The ID Book: Unmasking the Soul and Revealing Your True Mission In Life

By Ross Lucas

Finding genuine fulfillment in life can be a daunting task. When we’re at a crossroads, or our best-laid plans have been derailed, it’s only human to feel lost, frustrated, or alone. For those searching to reconnect with themselves and deepen into the meaning of life, The ID Book provides insight for getting to know your true identity and methods for discovering your individual path to a more profound place in the cosmos. Drawing from a background of more than 20 years in pastoral ministry and another 20 years as a psychologist and pastoral counselor, Ross Lucas brings a fresh perspective to understanding who we are and what our purpose is in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387511624

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to the person who has been most faithful and unfailingly supportive as I search for my identity in God and my God-given mission in life. She has been by my side in good times and bad times; in times of certainty and times of uncertainty for (at the writing of this dedication) over 46 years. The book is dedicated to my wife Carolyn Sue (Ricks) Lucas.

Acknowledgements

I want to acknowledge those who have helped make this book a reality. In general, all of the people of the churches I have served—either as settled pastor or transitional / interim pastor—have contributed to what I have done. Those churches include Mt. Vernon Baptist Church of Worthington, Indiana; First Baptist Church of Dunkirk, Indiana; Rainy Mountain Kiowa Indian Baptist Church of Mountain View, Oklahoma; First American Baptist Church of Hobart, Oklahoma; McDoel Baptist Church of Bloomington, Indiana; New Hope Baptist Church of Bay City, Michigan; First Baptist Church of Battle Creek, Michigan; and First Baptist Church of Owosso, Michigan.

I also want to acknowledge the men of the Mankind Project, who not only helped me in understanding who I am and my mission in life, but many of whom attended workshops I presented on understanding identity and what one’s mission is based on a strengths perspective. Special recognition needs to be extended to the small group I have met with regularly for the last 10 years: the Soaring Men, who meet in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Finally, I could not have done the work without my wife, who read several versions of this work over the last 8 years; my friend John Powell, who read the initial work and gave great encouragement; and my children and children-in-laws, who encouraged me and never stopped believing in me. Finally, I want to acknowledge the person who edited the final work, finished the cover design, and encouraged me more than she knows, Erin McAuley of Impluvium Studios.

1

An ID Is More Than

a Picture on a Driver’s License

Dan stretched his arms as he stood up. It had been a restless night. As he got to the bathroom, he caught a glimpse of a face in the mirror. Turning, he looked at himself: his hair rumpled, his unshaven face, his eyes dark from lack of sleep. Today is the day, he thought. In two hours he would stand before a judge and his marriage of 12 years would be ended. Looking at the reflecting glass, he suddenly wondered who was looking back.

About the same time, in a different house, in a different town, another person stood gazing into a mirror, asking the same question. After working at a job for 15 years, Jill was facing a day where she didn’t know what she was going to do with her life. Her job had been eliminated yesterday. With expressions of gratitude for her years of service still ringing in her ears, she had walked out the doors of her workplace into a world where she no longer had a defined place.

Similar stories could be told over and over. It may be that children are gone from home for the first time. In some cases, a person may be settling into a career that they have invested years and thousands of dollars preparing for—only to discover that, in the end, he or she is not sure that job is still appealing. Others are retiring, looking ahead to years of healthy life, but are not sure how they want to spend those years.

The vast majority of people have looked in a mirror at some time in their life and asked the question, Who am I? Following on the heels of that question is a second question: What purpose do I serve on in this world? These questions are by no means new. They have been with us for as long as we have been able to reflect on ourselves. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem The Human Life’s Mystery she starts out talking about ordinary activities and then goes on to say,

And then, at moments, suddenly,

We look up to the great wide sky,

Inquiring wherefore we were born. . .

For earnest or for jest?¹

The question is whether or not we are really on Earth for any significant purpose. Are we just a part of some comedy, played out by unknowing actors, moving toward a meaningless conclusion?

I was in the process of developing a workshop addressing the question of individual purpose in life, when I discovered that the fundamental question is not Why are we on this earth? but Who am I? I realized that it is out of identity that one’s purpose or mission in life is defined. As long as our identity is unclear, our life mission will be fuzzy. Once our identity becomes clearer, the mission will take on a sharper focus.

