At The Gospel-Driven Church Jared Wilson has on his sidebar the common “About Me” section, which says this:

Jared Wilson. I’m the husband of Becky, the father of Macy and Grace, a writer of books, and the pastor of a great church. Most importantly, I am a follower of Jesus.

When I was at Bible College, a lecturer there advocated defining a person’s personhood or identity based on relationship as opposed to what you do.

“So”, said the lecturer, “I am Brian, husband of Trudi, father of George, Michael and Margaret” (not the actual names - I can’t remember the actual names!). His rationale was that the persons of the Trinity are defined by their relationship to each other, and therefore so are we.

Now, I doubt whether Jared is heir to that type of thinking considering he goes on to define himself by his writing and pastoring. Most likely he’s just following convention (many bloggers have similar descriptions). What I find fascinating, however, is that neither the lecturer, the people I know who follow his views nor Jared as my chosen representative of many blogger self-descriptions, ever actually follow the Trinitarian and biblical pattern of defining themselves in relationship to their father or even, in these egalitarian days, parents.

What a Western, individualistic oversight! In the process of trying to overcome individuality by defining self in terms of relationships, the relationships used to define us are those that begin with ourselves!

I don’t have a proper “About Me” section, and I confess to being reluctant to put much info about my family on the web, but it would be interesting to see self-descriptions containing inter-generational relationships that do not originate with us.

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