Speaker 1
in flux. Well, identity is typically when you think about it from a philosophical point that it's almost like an anchor of who you are. If you don't know who you are, it's there is no you and you have to anchor yourself to something. So people anchor themselves typically to their family. Who are you? Well, I'm so and so son or daughter. I mean, so you have to anchor yourself to God, to family, to a job, to a career, to certain things. There's just no stronger anchor than God, because God's unchanging your job will change. Your family will change. All those things are changing. God is unchanging. And so it's the thing that's most stabilizing. If somebody wants to create a stable identity, it's the most stable, he's the most stable thing you can anchor yourself to. And then the other thing is your community, right? Those people around you. And so that's another really critical part of your identity is who's your family, who are your friends, who's your community? Like people like, you know, somebody I ran through the other day, I asked them what they were doing and I said, hey, what do you do? I'm a crossfitter. That was part of their identity that they were a crossfitter, you know? And so vegans, hey, I'm a vegan, hey, I'm a carner. I'm, you know, so those things even become part of our identities. The goal is this. I believe that we have a universal purpose. And that is to love God, love people and make earth a heavenly place. Like you and I both love regenerative agriculture and helping heal the planet. This is why even what you guys are doing with you and and Paul Saladino with, you know, lineage beef sticks, I'm a huge fan of it. I'm going to buy it. I'm going to promote it. I'm going to tell people about it because you're helping heal the planet. Like when you're supporting regenerative agriculture and grass fed meat and those sort of things, like you're helping heal and redeem this entire planet. And imagine like, what does a utopia look like? Well, in a utopia in the Bible in the book of Genesis, God told Adam and Eve, take this paradise, this perfect paradise. And I want you to take it and make the entire world this paradise. That was the initial calling. And when you go and read the first book of the Bible, Genesis, the first couple chapters you'll read about being in a garden, when you go to the book of Revelation, the last two chapters, it says we will live in a garden city. Okay, so there's progression here. But now it's a garden, the whole earth, but a city. And so there's buildings, there's structures, there's things we've created. You know, and so if you've read the Lord of the Rings, which is my favorite, you know, fun book, I've ever read from that standpoint, you're reading about Rivendale and La Florian in these places of golden leaves and these trees and this absolute paradise. But I believe we're all called to turn this planet into an actual paradise. We know this can be done. We know already you can turn deserts into rainforests by certain farming practices and doing this thing. So my point there is, is I think I wanted to step back and go to here as part of the end in mind. And everybody is living in harmony to doing using their unique talents to doing what God has called them to do. Now going back to this, our identity is tied to your roles and responsibilities. And so my roles are a, I'm a son of God, that's one. And then let's talk about other people. I've role as a family. That's probably the next highest identity that a lot of people have. So my identity is as a father and as a husband. Now, if my identity, one of my core identities is I'm a dad and I'm a girl dad. I got two girls. I got a four year old and a four month old right now. And so part of your identity is also tied to the level of meaning you attached to and this is why God is important. God's eternal. We're spiritual beings. If you believe you're going to live for eternity or this time here, is it? You mentioned nihilism earlier. Okay, this life doesn't matter. It's meaningless. So none of that, you know, and there's different levels there. You could think, well, none of this matters or it matters only what I'm here or you could think of what matters for eternity. And not only would I do, but everything I do to other people. So if I think of myself and my role and identity as a father and I think of myself as okay, it's a low level of meaning, which is, okay, I'm a father. If I impregnate a woman, boom, done, that means I'm a father. That's a very low level of meaning. We know this is an issue today because fatherlessness and what that does to making the world not a heavenly place. Look at the statistics. It's mind blowing. So that's a very low level of okay, my role as a father, I'm not even going to show up because it's just not that meaningful for me in terms of the way I think of it. A level up from that is I'm a dad, I'm a father, and I'm going to show up. I'm going to provide for my family. I'm going to show up on a regular basis. I'm going to be there. I'm going to try and create a good environment. The best I know how that's a much higher level.