The terms identity and mission are used in many different contexts. If asked to prove identification, the first thought of many people in the United States is to produce some form of picture ID, like a driver’s license. The last time I went to the election polls, I was asked to prove my identity by showing a picture ID. The fact is, my identity is much more than a picture, a name, or an address.

Identity

Identity is the core essence of who we are. It is not the things we do, the roles we fulfill, nor the skills we have. All of our actions, behaviors, and attitudes come out of our identity. It is from our identity that we find roles to fulfill. It is because of our identity that we choose to develop certain skills. The difficulty is that we confuse our actions, roles, and skills with the identity out of which they arise. Because of that confusion, I find that many people have difficulty describing who they are apart from the ways in which they occupy their time.

Our identity is the sum total, with value added, of all of the ways in which we can be described: our name, our titles, our physical characteristics. However, all of the descriptions of who one is still give only a partial view of one’s identity. Identity is something resulting from the mixture of all our attitudes, skills, interests, and how they interact with each other.

Not only is one’s identity the sum of our characteristics and titles, but it also involves the way these characteristics interact. To comprehend one’s identity, these things have to be examined not only in isolation from each other, but also in connection with each other. For example, the identity of a male writer is more fully understood as one understands what it means to be male, what it means to be a writer, and how being a male affects being a writer (and vice versa). At the same time, identity must be understood in terms of how being a good writer is affected by being a good listener. Additionally, identity must be understood in terms of how being a good listener is affected by being a male. If all of these interactions begin to sound a bit complicated, you are getting the picture. Ultimately, identity is not just a collection of isolated characteristics; rather it is a complicated network of our individual characteristics and the interaction between them. We are formed as snowflakes are formed, no two being identical. (I understand that recent research has shown that there can be identical snowflakes, but they are rare.)

Identity is the most fundamental element of existence. One’s identity is more precious than life itself. At times, a person is willing to die to preserve his or her identity. People will fight and kill others for ideals and concepts; it is only for one’s own identity that one will die. Martyrs do not die for ideas or concepts; the martyr dies because of who he or she sees himself or herself to be in this world.

As I write this, there is much conflict in the world. The conflict in the Middle East is confusing to many Westerners because our culture doesn’t emphasize the importance of identity. A few, by no means all, Muslim men and women are willing to sacrifice their lives in what appears to be support of their cause. In fact, the cause is connected to who the man or woman sees himself or herself to be. There are also Muslim men and women who heroically give themselves for non-Muslims because they see themselves in a different light.

World War II was another war that was related to identity issues. Hitler emphasized the identity of Germans as the master race. In effect, he reduced the idea of identity from a complex interrelationship of various traits to a single concept. Once a person’s identity was reduced to a single idea or concept, then that identity could be seen as the being the only thing that really mattered. Everyone else could be conceived of as being somehow less than human. Atrocities could be committed because those being killed were not part of the master race. (Of course, to one who identified with the master race, the acts were not perceived to be atrocities.)

Identity has also driven people in the United States to irrational actions. In part, one reason the United States stayed in Viet Nam was due to a national identity rooted in having never lost a war. The U.S. also had an underlying belief that our country was superior in culture and society to Viet Nam. We as a nation sacrificed thousands of young lives to the defense of that identity. Such a commitment to a single aspect of identity will produce a fanaticism that sacrifices everything a person would otherwise hold dear.

Living Without Awareness

Every individual has a concept of self that shapes his or her life. However, many people are unable to articulate that self-concept. Many people go through life in a state of waking sleep, not understanding what their identity is or how the identity is affecting their lives. These people go through the motions of living, not really understanding what they are doing or why they are driven to do the things they do. If they are lucky, they will have a vague sense of being incomplete. If not so lucky, they will have no idea that they could experience life much more fully. I call this living without awareness living a shadow life.

A person may live out a shadow life in two ways. One way is to go through life in a state of blissful ignorance. In this case, a person will not suspect that there is an identity that is directing their actions. In the end, he or she lives an unexamined life. This person is satisfied with life because he or she has not seen that there is more to life than what is seen on the surface.

This blissful ignorance is really quite rare, but being rare does not mean that it does not happen. Over my years as a counselor, I worked with individuals who were living the life that had been dictated by their mother or father without realizing what was driving them. As long as things went well, the ignorance was not a problem. The individual was quite at peace. However, an unexpected illness or the loss of a job (among other possibilities) had shattered that ignorance and state of bliss.

