idolatry, union with Christ, sanctification, and
ultimately the gospel are explained with little recourse to “theological” terms—this
not only impressed me, but helped me personally. For example, I have sometimes
chafed at the language of “identity in Christ.” I knew it expressed a biblical
truth, but it wasn’t clear to me why, if what ultimately matters about me is my
identity in Christ, anything else about my personality or circumstances should matter.
Though not intended this way, the phrase had begun to sound, to my ears, like a
platitude dismissing anything in my life that caused me dissatisfaction or
grief. After reading Made for More, I’m beginning to see that it isn’t about
papering over the distinctive things about me (things God created!), but about understanding them all
in light of God’s providential, glorifying work in me.
This book didn’t answer all my questions, especially those about
the relationship between gender and the soul, and the ways these teachings play
out with respect to things like vocation and family. But exploring those
questions isn’t really the point of this book (so if you’re interested in
exegetical arguments over certain passages, look elsewhere). Indeed, it’s not
that those aren’t important, but that to have a hope of addressing them well,
we need to start from a higher level, more foundational truth about who we are.
Made for More is a gentle, wise resource to help us do exactly that.
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