Who Am I? Identity and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Quick Read

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Learning to “find yourself” is, by and large, a waste of time. The authentic self is not the problem — it is the wrong question. The right question is this: who are you in relation to God? That is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) was wrestling with when he wrote a poem from a Gestapo prison cell. And it is what this post is about.

No Such Thing As The Authentic Self

There is a degree to which who I am, the idea of an authentic self, is simply going to be unknowable in any meaningful way. Who we are is a moveable feast. We learn, we grow, and we are shaped by the people and situations we experience every single day. You might say, well isn’t there a core to who I am that remains the same? Can you define this core personality for me? Or are you only picking and choosing those parts of you that most match up to your own self-image?

Who we are is formed through our memories, our experiences, our choices, our beliefs, and our relationships. These things all change and develop. Sometimes we lose them, particularly our memories, or we simply forget them. Does that mean who I am has changed, or that how I talk about myself has changed? Is there a difference between who I am and how I talk about myself, or are they the same thing?

Is there the sense that who I am is actually hidden to myself? If I am the combination of my memories and experiences and relationships, and if I am not constantly aware of all of my memories, if I can forget things that I have gone through which have nevertheless influenced my growth and development, then are there elements of who I am that will remain a mystery because I cannot grasp hold of them?

And if our relationships also inform who I am, then is there a degree to which part of me is always behind me because how I am known is dependent upon others and is not controlled by myself? Edith Stein (1891–1942), philosopher, Carmelite nun, and fellow victim of the Nazis, argued in her early work that empathy — the capacity to imaginatively enter another person’s perspective — is not simply how we understand others. It is also how we begin to understand ourselves, because we can only see ourselves partially from the inside. We need others to show us what we cannot see. Stein would later conclude, as Bonhoeffer did, that the self is ultimately known only in God. Two thinkers, two prison cells, one answer.

I Am a Question to Myself

But then what about if how I act and present myself differs from person to person, from situation to situation? Am I the same person to my friends as I am to my work colleagues, or my family, or my partner? Am I lots of different people, or am I one person with lots of masks? Where does the presentation end and the person begin? Or do I just choose which stories to tell about myself? This is how social media works — we put out an idealised story of how we want to be seen and then wait to see whether the world says yes, this is who you are, back to us.

But then what happens when the stories that others tell about me do not match up with the stories I tell about myself. One of my favourite theologians, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), struggled with this question throughout his life but particularly when he was put in prison by the Nazis. He wrote a poem to try and wrestle with this question.

Who am I? They often tell me
I would step from my cell’s confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I would talk to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I would bear the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I know of myself,
restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
trembling with anger at despotism and petty humiliation,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
fleeing in disorder from a victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Who Am I?” from Letters and Papers from Prison (1953, Eng. trans. SCM Press). Used for educational and theological reflection purposes.

Who Am I?

Bonhoeffer is not the only person who has wrestled with this question. But he may be the most honest about it. His poem from prison does what few of us dare: it refuses a tidy answer.

In his poem, Bonhoeffer is wrestling with his sense of self. His world had been turned upside down. He had gone from being an academic and a pastor, someone from a wealthy and privileged background, to being a member of the resistance and the Confessing Church, then being imprisoned. He didn’t know what his future was going to be. He was struggling with his sense of impotence and the hardships of being in a Gestapo prison.

There in his prison cell he struggled with who he was. His sense of self had taken a beating. His identity was damaged by the changes that had happened to his life. He was left unsure, questioning who he had become. This questioning was made harder for him because the people around him, both other inmates and the guards, saw him differently to his self-image.

Who was right? Their perception of him, or his questioning self-image? His poem explores that question. His inner voice arguing with what others are telling him. Something I think many of us can relate to. There are so often times when the way people talk about us just doesn’t match up with our own self-image, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad.

For Bonhoeffer, either he was a hypocrite, or he did not really know himself. Could he be both the scared prisoner, watching as his country and his life collapsed around him, and the confident pastor, talking to the guards as if they worked for him, giving encouragement and faith to his fellow prisoners?

Bonhoeffer resolves this question by taking the foundation away from the validity of the question itself. Who Am I? Only God knows for certain, and God knows that I am His.

I Am Known By God

For Bonhoeffer, the questions of who he is continue to plague him. He cannot reconcile his own knowledge of himself with other people’s views of him. He cannot know himself. But he takes comfort from knowing and believing that ultimately his identity is rooted in belonging to Jesus.

God knows him, loves him, and holds him. His identity is to be in Christ. Everything else is passing — only Christ’s knowledge of him can know and hold all that he is.

We can see in scripture where he drew that confidence from.

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

— 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NRSV)

When we are in Christ, when we root our identity in who Jesus says that we are, then we are a new person. We get a fresh start. Part of being a disciple is about discovering who we are in relation to Christ.

“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

— Colossians 3:3 (NRSV)

When we die with Christ, who we were is hidden by Jesus. All the bad, all the mistakes, all the parts we don’t like, is covered by God. We can let go of the things that weigh us down because we can know ourselves as a new person.

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”

— Isaiah 49:15 (NRSV)

The NRSV rendering here is worth sitting with. Not “though she may forget” but “even these may forget.” The promise is sterner, and therefore more certain. Even when our memories start to fail. Even if we have brain damage and we lose who we used to be. Even when our bodies fail and we cease being able to do the things that gave us meaning, God still remembers us. Even when we distance ourselves from God, God still loves us. We are held in the memory of God for eternity.

We remain a mystery to ourselves. Perhaps we can never fully know ourselves. But rather than that driving us into despair or melancholy, it can give us some measure of freedom. We do not need to try and make ourselves into anything other than we are. Who we are is to be loved and known and held by Christ. Who I am is someone who belongs to Jesus.

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