But in every case, in the midst of the messiness and challenges of what Christians call fellowship, I came to know and be known by people, many vastly different from me in key respects, whose lives and caring interactions with me and each other helped all of us to live more fully our identity as children of God. We can be known and loved not only

I now want to discuss practices that can enable a person to put on the identity of a child of God known and loved by him. I recommend three, which pertain to how we relate to God and the people of God: listening to God; speaking to God; and becoming a committed and vulnerable member of a local church faith community.

I judged the movement to be fatally flawed for three reasons: looking only inward to find yourself produces a fragile self, easily destabilized and lacking in genuine and lasting self-knowledge (chapter 2); it is failing to lead to the good life, too easily producing selves that are self-deceived, self-absorbed, and self-centered (chapter 3); and

To put on the narrative identity of the life story of Jesus Christ, put your trust in Christ and get baptized, read and hear the Bible, take Communion, say the creed, sing the faith, and, most importantly, live the gospel.

With regard to the function of liturgy and storytelling in general, James K. A. Smith claims that we are defined by what we desire or love, which is bound up with our view of human flourishing. Liturgy, then—and Smith argues that the world is full of competing liturgies—helps to shape and cultivate our desires.

The humble, although thinking less about themselves, know themselves more accurately than do those who are proud. Or as Jesus put it, those who risk losing themselves know themselves better than those who seek to find themselves.

N. T. Wright notes the relevance of living Christ’s story for our world today: We live in a world where, increasingly, people are clutching at straws, unable to glimpse a story which would lead the way into true peace, freedom and justice. The Christian gospel offers such a story. But to tell it truly, you have to be living it.18

We live the stories to which we subscribe. Narrative identity informs behavior and shapes who we are in the world. Alistair McIntyre said it well: “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part.’”

I find it of great help and comfort that the Bible calls out the bad behavior of God’s people and also provides the resources for their renewal, and mine too. Keller writes, “While the church has inexcusably been party to the oppression of people at times, it is important to realize that the Bible gives us tools for analysis and unflinching