It can take a lifetime to answer that question. Our culture wants to slot us into well-defined identity groups, but identity is far more complicated than sharing characteristics with one group or another.
Each of us is magnificently unique.
We understand who we are based on our families, neighborhoods, schools, work and the wider culture, but for Christians, identity is first defined as children of God. Every other identifying trait is secondary. Recently, researchers have discovered that work is taking the place of religion in determining an individual’s identity.
I was first introduced to this concept when reading a book by sociologist Carolyn Chen, Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley written in 2022. She described corporations that provide meals, opportunities for socialization, and options for play to their employees. Some employees rarely leave. She concludes;
Silicon Valley helps us to see a broader trend, one that has eluded scholars of work and religion alike: subtly but unmistakably, work is replacing religion. Over the past forty years, work has extracted ever more of the time and energy of highly skilled Americans, crowding out other commitments, especially religion. P. 4 (Emphasis mine)
Historically churches were the center of social and spiritual life, and for some people, they still are. In recent years church attendance has declined for complicated reasons, but excessive busyness, disappointment with church organizations, and people meeting their needs elsewhere, like in their workplaces, are surely factors.
Derek Thompson, in The Atlantic, has coined a term for the belief that work is replacing religion: workism.
It is rooted in the belief that work can provide everything we have historically expected from organized religion: community, meaning, self-actualization. And it is characterized by the irony that, in a time of declining trust in so many institutions, we expect more than ever from the companies that employ us—and that, in an age of declining community attachments, the workplace has, for many, become the last community standing.
Why Americans Care About Work So Much by Derek Thompson
An individual who has invested their identity in a profession, who has found community, meaning and self-actualization in his or her workplace, is an identity crisis waiting to happen. When retired, she may wonder who she is now that she’s not working. He may not know what to do with himself. Some serious identity bridging will have to be done.
Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School who has researched the challenges associated with retirement coined the phrase identity bridging, which is the process of resurrecting past pursuits, hobbies, ideas or defining new areas of interest. It’s an absolute necessity for many who retire, Amabile says,
…identification with either the work that they do or their profession or their organization or their colleagues, that identification is very strong. And what do you do with that? What do you do with that big chunk of yourself after you retire? So we’ve discovered that many people engage in what we call identity bridging.1
Retirement is a stage of life to more fully realize your identity.
After working for decades, when your identity is largely consumed by your work, retirement is the perfect opportunity to expand your identity, to try out new hobbies, different work, or even a new career. Have some fun. Experiment with creative ideas. Play with interesting hypotheses. That may be more difficult than it sounds for those who felt most themselves at work.
Thompson writes,
The best-educated and highest-earning Americans, who can have whatever they want, have chosen the office for the same reason that devout Christians attend church on Sundays: It’s where they feel most themselves.
The Religion of Workism is Making Americans Miserable by Derek Thompson (Emphasis mine)
Where do you feel most yourself? At work? In the garden? Hiking? Having dinner with friends? At church? It’s an interesting question to focus our thoughts on identity. An office, classroom, hospital, or construction site and the people we work with help shape our identity, but there is far more to our identity than our jobs. Those who allow their workplaces to absorb them are limiting their identity.
Chen and Thompson are on to something, but I don’t believe they take it deep enough. Religion is a term for an organization of people who believe the same things about God. These people typically come together to worship God in a church, usually identified as a religion or a denomination, in other words, an organization. Religion is the cultural institution that we have constructed around a relationship with God, and it’s meant to foster a growing faith.
It’s the faith that is important.
If we have historically expected ‘community, meaning, and self-actualization’ from the cultural institution that we call religion, then the workplace, another cultural institution, can provide those things. But that’s the not primary intention of religion. Our faith and how we observe it in our religion should lead us to a better understanding of who God is and who we are in his sight, disciple us, help us become more ourselves. The workplace cannot begin to do that for us. Sadly, many churches don’t either.
Would you leave your faith behind as you enter retirement? I suspect your answer, like mine, is absolutely not. My faith is central to my identity, and I can no more leave it behind than I can go about my day, my life, without my heart. I feel most myself with God.
It took me a while to figure that out, for I’ve had my share of identity crises, but my identity is first and foremost a unique child of God. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing; no one can take that identity away from me. My identity is expanding, not shrinking, as I get older.
Retirement will be difficult for those who defined their identity by their work, but it’s also an opportunity to expand their vision of God and themselves.
I recommend taking advantage of the opportunity!
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
“An individual who has invested their identity in a profession, who has found community, meaning and self-actualization in his or her workplace, is an identity crisis waiting to happen.” Totally agree and I wish I had thought about that when I was in my early career instead of after retirement. Where do I feel most myself is indeed a great question to ponder. Thank you!
Thanks, once again, for an incredibly thought-provoking discourse. Your words spark excitement and paradoxically ignite introspection. I have so many ideas I want to dissect! One thought is to compare the differences between man-made corporate communities and divine congregations against self-made identification. It would be fascinating to explore the concepts of diversity, homogeneity and individualism across the spectrum of affiliation and organizing. Am I making sense?