The cultural conditions of expressive individualism and the technological capacity for never-ending self-display conspire to transform every act into an identity-defining, loyalty-aligning symbolic statement

In such conditions, no act—even the most benign—is merely an act but must always be something more: a declaration that signals who one is, with whom one's allegiances lie, against whom one stands opposed

The church must learn to be a people who joyfully rebels against the hegemonic dynamics of expressive self-display, the incessant pull to anxiously construct an identity in every personal action and to uncharitably interpret every action of the other as identity construction

The church must learn to be a people who receives her identity from the acts of God—his word and work—so that she is freed from the tyranny of self-oriented symbolics to act wisely in the world for the sake of faith, hope, and love, ever secure and whole in Christ