Chapter 15 – From Imago Dei to Constructed Persona

“I have called you by name; you are mine.”
— Isaiah 43:1

Who am I?

This is no longer a philosophical question. It is a daily negotiation. In a society where the self is fluid, identity is something to be declared, performed, or curated—not discovered, much less received. Personal truth is treated as the highest truth. What was once a stable category—“the human person”—has become, in modern thought, an unstable construct.

In this chapter, we explore how the very idea of the self has shifted—from something created and known by God (Imago Dei) to something constructed, chosen, and performed. Thinkers like Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, and Yuval Noah Harari have each, in different ways, redefined what it means to be human. Underlying their work is a common rejection of givenness—a denial that identity has any source outside the individual or the system. The result is not just psychological exhaustion, but a profound spiritual homelessness.

In contrast, Scripture offers a radically different view: we are not self-authored, but God-authored. We are known before we speak, named before we perform, and loved before we choose. The recovery of this truth is essential—not just for Christian theology, but for human dignity itself.

Gender as Fiction: Butler and the Performance of Identity

Judith Butler’s landmark work Gender Trouble advanced the now-popular idea that gender is not a biological or spiritual reality but a performative construct. According to Butler, there is no “woman” or “man” behind the social role—only the illusion produced by repeated cultural acts. To be female, in this framework, is not to be something, but to do something repeatedly under social constraint.

In Butler’s words, “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... identity is performatively constituted.” The body becomes incidental. The soul becomes unnecessary. What matters is how one performs, not who one is.

Butler’s work was radical—but it was also timely. Her theories found fertile ground in a postmodern culture already skeptical of fixed categories. In less than two decades, her ideas migrated from obscure academia to pop culture, HR departments, legal frameworks, and social media bios. The notion that identity is flexible, fluid, and fundamentally self-determined is now taken for granted in many institutions.

But the cost is high. When identity is a project rather than a gift, the pressure to define oneself becomes relentless. The body becomes a problem to be overcome. Childhood becomes a battleground. And the soul—if it is spoken of at all—becomes a construction site with no architect.

Žižek and the Void at the Center of the Self

Slavoj Žižek, the post-Marxist philosopher and cultural critic, approaches identity from a different angle—through the lens of lack. Drawing on Lacan and Hegel, Žižek argues that the self is not a coherent whole, but a void structured by desire. There is no true self behind our actions—only the illusion of unity that covers over an internal rupture.

This is not merely pessimism. For Žižek, this lack is what propels us to act, to desire, to construct ideologies. Religion, politics, gender, even love—these are elaborate ways of dealing with the trauma of being. The mistake is not to be confused; the mistake is to believe you are not.

Žižek’s influence is most visible in intellectual subcultures that embrace irony, absurdity, and collapse. His disciples reject any notion of the stable self, preferring instead to revel in fragmentation. Authenticity becomes a joke; meaning is always deferred.

But a self that is always laughing at itself is a self that can never be healed. Žižek’s vision may explain our cultural moment—but it cannot redeem it.

Harari and the Algorithmic Soul

Yuval Noah Harari, in bestsellers like Sapiens and Homo Deus, offers an even more disenchanted view of the self. In his telling, the soul is not a theological mistake—it’s an evolutionary illusion. What we call “personhood” is nothing more than a data pattern generated by biochemical algorithms. Emotions, choices, convictions—these are not signs of spirit, but outputs of a programmable machine.

For Harari, the future belongs not to persons but to programmers. In a world of biometric surveillance and behavioral prediction, he suggests, our algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves. Free will is a myth; consciousness is a side effect; dignity is negotiable.

This vision has deep resonance in Silicon Valley, in technocratic institutions, and among those who believe salvation will come not from heaven but from artificial intelligence. It is, in many ways, the logical end of a godless anthropology.

But if we are just machines, we cannot love or be loved. We cannot be held accountable, but neither can we be valued. We may optimize human behavior—but in the process, we destroy the human being.

From Creature to Creator: A Spiritual Shift

What unites Butler, Žižek, and Harari is not a shared discipline, but a shared impulse: the rejection of givenness. The self is no longer a creature to be formed, but a creator to be feared or worshiped. In modern secular thought, identity has no fixed essence, only floating function.

This marks a profound theological shift. In the Christian story, the self is real because it is created—endowed with dignity, marked with God’s image, and placed in a moral universe. In the secular story, the self is real only when it performs or redefines itself. The result is not freedom, but a crisis of weightlessness. We are asked to carry ourselves, invent ourselves, and secure ourselves—without foundation or finish line.

The Bible diagnoses this as self-deification. From Eden onward, the human temptation has always been to “be like God,” to define good and evil, to shape reality by sheer will. But the cost of that rebellion is always exile: from the garden, from truth, from ourselves.

The Biblical Vision: Known, Named, and Formed

In sharp contrast, the Bible offers a vision of identity that begins not with choice but with love.

We are made in the image of God (Imago Dei)—not as accidents, but as intentional acts of divine creativity. Our identity is not a performance but a calling. We are known before we perform, loved before we succeed, and forgiven before we even understand our failure.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” God says to Jeremiah (Jer. 1:5).
“You have searched me and known me,” writes the psalmist (Psalm 139).
“I have called you by name; you are mine,” declares the Lord (Isaiah 43:1).

This is not flattening. It is not erasure. It is the beginning of belonging.

When we receive our identity from God, we are set free from the tyranny of self-creation. We no longer have to invent meaning or perform our worth. We can rest in the One who gives both.

Redemption, Not Reinvention

The modern gospel of identity promises freedom through reinvention. The true Gospel offers freedom through redemption.

Jesus did not come to validate all identities. He came to transform them. The woman at the well did not find healing by affirming her story, but by encountering the Truth who rewrote it. Paul did not cling to his identity as a Pharisee, but counted it loss for the sake of knowing Christ.

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” writes Paul (2 Cor. 5:17).
Not a curated creation. Not a better performance. A new creation.

This transformation is not the erasure of the self, but the restoration of the true self—one formed in Christ, rooted in grace, and destined for glory.

Closing Reflection: The Relief of Being Known

The modern obsession with identity is not wrong in its desire. We were made to be seen, to be loved, to be known. But the path the world offers—of endless performance and self-definition—is not a path to peace. It is a treadmill.

Only the Gospel gives us what we long for: to be fully known and fully loved.

Not because we got it right. But because Jesus did.

So let the world perform. Let it deconstruct and digitize. But let the church remember and proclaim:

You are not your pronouns.
You are not your performance.
You are not your preferences.

You are God’s.

And that is enough.