Last month, I described a cultural shift from expressive individualism to what some are calling “mob identity”—the move from “find yourself by looking inside yourself” to “find yourself by looking to a group to define your identity.” In response to that column, multiple pastors reached out to me, from different parts of the country, recognizing this development in their own contexts.
A young man preparing to plant a church in New York City told me he saw both expressive individualist and group identity aspects in his community, sometimes in the same person. He’d recently been in a coffee shop on the Upper West Side with a young believer, an artist seeking to make something of beauty in a culture that increasingly sees beauty as either a luxury or an escape. While they talked, an ICE protest erupted across the street at the entrance to Columbia University. A strange juxtaposition. Here was a conversation about the God of all beauty, happening in real time against the backdrop of a world that feels, to many, like it’s perpetually on fire, everything coming apart at once.
Widen the view and you realize this loss of meaning and this search for significance, within the context of societal breakdown, isn’t just a big-city phenomenon. It characterizes this present moment across the country.
Two Dead Ends, One Deeper Problem
In Rethink Your Self, I described three basic orientations to life, each with a different starting point. You can embark on your quest for identity
- by looking in (defining yourself by your deepest desires),
- by looking around (finding your identity through community and belonging), or
- by looking up (finding your life in the God who has created and redeemed you).
Western culture over the past several decades has been dominated by the “look in” approach—the assumption that the purpose of life is to discover who you really are and express that identity to the world.
But as I noted in my earlier column, that approach is shifting. As the insecurities of expressive individualism become more manifest, and as the loneliness of this way of life becomes inescapable, more and more people are looking for a stable place to ground their identity. And here’s where the “look around” approach becomes attractive once again.
But take note: This isn’t a simple return to the culture of traditional societies where “look around” is most prevalent. What looks like a correction to expressive individualism is actually an evolution. Why? Because the self remains in the driver’s seat; it’s just that now the individual is choosing to base his or her identity in tribal belonging rather than self-expression. You choose to align with your group. The group then tells you who you are. And you choose to display that identity to the world as a signal of your values and virtue.
Why does this development matter for evangelism? Because both the “look in” and “look around” orientations share the same underlying assumption: The resources for human flourishing are available to us if we can just arrange things correctly. Whether it’s more individual freedom or more group solidarity. Whether it’s fewer constraints on the individual or more belonging for the group. The argument isn’t about whether the world is broken or whether we share in that brokenness. It’s about which lever, pulled hard enough, will finally fix us and, by extension, the world.
But both roads lead to a dead end. Neither the self nor the tribe can bear the weight of what we’re asking them to carry.
Follow the Hope to Its Logical End
Both the expressive individualist and the identity-politics devotee are functioning, at some level, as frustrated idealists. They yearn for a better world, a world that’s freer, more accepting, more communal. They’re exhausted by the gap between what they long for and what they see. They’re angry that the world they want hasn’t arrived yet, and they often assume something or someone is holding them back.
So, where do we start in conversation with people like this? With questions, not arguments. You don’t argue someone out of something they were never argued into. And most people don’t adopt a posture toward the world because they were convinced of good arguments. They land there because of hope.
That’s why questions are key. The goal is to help people follow their own hopes further than they’ve followed them themselves. Ask them to articulate what they see as the biggest problems in the world. Dig a little deeper to see who or what they believe is responsible for those problems. Ask them what would need to happen to bring about resolution or healing. Probe whatever “fixes” they suggest, to help them see that whatever they assume would be permanent would more likely be temporary.
These aren’t trick questions. You’re drawing out someone’s perspective, helping them consider their life and why they see the world the way they do. Many people live with a mix of hopes and dreams, frustrations and hurts. The Christian, by unearthing the initial longings that drive a person’s search for identity and happiness, can then help someone trace the proposed solutions to their logical end.
What we find is that most of the solutions on offer—whether it’s expressive individualism or the newer amalgamation of individualism and identity politics—would require a change in human nature that their view of the world can’t account for or accomplish. Fewer constraints won’t resolve the selfishness that corrupts freedom. More group cohesion won’t resolve the pride and tribalism that corrupt solidarity.
As Christians, we know sin infects everything. We know we need salvation outside ourselves. And so, in the end, all these conversations ought to lead to this question: And if that doesn’t work . . . what then?
Gospel Longings, Misdirected in the World
The good news is, the longings underneath expressive individualism or crowd identity aren’t dismissed by the Bible. We can acknowledge God-given longings that sin has misdirected.
The hunger for justice is real, and right. The longing to belong—the hope for a community that can hold together across difference, for a solidarity that doesn’t require an enemy to sustain it—is real, and right. The desire for a renewed world, for beauty that isn’t just an escape but evidence that brokenness won’t have the final word, is real, and right.
Christianity doesn’t dismiss these longings. Even though, yes, the Scriptures will expose the lies we’re prone to believe, and even though the gospel subverts all human efforts to satisfy these longings, we believe the Christian story promises fulfillment at a depth no political movement or tribal identity can reach. Justice that gets to the root of the issues we face. A community marked not by opposition to shared enemies but by devotion to a shared Lord. A restoration that isn’t man-made and uncertain but guaranteed in the end, because the One who promised it rose from the dead.
Better, Richer Hope
In evangelism, our response to a resurgent “look around” approach—whether it’s progressive identity politics or conservative versions of nationalism—must be to follow the way of Jesus. To those who would “look in” first, Jesus says to deny ourselves, to find ourselves by losing ourselves. To those who would “look around” first, Jesus relegates every group identity (including the family) to second-tier status under his reign.
Only looking up reorders us in a way that gives true dignity to the self without making it ultimate. Only looking up elevates the beauty of community without making the tribe an idol.
If it’s true we’re entering an era marked by the combination of expressive individualism and group identity, the world will need a church that shows what it looks like when we look up before we look in or around. A church that can show a world grasping for freedom and solidarity what it looks like to truly belong—to God and to one another.
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