The second, and more common, way people may live a shadow life is that they experience some discomfort, having a vague sense that something is not complete in their lives. They work very hard to ignore the discomfort, even though it is a part of their daily existence. They live their entire lives without really knowing their own identity or the implications of that identity. They may end each day feeling sad and empty and they have no idea why.

The lack of a clear personal self-concept in Western culture has not gone unnoticed. The marketing industry uses this lack of awareness to attract consumers to their products. They convince people that buying whatever they are selling will give you a sense of societal belonging. Pepsi Cola was very direct when using the Pepsi Generation approach to advertising starting in 1963.² In 2005, Procter & Gamble promoted Tag Body Spray as a product that made young men irresistible to women. The ads depict women overwhelmed with physical attraction because a young man uses Tag Body Spray.

If the target audience for these ads were people who had a clear self-concept (personal identity), the commercials would lose much of their power to provoke buying the advertised product. Individuals would realize they do not need something external to make themselves attractive. Additionally, knowledge of their identity would move these young men to want to attract one type of woman: a woman who complemented their own unique characteristics, not a faceless horde of young women who just happen to be nearby.

Lack of a clear self-concept leaves a hole, a vacuum aching to be filled, in one’s life. A person seeking to fill that vacuum will grab onto anything that promises relief. The advertising industry wants us to believe we are made whole by what we drink, the car we drive, or the body spray we use. In actuality, the emptiness we feel can only be filled from the inside out. The first step in filling the hole is understanding oneself more fully.

Shakespeare wrote, [T]o thine own self be true,/ And it must follow, as the night the day,/ Thou canst not then be false to any man.³ The problem is that one first has to know one’s own self. Moreover, if one does not know oneself, it will be impossible to be true to anyone else. A man or woman will be false to others to the extent that he or she does not know himself or herself. If a person is an artist at heart, even if they are not aware of it, then that person will be false to himself or herself by dedicating themselves to another field. No one else can even know who the person really is because it is hidden from the individual himself nor herself. To the extent that self is not known, everything in life will be superficial.

Identity is the essential core of being, the sum of all the pieces of who we are, working in relationship with each other. Awareness (or lack of awareness) of who one truly is at his or her core, directly affects how true we can be to ourselves and to others.

Mission

One’s personal identity (at times I will refer to this as the soul identity) and one’s purpose in life are related. The more we know about one, the easier it will be to learn about the other. Learning about the soul’s identity and the life mission or life purpose is a cyclic process. Each thing one learns about the soul identity will help one to learn something about the life mission and that in turn will help one learn more about the soul identity.

In my experience of the world, the word mission often takes on a religious connotation. A mission is understood in terms of something that one does for God. In the context of this book, a personal mission is a function of each individual’s uniqueness and purpose in life. Mission and purpose are somewhat interchangeable terms.

There are other words which may connote something similar to mission: calling and vocation are two examples. While these words have similar meaning in many vocabularies, I want to differentiate what they each mean for this book. Calling hints at the activity of the divine (the divine being that which is greater than the individual) in determining the direction of a person’s life. When someone is said to be called to an endeavor, it means that person has committed himself or herself to a specific path because the divine has set him or her apart for an important task. Vocation is more about a chosen career. The way I am using it here it does not have the same spiritual connotation as mission.

A calling and a mission have slightly different connotations. The calling is the act of the divine letting one know that he or she has a specific job to do. The mission is the job that needs to be done. In either case, when one says calling or mission, one is talking about a specific purpose.

Everyone has a mission in life, and it is only with a calling that one becomes aware of what that mission is. The calling is what breaks through all the distractions and focuses a person’s life. A calling might be understood as marching orders. Just as identity and mission work together, each clarifying the other, calling and mission work together to increase clarity. As either the mission or the calling becomes clearer to an individual, its counterpart will also become clearer. If one becomes more fully aware of his or her mission, he or she will be more open as to how he or she is called to fulfill that mission.

A calling is sometimes experienced as a sudden awareness that here is where I belong. In religious language, it is an understanding that here is where God says I belong. Note that the calling and mission are still about identity. When one discovers his or her place in the world, one understands that all