In Genesis 1:27, we read the following: “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” We are beings inextricably linked to God, yet we are constantly striving to separate ourselves from our Creator. It’s part of our primeval rebellion (“you will be like god knowing good and evil”), and it’s something that has become a rather significant part of our nature.
Given our source, we have a free will from which flows all kinds of creation and, unfortunately, destruction. What happens when we continue our rebellion against God and start re-creating ourselves? Is the creation of a new identity an act of rebellion or something else? Where does an identity come from anyway? Is it something suggested to us by our environment, or does it depend on our individual personalities? These are some of the questions that Tara Isabella Burton asks, and attempts to answer, in her new book, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians.
Read Full Article »