Flipping the Script on Identity

FLIPPING THE SCRIPT ON IDENTITY

Blackmore’s identity as a believer in paranormal phenomena made it difficult for her to change her mind, yet she ultimately managed to anyway. That’s because, in addition to her identity as a paranormal believer, Blackmore had a second identity, one that was strong enough to counter the first—that of a truth-seeker. She prided herself on subjecting her conclusions to thorough scrutiny, double-checking results, and ultimately, believing her data.

That’s a common theme among people who are good at facing hard truths, changing their mind, taking criticism, and listening to opposing views. Scout mindset isn’t a chore they carry out grudgingly; it’s a deep personal value of theirs, something they take pride in.

Throughout the last two chapters, we’ve seen how your identity is a hindrance to scout mindset, how thinking of yourself as “a feminist” or “an optimist” can shape your thinking and behavior in invisible ways, creating pressure to believe certain things and defend certain positions regardless of whether they’re true. This chapter is about a way to make that phenomenon work for us instead of against us by flipping the script and making scout mindset part of our identity.

We can return now to Joshua Harris, the pastor and author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. When we last left him, Harris had begun to seriously consider the possibility that his critics were right. Maybe the pro-purity message of his book was too extreme. Maybe it really had been damaging to some of his readers’ relationships and self-worth, even though that was never his intention. Still, he found it hard to stomach the thought of repudiating his own book. As he admitted to a journalist, “Part of the reason this has been so hard for me is that I have so much of my identity tied up in these books. It’s what I’m known for. It’s like, well, crap, is the biggest thing I’ve done in my life this really huge mistake?”[2]

Identity made it hard for Harris to face the truth, but in the end, identity is also the reason he succeeded. In 2015, Harris stepped down as pastor and enrolled in a graduate school of theology. At age forty, it was his first time attending a traditional school full time—he had been homeschooled as a child and, after his book made him famous at twenty-one, he had become a pastor without going to college first. The change in his role sparked a corresponding change in the way he saw himself. He was no longer the “leader with answers.” He was a “student with questions,” and he found that the new identity made it easier for him to entertain new perspectives, even when they pushed the limits of his comfort zone.[3]

By 2018, Harris had concluded his soul-searching and found his answer: he had decided to discontinue publication of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. He announced the decision on his website, explaining: “I no longer agree with its central idea that dating should be avoided. I now think dating can be a healthy part of a person developing relationally and learning the qualities that matter most in a partner.”[4]