BBC Radio 4 2016-05-26

Good morning.

This week, a play called Incognito opened in New York. The script is by Nick Payne, who's been hailed as the new Tom Stoppard, our giant of intellectual theatre. It focuses on the very topical theme of identity.

Drawing on four stories and more than 20 characters, the play explores what neuroscience is telling us about how our brains work, and echoes with one of humanity's deepest questions: who am I?

The play’s central concern is where our sense of self comes from - are we just a collection of memories and mental workarounds? Is there anything about us that's intrinsic, or are we just a jumbled filing system for information and influences? The New York Times says it challenges our most fundamental notions of autonomous selfhood.

We live in an age that's fascinated by identity. It's currently showing up most clearly in debates around gender identity - our next census may ask about it, and one social media site currently gives UK users dozens of options from which to select their gender self-definition.

Understanding who we are is a deep and healthy human need, and a task that we instinctively feel will lead to flourishing. Whether it's through finding the right language or label, better understanding our brains, or unpacking our pasts, the hope for many is that if we really know who we are, perhaps we will feel at home in our skins.

Lots of these are important and valuable responses to the question of identity. Christianity offers a slightly different approach to the project of working out our true selves. Paradoxically, Christians believe that we find a stable sense of self, not, or not solely, by gazing inwards, but by turning out beyond ourselves. Theology’s starting point for identity is that all humans are made in the image of a Trinitarian God. If God is trinity - that is, father, son and Holy Spirit, which is its very essence a relationship - then so are we.

Interestingly, Neuroscience itself to some extent confirms this. It turns out that the brain is intensely social. Its very matter is formed and moulded by the human connections in which we are imbedded. Babies’ brains literally take shape when they experience loving interaction, a fact that has not helped my own sense of the weighty responsibility of being a parent.

In the words of an old mobile phone advert, then, I am who I am because of everyone else. It's impossible to understand the self except in the context of others.

Therefore, the unveiling of ourselves as individuals can only get us so far. Jesus sums up this paradox, saying that it's only when we lose ourselves, in service and relationship with something bigger, that our true self can be found.

First broadcast 26 May 2016